May 1, 2008

700 years ago
1308

Died on this date
Albrecht I, 52. King of the Romans (Germany), 1298-1308. Albrecht I was the eldest son of King Rudolf I, but the monarchy wasn't hereditary, and the Prince-electors chose Count Adolf of Nassau-Weilburg as king upon Rudolf I's death in 1291. Albrecht I killed Count Adolf in the Battle of Göllheim on July 2, 1298, and was elected King of the Romans 25 days later. He was assassinated by his nephew Duke John, whom he had deprived of his inheritance, and was succeeded on the throne by Henry VII.

410 years ago
1598

Exploration
Jacob van Neck’s merchant fleet departed for Java from the Netherlands.

140 years ago
1868

Died on this date
Tom Dula, 22. U.S. convicted criminal. Mr. Dula (pronounced "Dooley") was a private in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He was convicted of the 1866 murder of his lover, Laura Foster, but maintained his innocence. Mr. Dula was hanged in Statesville, North Carolina; his ordeal inspired the folk song Tom Dooley.

Economics and finance
The Post Office Savings Bank was established in Ottawa.

125 years ago
1883

Popular culture
"Buffalo Bill" Cody put on his first Wild West Show.

World events
The Amsterdam World's Fair opened.

Baseball
Baseball returned to Philadelphia as the city hosted its first National League game since 1876. The Philadelphia Quakers, after holding their first spring training at Recreation Park, opened their regular season there, losing 4-3 to the Providence Grays.

Sport
The New York Athletic Club hired Bob Rogers as the first American professional sports trainer.

110 years ago
1898

War
The United States Navy destroyed the Spanish Pacific fleet in the Battle of Manila Bay, the first major battle of the Spanish–American War.

Baseball
The Board of Discipline of the National Baseball League adopted a set of rules to suppress rowdy ball playing. John T. Brush said the resolution, which he proposed, "has worked like a charm."

100 years ago
1908

Weather
The world's most intense shower (2.47" in 3 minutes) was recorded at Portobelo, Panama.

80 years ago
1928

Died on this date
Thaddeus C. Sweet, 55. U.S. politician. Mr. Sweet, a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from the 32nd New York District, was killed when an airplane in which he was riding from Washington to Oswego made a forced landing near the Whitney Point fair grounds.

Diplomacy
Prince Carol of Romania arrived in England with Mme. Lupescu, a guest of Romanian ex-Premier B. Jonescu.

World events
Dutch artist Erich Wichman, a drunken Fascist, attacked the VARA-radio transmitter.

Scandal
Harry F. Sinclair told the U.S. Senate Teapot Dome oil committee that since his acquittal of the Fall bribery charge (that is, conspiring, with former Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall to defraud the U.S. government), he had turned over to the Sinclair Crude Oil Purchasing Company the $757,000 in Liberty bonds, plus some $142,000 in interest, which represented his quarter interest in the Continental Trading Company deal. Mr. Sinclair said that the $233,000 he sent to Mr. Fall after the Teapot Dome lease was to buy a third interest in Mr. Fall’s Three Rivers cattle and land company. He said that the $260,000 he gave Will Hays for the Republican deficit in 1923 was a "loan," save for $75,000, and that Mr. Hays returned all but $75,000 to him, then took back $85,000 for himself because he had dug into his own pocket for this amount, so that Mr. Sinclair’s total gift to the Republican Party was $160,000.

Americana
The Hawaiian celebration Lei Day was first observed.

Transportation
Pitcairn (later Eastern) Airlines began service.

Religion
The quadrennial general Methodist Episcopal Church conference opened at Kansas City, Missouri. During its sessions, the conference voted for closer co-operation with other Protestant denominations.

Disasters
6 children died and 10 were injured by hailstones in Klausenburg, Romania.

60 years ago
1948

Hit parade
#1 single in the U.S.A. (Billboard) (Best Seller): Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me)--Peggy Lee (8th week at #1)

U.S. top 10 (Cash Box)
1 Now is the Hour (Maori Farewell Song)--Bing Crosby (7th week at #1)
--Gracie Fields
--Margaret Whiting
--Eddy Howard and his Orchestra
--Charlie Spivak and his Orchestra
2 Sabre Dance--Woody Herman and his Orchestra
--Freddy Martin and his Orchestra
3 Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me)--Peggy Lee
4 I'm Looking Over a Four Leaf Clover--Art Mooney and his Orchestra
--Russ Morgan and his Orchestra
--The Three Suns
--Uptown String Band
5 Because--Perry Como
6 Beg Your Pardon--Francis Craig and his Orchestra
--Frankie Carle and his Orchestra
--Larry Green and his Orchestra
7 Haunted Heart--Perry Como
--Jo Stafford
8 Little White Lies--Dick Haymes
9 Baby Face--Art Mooney and his Orchestra
--Sammy Kaye and his "Swing and Sway" Orchestra
--Jack Smith and the Clark Sisters
10 Toolie Oolie Doolie (The Yodel Polka)--The Andrews Sisters
--Vaughn Horton and the Polka Debs

Singles entering the chart were Airizay by Ray McKinley and his Orchestra (#31); I've Got a Crush on You, with versions by Frank Sinatra, and Sarah Vaughan (#34); and Jungle Rhumba by Xavier Cugat and his Orchestra (#38).

Died on this date
Christos Ladas. Greek politician. As Minister of Justice in the government of Prime Minister Themistocles Sofoulis, Mr. Ladas promoted legislation to outlaw the KKE (Greek Communist Party), which was then waging a civil war against the government. As he left the Church of Saint George on Holy Saturday, Mr. Ladas was attacked and blown up, along with his bodyguard, with a hand grenade thrown by a Communist named Ephstratios Moutsoyannis. As a trial lawyer, Mr. Ladas had defended the KKE against accusations of high treason in August 1925 and February 1926.

Asiatica
North Korean proclaimed itself the People's Democratic Republic of Korea, with Kim Il-sung as leader.

Religion
Pope Pius XII published his encyclical Auspicia Quaedam.

Horse racing
Citation, with Eddie Arcaro up, won the 74th running of the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville in a time of 2:05 2/5, 3 1/2 lengths ahead of Coaltown, with My Request third.



50 years ago
1958

World events
In the Indonesian archipelago of Maluku, an Ambonese rebellion bombed the island of Ambon, and conquered the island of Morotai.

Politics and government
Arturo Frondizi was sworn in as the 33rd President of Argentina. Mr. Frondizi, leader of the Intransigent Radical Civic Union, had become President by defeating the more liberal and anti-Peronist Radical Ricardo Balbin. Mr. Frondizi had previously run for Vice-President with Mr. Balbin as presidential candidate on the same ticket.

40 years ago
1968

Hit parade
#1 single in the U.K. (Record Retailer): What a Wonderful World/Cabaret--Louis Armstrong (2nd week at #1)

Australia's top 10 (Go-Set)
1 Lady Madonna/The Inner Light--The Beatles
2 Love is Blue (L'Amour est Bleu)--Paul Mauriat and his Orchestra
3 Magical Mystery Tour (EP)--The Beatles
4 Simon Says--1910 Fruitgum Company
5 Delilah--Tom Jones
6 Young Girl--The Union Gap
7 Valleri/Tapioca Tundra--The Monkees
8 Underneath the Arches/Friday Kind of Monday--Johnny Farnham
9 Honey--Bobby Goldsboro
10 The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)--Manfred Mann

Singles entering the chart were Hello How are You? by the Easybeats (#34); Penelope by Normie Rowe (#38); and Me, the Peaceful Heart by Lulu (#40).

At the movies
Tarzan and the Jungle Boy, starring Mike Henry and Rafer Johnson, opened in theatres.

Politics and government
New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller ripped the foreign policy of the Lyndon Johnson administration in a speech kicking off his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in Philadelphia. He termed U.S. policy in Europe "sterile," and said that the war in Vietnam should be "de-Americanized."

Protest
In a student rally at Columbia University in New York, demonstrators and police clashed again, with 5 policemen and 6 students injured.

Economics and finance
in a move to aid the United States in reducing its balance of payments deficit, 16 of its major trading partners agreed to step up the 20% tariff cuts due January 1, 1970 on American exports under the Kennedy Round agreement to January 1, 1969. At the same time, they putt off for one year, to January 1, 1970, the 20% tariff cut the U.S. was supposed to make on January 1, 1969.

Labour
Communist and Catholic labour groups staged a nationwide 24-hour strike in France. In Paris, more than 500,000 workers, students, teachers and opposition leaders marched for more than four hours, singing the Internationale and giving vent to anti-de Gaulle feelings. Charles de Gaulle had been President of France's Fifth Republic since 1958.

Disasters
19 members of a wedding party were killed when a truck plunged into a ravine near Benares, India.

Hockey
NHL
Stanley Cup
Semi-Finals
St. Louis 1 @ Minnesota 5 (Best-of-seven series tied 3-3)

Basketball
ABA
Finals
Pittsburgh 118 @ New Orleans 112 (Best-of-seven series tied 3-3)

Baseball
Philadelphia Phillies’ pitcher John Boozer was ejected by umpire Ed Vargo at Shea Stadium for throwing spitballs during his warmup pitches, becoming only the second major league pitcher to be ejected from a game for doing it.

30 years ago
1978

Hit parade
#1 single in Australia (Kent Music Report): Stayin' Alive--Bee Gees (5th week at #1)

#1 single in Japan (Oricon Singles Chart): Southpaw--Pink Lady (5th week at #1)

#1 single in Spain (PROMUSICAE): Poco A Poco... Me Enamoré De Tí --I Collage

Died on this date
Aram Khachaturian, 74. Russian composer. Of Armenian ancestry, Mr. Khachaturian was best known for his ballets Spartacus and Gayaneh and incidental music for the play Maskerade. The Sabre Dance from Gayaneh is probably his most recognizable piece of music. My favourite Khachaturian composition is the adagio from Spartacus; this was used in the 1970s as the theme music for the BBC television drama series The Onedin Line (the music was better than the show). To this day, when I hear that music, it takes me back to late 1974-early 1975 in Yellowknife, watching that show late at night from CBUT in Vancouver. Mr. Khachaturian was a dedicated Communist, but incurred the wrath of Soviet Commie kingpin Andrei Zhdanov in 1948 when he naively neglected to include a dedication or program notes with his Third Symphony. Mr. Khachaturian had dedicated the work to Communism, but didn’t think that the Soviet people needed an announcement to accompany the work; apparently, he was mistaken. Mr. Khachaturian was badly shaken by his denunciation. Mr. Khachaturian, a proud Armenian, composed the state anthem of the Armeninan Soviet Socialist Republic; this is one of the five current choices to become the next Armenian anthem.

War
French and Senegalese UNIFIL troops clashed with Palestinian guerrillas in Lebanon, hours after the third partial withdrawal of Israeli troops occupying southern Lebanon. Two guerrillas and three United Nations soldiers were killed in two separate incidents.

Diplomacy
The United States, East Germany, and Mozambique completed a three-way exchange of prisoners. A Soviet spy, convicted in the U.S.A., was released in West Berlin in exchange for an American arrested by East Germany for trying to help three East Germans leave the country. Eight days earlier, an Israeli businessman had been released by Mozambique as part of the deal.

World events
Hundreds of ethnic Chinese were reported to be fleeing Vietnam after the nationalization of their businesses there.

Politics and government
Ernest Morial was inaugurated as New Orleans’ first Negro mayor.

Adventure
Naomi Uemura of Japan became the first person to reach the North Pole overland alone. His trek took 57 days, and included the invasion of his camp by a polar bear, and the breakup of an ice floe he was on.

Technology
Gary Thuerk, a salesman for Digital Equipment Corporation, connected a computer to the Arpanet (what the Internet was known as then), and sent an advertisement for a new computer to 393 users--the first example of spam. For more details, go here.

Basketball
NBA
Western Conference
Semi-Finals
Portland 94 @ Seattle 105 (Seattle won best-of-seven series 4-2)

Baseball
Former major league pitcher and controversial author (Ball Four) Jim Bouton began a comeback with the Savannah Braves of the AA Southern League.

25 years ago
1983

Diplomacy
Stansfield Turner, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, warned in a newspaper article that the CIA should avoid getting involved in providing covert aid to rebels operating inside Nicaragua. He said that the United States was perceived as backing supporters of the former dictator Anastasio Somoza, and that the CIA might be drawn into breaking U.S. law.

Economics and finance
The United States Commerce Department reported that the nation’s per capita income for 1982 had increased only 5.3%--$11,056, up from $10,495 in 1981.

Hockey
NHL
Stanley Cup
Clarence S. Campbell Conference Finals
Edmonton 3 @ Chicago 2 (Edmonton led best-of-seven series 3-0)

Andy Moog won the goaltending duel over Tony Esposito as the Oilers edged the Black Hawks at Chicago Stadium.

20 years ago
1988

Hit parade
#1 single in New Zealand (RIANZ): One Tree Hill--U2 (6th week at #1)

#1 single in Switzerland: I Should be So Lucky--Kylie Minogue

Politics and government
The two leading parties in El Salvador continued to argue over the outcome of the March elections to the Legislative Assembly. With the Supreme Court having ruled that a disputed seat be left vacant pending a final court decision, the parties seated their assembly members separately. The National Republican Alliance (ARENA) claimed that with one seat unresolved, their 30 members constituted an absolute majority of the remaining 59 seats.

Basketball
NBA
Playoffs
Eastern Conference
First Round
Milwaukee 97 @ Atlanta 104 (Atlanta led best-of-five series 2-0)
New York 102 @ Boston 128 (Boston led best-of-five series 2-0)
Cleveland 101 @ Chicago 106 (Chicago led best-of-seven series 2-0)

Western Conference
First Round
Seattle 111 @ Denver 91 (Best-of-five series tied 1-1)
San Antonio 112 @ Los Angeles Lakers 130 (Los Angeles led best-of-five series 2-0)

10 years ago
1998

On television tonight
The documentary The Unreal World of Professional Wrestling was broadcast on A&E.

Died on this date
Otto Bettmann, 94. German-born U.S. archivist. In 1936, a year after immigrating to the United States from Nazi Germany, Mr. Bettmann founded the Bettmann Archive, a collection of photographs and images. The archive, which now numbers 11 million items, was moved in 2002 from Manhattan to the Iron Mountain National Underground Storage Facility in western Pennsylvania.

Eldridge Cleaver, 62. U.S. activist and writer. Mr. Cleaver was a leader in the Black Power movement and the Black Panther party in the 1960s. His book Soul on Ice (1968) was one of the key books of the movement. In 1968 Mr. Cleaver ran for President of the United States on the ticket of the Peace and Freedom Party. An attempted murder charge resulting from a clash with police prompted Mr. Cleaver to flee to Algeria; he also later lived in Cuba and France. It was while he was living in Cuba that Mr. Cleaver began to become disenchanted with Communism, as he saw the effects that Communism actually had on society. In particular, he noticed that there was no love in Communism. Mr. Cleaver returned to the United States in 1975, renounced the Black Panthers, and negotiated his criminal charges into a sentence for assault. A second book, Soul on Fire, appeared in 1978. He also marketed a line of men’s clothing which included pants with a codpiece, which he called a Cleaver Sleeve; this attracted some notoriety (Maclean’s magazine ran a photo of the infamous pants), but not many sales. In the late 1970s Mr. Cleaver professed to have become a born-again Christian, but in the early 1980s he experimented with other religious movements; first, the Unification Church (better known as the Moonies), and then the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (better known as the Mormons). Why a black man would be attracted to Mormonism is a mystery (the Mormon explanation of the origin of the black race is that the spirits who remained neutral in the heavenly dispute between Jesus and Satan were cursed by being born on earth as black people), but Mr. Cleaver was eventually baptized into the Mormon church, where he remained for the rest of his life. Mr. Cleaver had religion, but unfortunately, he didn’t have Christ in his life; sometime in the 1980s he developed an addiction to crack cocaine--an addiction he didn’t kick until 1994. This blogger met Mr. Cleaver at the University of Alberta on May 5, 1983, where Mr. Cleaver was speaking on behalf of the Freemen Institute (more on that coming up in the May 5 post), and found him to be a pleasant individual. I met him in a men’s room--he wasn’t wearing the pants with the Cleaver Sleeve (and I didn’t bring that subject up). He was interviewed by Dick MacLean on his CFRN radio talk show, as well as Bruce Hogle and others on the CFRN television news program Face the Newsmen.

World events
Former Rwandan Premier Jean Kambenda pled guilty to genocide charges before a United Nations tribunal, and faced life in prison.

Hockey
NHL
Stanley Cup
Eastern Conference
Quarter-Finals
Montreal 5 @ Pittsburgh 2 (Montreal led best-of-seven series 3-2)
Buffalo 3 @ Philadelphia 2 (OT) (Buffalo won best-of-seven series 4-1)
Boston 4 @ Washington 0 (Washington led best-of-seven series 3-2)

Michal Grosek scored for the Sabres on a powerplay at 5:40 of the 1st overtime period as they eliminated the Flyers at CoreStates Center.

Basketball
NBA
Playoffs
Western Conference
First Round
Utah 93 @ Houston 71 (Best-of-five series tied 2-2)