William Martin Joel, Grammy Award-winning rock vocalist/singer was born on this date.
I'm old enough to remember when you used to eagerly await a new Billy Joel album as much as a Bruce Springsteen album (not that many people still eagerly await a Springsteen album anymore.)
May 9, 1950 -
L. Ron Hubbard publishes the first edition of Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health.
This follows on the heels of a feature article in the pulp sci-fi magazine Astounding Science Fiction.
A book review in the The New Republic describes the work as "a bold and immodest mixture of complete nonsense and perfectly reasonable common sense, taken from long-acknowledged findings and disguised and distorted by a crazy, newly invented terminology." The subsequent movement goes on to become one of the scariest, most powerful pseudoreligious cults in modern history.
But you didn't here this from me.
May 9, 1978 -
The body of former Italian premier Aldo Moro is discovered in the back seat of a Renault. He had been kidnapped 54 days prior by the Red Brigades, who demanded the release of their incarcerated comrades.
When Italian authorities refused to give in, Moro's captors killed him, but not before forcing the hostage to hold a newspaper announcing his own death.
May 9, 1980 -
35 people are killed in Tampa, Florida when the Liberian cargo ship Summit Venture smashes into a supporting pier of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge.
Seven vehicles, including a Greyhound bus, topple into the water 150 feet below.
May 9, 1983 -
Pope John Paul II retracts the Catholic Church's condemnation of astronomer Galileo Galilei, issued in 1633 by Pope Urban VIII. The Church had convicted the scientist of heresy, sentenced him to house arrest, and forced him to recant central scientific truths.
In the end, this error only took 350 years to correct. A speedy correction by church standards.
May 9, 1989 -
VP Quayle say in United Negro College Fund speech: 'What a waste it is to lose one's mind' on this date.
Joe Biden will have to work very hard to meet this high bar indeed
May 9, 1992 -
Final episode of 'Golden Girls' airs on NBC-TV .
That must have been some after party.
And so it goes
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