Today in History
May 6 1527 -
Mercenaries sack the city of Rome, an event considered by many historians to mark the end of the Renaissance. Luckilly for us, most artists don't listen to historians and we have the great works of the late Renaissance painters.
May 6, 1758 -
Maximilien-Francois-Marie-Isidore de Robespierre was born. Even in the revolutionary context of his age, Mr. Robespierre stands out as one of the most revolting figures in history.
M. Robespierre fought valiantly to help revolutionary France achieve liberty, fraternity, and equality but inadvertently caused an unfortunate turn of weather known as the "rain of terror."
At first this rain caused only French loyalists to lose their heads, but M. Robespierre's egalitarian convictions led him to conclude that citoyens from all walks of life should lose theirs as well. The celebrated chemist Atoine-Laurent Lavoisier, for example, was beheaded on May 8, 1794 for having identified oxygen, which people mistakenly thought to be one of the noble gases.
M. Robespierre ended up losing his own head on the guillotine; this was called poetic justice by some Frenchmen and irony by others. This disagreement eventually produced the Napoleonic Age, in which soldiers had to crawl on their stomachs until Napoleon was disabled by the sight of Elba.
May 6 1853 -
Ignoring signals, a train travels through an open drawbridge and into the Norwalk river in Connecticut, killing 46 passengers. The engineer and crew jumped clear, not warning the others of their fate.
May 6 1862 -
Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden and the essay Civil Disobedience, dead at age 44. His last words thought to be "Moose..Indian". But they were actually " Moose and Squirrel" and the estate of Mr. Thoreau have been in a contenous legal battle with the creators of the "Rocky and Bullwinkle Show" ever since.
May 6, 1915 -
America's premiere genius - Academy Award-winning American director, writer, actor and producer for film, stage, radio and television, and serious political activist, George Orson Welles was born on this date. Apparently, his mother would birth no child before it's time.
May 6 1937 -
Zeppelin Hindenberg explodes at Lakehurst NJ, leaving 36 dead and others seriously burned. Official cause of the explosion is listed as "St. Elmo's Fire" (Both Rob Lowe and Mare Winningham have been cleared of any wrongdoing but police are still labelling Demi Moore as 'a person of great interest') although it probably also involved the flammable silver paint the Germans used to coat the thing. One bright spot was providing a really cool cover for Led Zepplin's first album.
May 6 1983 -
West German authorities announce that the recently discovered "Hitler Diaries" are counterfeits, made from paper not available until at least 1955. Parties unknown managed to swindle the German magazine Stern out of an undisclosed sum, and esteemed historian Hugh Trevor-Roper was so convinced of their authenticity that he proclaimed "I'm staking my reputation on it." I wonder how that worked out for him.
May 6 1987 -
Disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker is formally defrocked by the Assemblies of God.
May 6, 1992 -
Noted movie star, singer, US Spy and all around woman of the world, Marlene Dietrich died on this day. I'm sure she cleaned up her little bit of heaven when she got there.
May 6 1993 -
Disgruntled postal worker Mark Richard Hilburn (recently fired) enters the Dana Point, CA post office and shoots two former coworkers, killing one. And disgruntled 27-year veteran Lawrence Jasion enters the garage area of the Dearborn, Michigan post office and whips out a .38 revolver. He proceeds to kill mechanic Gary Montes and wound two other coworkers. Before anyone can react, Jasion then blows his brains out. The Dearborn office was infamous for its authoritarian policies. It was not a good day for the Post Office.
May 6 2002 -
Dutch right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn is shot six times in the head as he leaves a recording studio in Hilversum, near Amsterdam. His party platform was based on repeal of the discrimination clause of the constitution, an odd position considering that Fortuyn was homosexual. It is not clear what assassin Volkert van der Graaf's motive was, speculations ranging from Fortuyn's public statements regarding fur farming (van der Graaf is a founder of that country's Animal Liberation Front) to his sympathies towards Dutch Muslims.
And so it goes
Gary Montes is part Hispanic. His parents did join him with the Lord.
ReplyDeleteGary Eugene Montes and his father Eugene Daniel Montes' remains were cremated as (possible) per request.
ReplyDelete