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“If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out.”
~ Rabindranath Tagore
Wikiquote (Rabindranath Tagore (Rabindranath Thakur, anglicised to Tagore) (May 7, 1861 – August 7, 1941) a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music.)
May 6th, 1527
Sack of Rome (1527) Spanish and German troops sack Rome; some consider this the end of the Renaissance. 147 Swiss Guards, including their commander, die fighting the forces of Charles V in order to allow Pope, and the surrender of Clement VII to escape into Castel Sant'Angelo.
Wikipedia Photo: Sabine hills in the middle of Sabina.
May 6th, 1536
King Henry VIII orders English language Bibles be placed in every church.
Wikipedia Image: A statue of Gutenberg is superimposed on the bible he created.
May 6th, 1536
Siege of Cuzco: Incan forces attempt to retake the city of Cuzco from the Spanish.
Wikipedia Image: Francisco Pizarro, Governor of New Castile; Map, The Conquest of Peru, 1531 - 1533; Pizarro Seizing the Inca of Peru Millais, John Everett
May 6th, 1542
Jesuit priest Saint Francis Xavier reaches Old Goa, the capital of Portuguese India at the time.
Wikipedia Painting: Portuguese trading ships. Jesuits, or priests, are among the passengers to the Far East
May 6th, 1659
English Civil War:
1659 - English Restoration; A faction of the British Army removes Richard Cromwell as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth and reinstalls the Rump Parliament.
Wikipedia Painting: English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians (Roundheads) and Royalists (Cavaliers);
John Milton publishes Areopagitica;
Battle of Naseby, victory of the Parliamentarian New Model Army;
Battle of Marston Moor, 1644;
"Cromwell at Dunbar", by Andrew Carrick Gow; Oliver Cromwell; King Charles I, painted by Van Dyck;
"And when did you last see your father?" by William Frederick Yeames.
May 6th, 1682
Louis XIV of France moves his court to the Palace of Versailles.
Wikipedia Photo: Palace of Versailles; The interior court of the Palace of Versailles ● Palace gardens ● The Grand Trianon Castle Interiors ● Hall of Mirrors. Palace of Versailles: When the château was built, Versailles was a country village; today, however, it is a suburb of Paris, some 20 kilometres southwest of the French capital.
May 6th, 1757
Seven Years' War:
1757 - Battle of Prague; A Prussian army fights an Austrian army in Prague.
Wikipedia Painting: The Death of General Wolfe (1771) by Benjamin West, depicting the Battle of the Plains of Abraham; Battle of Hochkirch; Battle of Minorca of May 20, 1756, shortly after the French landing on Minorca; Siege of Kolberg (1761); Leibgarde battalion at Kolin, 1757; Battle of Zorndorf in August 1758 where Russian and Prussian armies suffered heavy casualties and both claimed a victory. Battle of Lagos, by Théodore Gudin.
May 6th, 1757
Konbaung-Hanthawaddy War: ends, and ends the Burmese Civil War (1740–1757).
Wikipedia Photo: Burma: ● Topographic map and location of Burma ● Temples at Mrauk U ● Pagodas and temples in present-day Pagan (Bagan), the capital of the Pagan Kingdom ● Stilt houses at Lake Inle, Burma ● Mae La camp or Burmese refugees, Tak, Thailand
May 6th, 1782
Construction begins on the Grand Palace, the royal residence of the King of Siam in Bangkok, at the command of King Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke.
Wikipedia Image: Thailand (officially the Kingdom of Thailand, formerly known as Siam) is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula in Southeast Asia.
May 6th, 1801
French Revolutionary Wars / Napoleonic Wars:
1801 - Action of 6 May 1801; Captain Thomas Cochrane in the 14-gun HMS Speedy captures the 32-gun Spanish frigate El Gamo.
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 6th, 1840
Penny Black, the first official adhesive postage stamp, becomes valid for use in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Wikipedia Painting: Penny Black, United Kingdom ● The Jacob Perkins' press, that printed the Penny Black and the 2d Blue, in the British Library Philatelic Collections.
May 6th, 1844
The Glaciarium, the world's first mechanically frozen ice rink, opens.
Wikipedia Photo: Canada Square Ice Rink, credit Father of Spider Cat, Flickr.
May 6th, 1861
American Civil War:
1861 - Arkansas secedes from the Union retreat.
1861 - Richmond, Virginia; is declared the new capital of the Confederate States of America.
1863 - Battle of Chancellorsville; ends with the defeat of the Army of the Potomac by Confederate troops.
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 6th, 1877
American Indian Wars:
1877 - Chief Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux surrenders to United States troops in Nebraska.
Wikipedia Photos: American Indians - Chief Crazy Horse, Tashunca-uitco (1849 - 1877) ● Geronimo Apache Chief (1829 - 1909) ● Indian Chief 'Two Eagles'; Crow Indian Chief ● Snake Cheif ● Band of Chiricahua Apache Indians, followers of legendary renegade Geronimo, attending a peace negotiation after a long struggle against U.S. government attempts to force them onto reservations - Tombstone, Arizona (1886), Life Magazine ● American Horse - Oglala ● Native American Arapaho Indian ● Washakie, Shoshone leader ● Arapaho American Indian Chief.
May 6th, 1882
Phoenix Park Murders: Thomas Henry Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish are stabbed and killed in Dublin.
Wikipedia Phoenix Park Murders.
May 6th, 1889
The Eiffel Tower is officially opened to the public at the Universal Exposition in Paris.
Wikipedia Photo: Eiffel Tower, Paris, France, Fisheye - HDR, credit Erlend Robaye, Getty Images.
May 6th, 1933
The Deutsche Studentenschaft attacked Magnus Hirschfeld's Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, later burning many of its books.
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 6th, 1935
Great Depression: New Deal; Executive Order 7034 creates the Works Progress Administration..
Wikipedia Photo: Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother depicts destitute pea pickers in California, centering on Florence Owens Thompson, age 32, a mother of seven children, in Nipomo, California, March 1936; Bud Fields and his family. Alabama. 1935 or 1936. Photographer: Walker Evans; Unemployed men vying for jobs at the American Legion Employment Bureau in Los Angeles during the Great Depression.
May 6th, 1937
Hindenburg disaster: The German zeppelin Hindenburg catches fire and is destroyed within a minute while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey.
Archive.org (Footage from Castle and Pathé coverage of the Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst. Also shots of the big ships over New York)
● Hindenburg Disaster Real Footage (1937) [HD]
You Tube (Hindenburg Disaster Real Footage (1937) [HD]. Footage of the Nazi airship catching fire, crashing and burning to the ground.)
Wikipedia Painting: The Hindenburg bursts into blames above Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937. credit: Popperfoto, Getty Images.
May 6th, 1940
American author John Steinbeck is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel The Grapes of Wrath.
Wikipedia Image: The Grapes of Wrath, First edition cover.
May 6th, 1941
California's March Field: Bob Hope performs his first USO show.
Wikipedia Photo: Bob Hope and Jerry Colonna; 1940 NBC, NBC Photo Service ● Bob and Dolores Hope ● Bob Hope Collection, Jack Benny and Bob Hope 1940; Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division (89C.2) ● Bob Hope USO Show - Fritzlar, Germany (Hesse) July 26, 1945 - Gale Robbins on stage with Bob Hope ● 1950 Mr Korea, Bob Hope USO Show at Seoul (Audience reaction to the Bob Hope show at Seoul, Korea. October 23, 1950. Capt. Bloomquist. (Army) NARA FILE # 111-SC-351580. (Department of Defense Photo)).
May 6th, 1941
World War II:
1941 - The first flight of the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt.
1942 - Battle of Corregidor; On Corregidor, the last American forces in the Philippines surrender to the Japanese.
1945 - Axis Sally delivers her last propaganda broadcast to Allied troops.
1945 - Eastern Front; Prague Offensive - the last major battle of the Eastern Front, begins.
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 6th, 1954
Roger Bannister becomes the first person to run the mile in under four minutes.
Wikipedia Image: Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile barrier in 1954 ● Roger Bannister, who burst through the legendary four-minute barrier to run the mile at Oxford, England on May 6, 1954 in 3:59.4, embraces his competitors Chris Brasher, left, and Chris Chataway, right, after he learned of his new record, ● Associated Press.
May 6th, 1966
Moors Murders: In England, Myra Hindley and Ian Brady are sentenced to for the Moors Murders.
Wikipedia Photo: Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, Brady (left) and Hindley, October 1965 ● David and Maureen Smith, pictured around the time of the murders. David Smith's statement to the police led to Brady's arrest.
May 6th, 1976
Earthquake:
1976 - An earthquake strikes the Friuli region of northeastern Italy, causing 989 deaths and the destruction of entire villages.
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 6th, 1981
A jury of architects and sculptors selects Maya Ying Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial from 1,421 other entries.
Wikipedia Photo: Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C..
May 6th, 1994
Channel Tunnel: Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and French President François Mitterrand officiate at the opening of the Channel Tunnel.
Wikipedia Photo: Channel Tunnel: Eurostar train ● The service tunnel is 4.8m in diameter and lies between the two rail tunnels 15m away from each of them ● The only remaining accessible section of the tunnel at Shakespeare Cliff, as the tunnel dips downwards the water eventually comes up to the roof, credit by Nick Catford.
May 6th, 1994
Monica Lewinsky scandal: Former Arkansas state worker Paula Jones files a lawsuit against United States President Bill Clinton, alleging that he had sexually harassed her in 1991.
Wikipedia Photo: Monica Lewinsky scandal, Time Cover Story "If it were not for Monica Lewinsky, I think we would have Social Security ..."
May 6th, 2013
Ariel Castro kidnappings: Three women missing for more than a decade are found alive in the U.S. city of Cleveland, Ohio, while a 52-year-old man, Ariel Castro, is taken into custody.
Wikipedia Photo: Ariel Castro kidnappings Ariel Castro (1960 – 2013), Amanda Berry, Georgina "Gina" DeJesus and Michelle Knight / August 22, 2002 - May 6, 2013