May 7th is

Roast Leg of Lamb Day

Cosmopolitan Cocktail Day

National Barrier Awareness Day *

National Library Legislative Day *

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MORE! David Hume, Anne Dudley and Edvard Munch, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica,
St. Kitts & Nevis – Labour Day Holiday

Kazakhstan – Homeland Defender Day

Malaysia – Pahang: Hari Hol Pahang
(Remembrance day for Sultan)

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On This Day in HISTORY

558 – In Constantinople, the dome of Hagia Sophia collapses; Justinian I immediately orders that the dome be rebuilt

1429 – Joan d’Arc is wounded between the neck and shoulder, pulls the arrow out herself, and returns to lead the charge on the key English position, les Tourelles, a turreted gatehouse at Orléans, which breaks the siege that had lasted over six months

1487 – The Siege of Málaga commences during the Spanish Reconquista, the campaign by the Catholic Monarchs to take Spain back from the Muslims

1664 – Construction begins on the Palace of Versailles for Louis XIV of France

1697 – Stockholm’s royal castle, dating back to medieval times, is destroyed by fire; it is replaced by the Royal Palace, which is finally completed in 1760

1711 – David Hume born, Scottish economist, historian, and philosopher

1718 – The city of New Orleans is founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville

1748 – Olympe de Gouges born, French playwright, philosopher, feminist and abolitionist; Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791); executed during the Reign of Terror for attacking the Revolutionary government

1763 – Pontiac’s War begins with attacks by his coalition of over a dozen tribes on a number of British forts and settlements in the Great Lakes region

1794 – Robespierre introduces the Cult of the Supreme Being in the National Convention as the new state religion of the French First Republic, intended to replace both Roman Catholicism and the Cult of Reason

1812 – Robert Browning born, English Victorian poet and playwright

1818 – Juliet Opie Hopkins born, American nurse and administrator during the Civil War, “the Florence Nightingale of the South,” buried in Arlington National Cemetery

1824 – Premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Vienna, Austria

1832 – At the London Conference of 1832, Britain, France and Russia decide, without consulting Greece, that the country, which had just freed itself from the Ottoman Empire with their help, should be governed by a monarchy, and the throne is offered by them to Bavarian Prince Otto

1833 – Johannes Brahms born, German Romantic composer and pianist

1840 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky born, the first Russian composer to attract international acclaim; noted for ballets and symphonies 

1845 – Mary Eliza Mahoney, one of the first African Americans to gradutate from nursing school, and the first African American to work as a professionally trained nurse; co-founder with Adah B. Thoms of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses, which challenged racial discrimination in the registered nursing profession. The NACGN merged in 1951 with the American Nurses Association. Mahoney was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1993

1846 – The Cambridge Chronicle, America’s oldest surviving weekly newspaper, is published for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts

1864 – The world’s oldest surviving clipper ship, the City of Adelaide, is launched by William Pile, Hay and Co. in Sunderland, England, for transporting passengers and goods between Britain and Australia

1892 – Archibald MacLeish born, American Modernist poet, playwright, and lawyer

1895 – In Saint Petersburg, Russian scientist Alexander Stepanovich Popov demonstrates to the Russian Physical and Chemical Society his invention, the Popov lightning detector — a primitive radio receiver

1901 – Gary Cooper born in Montana, American film actor and movie star, began his career as a stunt rider in silent movies, but became a star in 1929 in the early sound picture, The Virginian; notable for his performances in A Farewell to Arms, Meet John Doe,  Sergeant York, The Pride of the Yankees, and High Noon. Won Academy Awards for Best Actor in Sergeant York and High Noon

1915 – World War I: German submarine U-20 sinks RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans. Public reaction to the sinking turns many formerly pro-Germans in the United States against the German Empire

1915 – China received a revised ‘Thirteen Demands’ from Japan, an ultimatum with a two-day deadline for response; in January, 1915, the Empire of Japan had originally sent the Republic of China ‘Twenty-One Demands’ which would have greatly extended Japanese control of Manchuria and the Chinese economy and ended the Open Door Policy, which had kept China open to trade with all countries equally since 1899

1919 – Eva Perón born, dubbed Evita, influential First Lady of Argentina (1946-1952), advocate for labor rights, healthcare and women’s suffrage

1920 – Treaty of Moscow: Soviet Russia recognizes the independence of the Democratic Republic of Georgia only to invade the country six months later

1920 – The Art Gallery of Ontario, in Toronto, opens the first exhibition by the Group of Seven, a group of Canadian landscape painters, also known as the Algonquin School

1927 – Ruth Prawer Jhabvala born in Germany to Jewish parents; her family was among the last to escape from the Nazi regime in 1939, emigrating to Britain; she then lived in India with her husband from 1951 until 1975, when she moved to New York after his death; British-American novelist and screenwriter; Heat and Dust

1928 –The Ji’an Incident: the Japanese Army, allied with Northern Chinese warlords, resume the Northern Expedition in violation of their standing orders and Chinese sovereignty, moving into Ji’an and Qingtao; Chiang Kai-shek’s Kupmintang troops ignore his orders to avoid engagement, and move to meet the Japanese coalition.  Leaders on both sides call for a truce and cease-fire, but the Japanese generals, building their stocks of food and ammunition, hold 17 of the Chinese negotiators hostage, while issuing demands with a 12-hour deadline that the Chinese would never accept. When the chief negotiator protests in Japanese, he and the rest of the negotiators are tortured and killed. Japanese forces go on to kill over 2000 Chinese civilians after fierce fighting drives the Chinese troops from the area

1939 – Germany and Italy announce their alliance, the Rome-Berlin Axis

1940 – After Germany’s surprise invasion of neutral Norway, the Norway Debate in the British House of Commons begin, and lead to a ‘no confidence” vote, and the replacement of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain by Winston Churchill

1940 – Angela O. Carter born, English novelist, journalist, poet and feminist; Nights at the Circus, The Magic Toyshop, Wise Children

1945 – General Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender terms at Reims, France, ending Germany’s participation in the war, which take effect the next day

1948 – The Council of Europe is founded during the Hague Congress

1949 – Deborah Butterfield born, American sculptor, noted for horses made from found objects; credits her interest in sculpting horses to being born on the day of the 75^th running of the Kentucky Derby

Deborah Butterfield in her Montana Studio

1952 – The concept of the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey Dummer

1954 – Indochina War: The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ends in a French defeat and a Vietnamese victory

1954 – Joanna D. Haigh born, British physicist and academic; professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London, and co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment since 2014; noted for work on solar variability, radiative transfer, and stratosphere-troposphere climate modeling;  Fellow of the Royal Society since 2013, and former president of the Royal Meteorological Society

1954 – Amy Heckerling born, American film director, screenwriter and producer; Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Look Who’s Talking and Clueless

1956 – Anne Dudley born English composer, conductor and pop musician; first BBC Concert Orchestra Compose in Association in 2001; member of the band Art of Noise and Academy Award winner for the Best Original Score for The Full Monty

1957 – Kristina M. Johnson born, American executive, optical engineer, and academic; appointed as U.S. Department of Energy Under Secretary (2009-2010), where she developed an integrated  Strategic Technologies Energy Plan for reducing our dependence on imported oil by 75%, achieving greenhouse gas reductions of 83% by 2050, and achieving 80% low-carbon electricity by 2035; leader in developing optoelectronic processing systems and 3-D imaging; co-founder of the National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center, and the Center of Excellence in Optoelectronics at the Colorado Advanced Technology Institute; Chancellor of the State University of New York; advocate for women in leadership, science and engineering; first woman awarded the International Dennis Gabor Award for creativity in modern optics in 1993, and recipient of the John Fritz Medal for engineering; in 2015 elected to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, and elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2016

1960 – Almudena Grandes born, Spanish writer, columnist and leftist political activist; in 1989, won the La Sonrisa Vertical prize for her novel Las ededes de Lulú (The Ages of Lulu)

1961 – Dame Sue Black born, Scottish forensic anthropologist, anatomist and author; Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology at the University of Dundee (2005-2018); will be Pro Vice-Chancellor for Engagement at Lancaster University beginning in August 2018; co-author of Disaster Victim Identification: The Practitioner’s Guide, and Age Estimation in the Living: The Practitioners Guide

1962 – Judith S. Donath born, American computer scientist; fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center, and founder of the Sociable Media Group at the MIT Media Lab; combines concepts from many disciplines, including evolutionary biology, architecture, ethnography and cognitive science, in developing and optimizing designs of mediated virtual cities on the internet and online virtual identities; Inhabiting the Virtual City

1977 – Seattle Slew wins the Kentucky Derby on his way to winning the Triple Crown

1984 – A $180 million out-of-court settlement is announced in the Agent Orange class-action suit brought by Vietnam veterans.

1986 – National Barrier Awareness Day * is first proclaimed, a day to break down the physical and societal barriers that make life more difficult for people with disabilities

1992 – Michigan ratifies a 203-year-old proposed amendment to the United States Constitution making the 27th Amendment law, which bars the U.S. Congress from giving itself a mid-term pay raise

1992 – NASA Space Shuttle Endeavour is launched on its first mission, to retrieve an Intelsat VI satellite

1994 – Edvard Munch’s iconic painting The Scream is recovered undamaged after being stolen from the National Gallery of Norway in February

1995 – National Library Legislative Day * is sponsored by the American Library Association.  Librarians and library lovers lobby Congress in person and online to insure continued federal support for community libraries, and to inform legislators of the impact proposed legislation will have on these priceless resources

2000 – Vladimir Putin is inaugurated as president of Russia

2007 –  Israeli archaeologists discover the tomb of Herod the Great, south of Jerusalem

2012 – Paeleoclimatological research by the British team of Earth Science lecturer David Wilkinson, zoologist Graeme Ruxton and methane expert Professor Euan Nisbet, suggests that the flatulence of sauropod dinosaurs may have produced enough methane gas to warm the earth during the Mesozoic Era (from about 252 to 66 million years ago)

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