Today in History
May 5 2349 BC -
Noah's Ark lands on Mount Ararat, according to calculations by James Ussher, Archbishop of the Church of Ireland. According to the good bishop, Noah heard about the two for one Margaritas at Senor Swanky's.
May 5 840 -
A son of Charlemagne, Emperor Louis of Bavaria, dies of fright during a total eclipse of the sun. His sons quarrel, causing the division of his Empire into France, Germany, and Italy.
May 5 1821 -
Napoleon dies on the island of St. Helena, some suspect from arsenic poisoning. More likely, he died from stomach cancer as did his father.
May 5 1925 -
High school teacher John T. Scopes is arrested for teaching evolution by authorities in Dayton, Tennessee, as part of a publicity stunt to make the town famous. Since Scopes admitted teaching the theory, he was found guity, and the law remained on the books in the backward state until 1967.
May 5 1945 -
Elsie Mitchell and five children she is watching are killed by a Japanese balloon bomb which drifted over the Pacific into Oregon. They are the only people killed in action on the US mainland during World War II.
May 5 1955 -
An internal CIA memo emphasizes the need for a drug that creates a state of "pure euphoria" and no letdown. From this springs Operation Midnight Climax, in which CIA brothels were set up in San Francisco, and their customers surreptitiously dosed with LSD by prostitutes. Operative George Hunter White observed reactions behind a two way mirror, purely in the interest of science.
May 5 1961 -
Alan B. Shepard is the first American in space, with a fifteen minute suborbital flight. He was forced to piss himself in his suit prior to launch, as it lacked an evacuation system.
May 5 1982 -
Secretary Janet Smith in the computer science department at Vanderbilt University is injured when she opens a package from the Unabomber.
May 5 1993 -
After getting pulled over for erratic driving, Keanu Reeves is arrested for drunk driving in Los Angeles.
May 5 2000 -
"On May 5 of the year 2000, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will be aligned with the earth for the first time in 6,000 years. On that day the ice buildup at the South Pole will upset the earth's axis, sending trillions of tons of ice in the water sweeping over the surface of our planet."-- 5/5/2000: Ice -- the Ultimate Disaster by Richard W Noone
And so it goes.
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