First Confidential

THIS DAY IN HISTORY - MAY 2nd

Harry Emerson Fosdick, Quote

“I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it.”

~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

Wikiquote (Harry Emerson Fosdick (May 24, 1878 – October 5, 1969) was an American pastor. Fosdick became a central figure in the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s and was one of the most prominent liberal ministers of the early 20th Century.)

This Day in History

May 2nd, 1194

Richard I of England

King Richard I of England gives Portsmouth its first Royal Charter.

Wikipedia  Image: Richard I of England: The ruins of Château Gaillard. Even a rain of blood – considered a bad omen – did not dissuade Richard from building his vast and expensive fortress in Normandy. ● 19th-century portrait of Richard by Merry-Joseph Blondel ● Richard I being anointed during his coronation in Westminster Abbey, from a 13th-century chronicle ● Effigy (1199) of Richard I at Fontevraud Abbey, Anjou.


May 2nd, 1536

Henry VIII; Coat of Arms and Seal of Henry VIII of England; Catherine of Aragon as a young widow, by court painter Michael Sittow, 1502; Anne Boleyn, Henry's second queen; a later copy of an original painted 1534; Jane Seymour<, Henry's third wife; Anne of Cleves, Henry's forth wife by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1539; Catherine Howard<, Henry's fifth wife, by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1540; Catherine Parr, Henry's sixth and last wife

Anne Boleyn Queen of England, is arrested and imprisoned on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft.

Wikipedia  Painting: Henry VIII Coat of Arms and Seal of Henry VIII of England; Catherine of Aragon as a young widow, by court painter Michael Sittow, 1502; Anne Boleyn, Henry's second queen; a later copy of an original painted 1534; Jane Seymour, Henry's third wife; Anne of Cleves, Henry's forth wife by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1539; Catherine Howard, Henry's fifth wife, by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1540; Catherine Parr, Henry's sixth and last wife.


May 2nd, 1568

Mary, Queen of Scots, (8 December 1542 – 8 February 1587), also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, was queen regnant of Scotland from 14 December 1542 to 24 July 1567 and queen consort of France from 10 July 1559 to 5 December 1560

Mary, Queen of Scots, escapes from Loch Leven Castle.

Wikipedia  Painting: Mary, Queen of Scots (8 December 1542 – 8 February 1587), also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, was queen regnant of Scotland from 14 December 1542 to 24 July 1567 and queen consort of France from 10 July 1559 to 5 December 1560.


May 2nd, 1611

The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed August 24th, 1456

King James Bible is published for the first time in London, England, by printer Robert Barker.

Wikipedia  Image: A statue of Gutenberg is superimposed on the bible he created.


May 2nd, 1670

Hudson Bay Company, Canada © Bridgeman Art Library ● Hudson's Bay Company Ships: Prince of Wales and Eddystone bartering with the Inuit off the Upper Savage Islands, Hudson Strait, NWT. Watercolour by Robert Hood (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-40364). credit The Canadian Encyclopedia ● Labrador Canada 1749 Hudson Bay (Bayes d'Hudson et de Baffins, et Terre de Labrador, Paris, 1749).

King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson's Bay Company to open up the fur trade in North America.

Wikipedia  Image: Hudson Bay Company, Canada © Bridgeman Art Library ● Hudson's Bay Company Ships: Prince of Wales and Eddystone bartering with the Inuit off the Upper Savage Islands, Hudson Strait, NWT. Watercolour by Robert Hood (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-40364). credit The Canadian Encyclopedia ● Labrador Canada 1749 Hudson Bay (Bayes d'Hudson et de Baffins, et Terre de Labrador, Paris, 1749).


May 2nd, 1808

Napoleonic Wars: (1803–15) were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions French Revolutionary Wars, Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay): Battle begins when a British fleet engages the French Revolutionary Navy fleet in an unusual night action

French Revolutionary Wars / Napoleonic Wars:
1808 - Peninsular War The people of Madrid rise up in rebellion against French occupation. (Francisco de Goya later memorializes this event in his painting The Second of May 1808.)

Wikipedia  Painting: Battle of Trafalgar: The British HMS Sandwich fires to the French flagship Bucentaure (completely dismasted) in the battle of Trafalgar; Napoleon in Berlin (Meynier). After defeating Prussian forces at Jena, the French Army entered Berlin on 27 October 1806; Battle of the Bridge of Arcole Napoleon Bonaparte leading his troops over the bridge of Arcole, by Horace Vernet; Napoleon as King of Italy (Appiani); Napoleon Crossing the Alps (David). In 1800 Bonaparte took the French Army across the Alps, eventually defeating the Austrians at Marengo; Charge of the Russian Imperial Guard cavalry against French cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland, 14 June 1807; Battle of Borodino as depicted by Louis Lejeune. The battle was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars; Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia, a painting by Adolph Northen; Wellington at Waterloo by Robert Alexander Hillingford; Napoleon is often represented in his green colonel uniform of the Chasseur à Cheval, with a large bicorne and a hand-in-waistcoat gesture.
Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay).


May 2nd, 1863

Lincoln Memorial: an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument American Civil War: Battle of Antietam; Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland American Civil War: American Civil War: First Battle Between Ironclads; CSS Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads

American Civil War:
1863 - Battle of Chancellorsville: Stonewall Jackson is wounded by friendly fire while returning to camp after reconnoitering. (He succumbs to pneumonia eight days later.)

Wikipedia  Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war. ● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● First Battle Between Ironclads: CSS Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads.
Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.


May 2nd, 1932

The Jack Benny Program: Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, and Eddie Anderson (Rochester)

Comedian Jack Benny's radio show airs for the first time.

Wikipedia  Photo: The Jack Benny Program; starring Jack Benny, is a radio-TV comedy series that ran for more than three decades and is generally regarded as a high-water mark in 20th-century American comedy. ● The Jack Benny Program: Jack Benny, Mary Livingstone, and Eddie Anderson (Rochester).


May 2nd, 1933

Sturmabteilung or SA, whose members were known as 'brownshirts', physically assault Adolf Hitler's opposition after his speech in Munich

Gleichschaltung: Adolf Hitler bans trade unions.

Wikipedia  Photo: Hitler and the Brownshirts; German Nazi activist Horst Wessel (left) at the head of a parade of S.A. stormtroopers, or “brownshirts”, in Nuremberg, Germany, 1929.


May 2nd, 1941

World War II: Second firestorm raid on Germany, the Royal Air Force conducts an air raid on the town of Kassel, killing 10,000 and rendering 150,000 homeless World War II: Battle of Leyte Gulf; Battle of Leyte Gulf; The first kamikaze attack: A Japanese plane carrying a 200-kilogram (440 lb) bomb attacks HMAS Australia off Leyte Island World War II: German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944) World War II: Eastern Front (World War II); was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945

World War II:
1941 - Anglo-Iraqi War; Iraqi coup d'état - Following the coup d'état against Iraq Crown Prince 'Abd al-Ilah earlier that year, the United Kingdom launches the Anglo-Iraqi War to restore him to power.
1945 - Fall of Berlin; The Soviet Union announces the capture of Berlin and Soviet soldiers hoist their red flag over the Reichstag building.
1945 - Italian Campaign; General Heinrich von Vietinghoff signs the official instrument of surrender of all Wehrmacht forces in Italy.

Wikipedia  Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.

Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.


May 2nd, 1945

World War II, The Holocaust

World War II: Holocaust;
1945 - The US 82nd Airborne Division liberates Wöbbelin concentration camp finding 1000 dead inmates, most starved to death.

Wikipedia  Photo: World War II, The Holocaust. Sources: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum USHMM, History 1900s, Internet Masters of Education Technology IMET, Techno Friends, Veterans Today, Concern.


May 2nd, 1964

Vietnam War: Operation Swift; U.S. Marines engage the North Vietnamese in battle in the Que Son Valley Vietnam War: Mobs of Vietnamese people scale the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam, trying to get to the helicopter pickup zone, just before the end of the Vietnam War on April 29, 1975. Neal Ulevich, AP

Vietnam War:
1964 - An explosion sinks the USS Card while docked at Saigon. Viet Cong forces are suspected of placing a bomb on the ship.

Wikipedia  Photo: Vietnam_War; Side view of an HH-53 helicopter of the 40th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron as seen from the gunner's position on an A-1 of the 21st Specialist Operations Squadron. (USAF Photo by Ken Hackman), Boston Globe;
● Mobs of Vietnamese people scale the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam, trying to get to the helicopter pickup zone, just before the end of the Vietnam War on April 29, 1975. Neal Ulevich, AP.
Vietnam War: The Big Picture / Boston Globe.


May 2nd, 1989

Cold War: often dated from 1947–1991, was a sustained state of political and military tension between the powers of the Western world, led by the United States and its NATO allies, and the communist world, led by the Soviet Union, its satellite states and allies Cold War: in Moscow, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Soviet Union for espionage Cold War: The Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological conflict and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991

Cold War:
1989 - Removal of Hungary's border fence; Hungary begins dismantling its border fence with Austria, which allows a number of East Germans to defect.

Wikipedia  Photo: Lockheed C-130 Hercules; RAF Menwith Hill, a large site in the United Kingdom, part of ECHELON and the UKUSA Agreement; New Zealand nuclear test, British nuclear tests near the Malden and Christmas Islands in the mid-Pacific in 1957 and 1958; Nevada nuclear tests, Nevada Division of Environmental Protection Bureau of Federal Facilities.
U2, Lockheed TR-1 in flight.


May 2nd, 1995

Kingdom of Yugoslavia: (Serbo-Croatian: Kraljevina Jugoslavija, Краљевина Југославија) was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941 1995 NATO bombing campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina / Aug. 30, 1995 by Oleg Stjepanovic (AP) ● Smoke rises from an ammunition depot in Bosnian Serb stronghold Pale near Sarajevo after NATO air strikes ● CK building in the moments after bombing ● Serbia marks the 10th anniversary of the Nato-led bombing campaign ● U.S. F-117 Nighthawk taxis to the runway before taking off from Aviano Air Base, Italy, on March 24, 1999

Yugoslav Wars:
1995 - Croatian War of Independence; Zagreb rocket attacks - Serb forces fire cluster bombs at Zagreb, killing 7 and wounding over 175 civilians.

Wikipedia  Map: Kingdom of Yugoslavia; Belgrade, Yugoslavia; A twilight moon rises above the Kamniske mountains and Slovenia’s Sava River Valley, Slovenia, credit National Geographic; Yugoslavia, November 1977, credit National Geographic.
Photo: 1995 NATO bombing campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina / Aug. 30, 1995 by Oleg Stjepanovic (AP) ● Smoke rises from an ammunition depot in Bosnian Serb stronghold Pale near Sarajevo after NATO air strikes ● CK building in the moments after bombing ● Serbia marks the 10th anniversary of the Nato-led bombing campaign ● U.S. F-117 Nighthawk taxis to the runway before taking off from Aviano Air Base, Italy, on March 24, 1999.


May 2nd, 2004

List of modern conflicts in the Middle East

Modern conflicts in the Middle East and terrorist attacks:
2004 - Yelwa massacre; more than 630 nomad Muslims are killed in Nigeria.

Wikipedia  Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)


May 2nd, 2008

In meteorology, a cyclone is an area of closed, circular fluid motion rotating in the same direction as the Earth (This is usually characterized by inward spiraling winds that rotate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere of the Earth)

Cyclone:
2008 - Cyclone Nargis makes landfall in Burma killing over 138,000 people and leaving millions of people homeless.

Wikipedia  Image: In meteorology, a cyclone is an area of closed, circular fluid motion rotating in the same direction as the Earth (This is usually characterized by inward spiraling winds that rotate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere of the Earth) ● Emergency Management, Australian Government. ● Global tropical cyclone tracks. ● Emergency Information, Burdenkin Shire.


May 2nd, 2008

Global Earthquake epicenters

Earthquake:
2008 - Chaitén Volcano erupts in Chile, forcing the evacuation of more than 4,500 people.

Wikipedia  Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.


May 2nd, 2012

Stolen on August 22, 2004, Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream is recovered in a raid by Norwegian police

A pastel version of Norwegian painter, Edvard Munch's iconic painting The Scream, sells for $120 million in a New York City auction, setting a new world record for an auctioned work of art.

Wikipedia  Painting: The Scream (Norwegian: Skrik)