Did you call your mother?

The United States celebrates Mother's Day on the second Sunday in May. In the United States, Mother's Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.



When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on 10 May 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Originally the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, this building is now the International Mother's Day Shrine (a National Historic Landmark). From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States.



So now you know.


May 10 1871 -
France and Germany signed a peace treaty in which France had to give up a lot of land (Alsace-Lorraine) to Germany.



They weren't happy about it, so after World War I they took it back. In the second World War the Germans reclaimed it. After the war the victorious allies held it briefly but decided not to get involved. They gave it back to France, where it remains to this day.


May 10, 1899 -
Balanchine and Nureyev rated him the greatest dancer of the twentieth century, and he is generally acknowledged to have been the most influential dancer in the history of filmed and televised musicals. Frederick Austerlitz was born on this date in Omaha, Nebraska.



He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. Not bad for a guy who's comments concerning his first first screen were, in part, "Can't sing. Can't act. Balding. Can dance a little."


May 10 1924 -
In perhaps the single worst mistake in the history of crime fighting, Attorney General Harlan Fiske Stone selects J. Edgar Hoover to head the Bureau of Investigation, later known as the FBI.



Hoover, in his cha-cha heels, red lipstick and Raymond Burr Nipple Rouge will remain at the post until his death 48 years later. (Bet that's an image you won't be getting out of your head anytime soon.)


May 10 1933 -
Joseph Goebbels presides over a public book burning in Berlin, which destroys more than 20,000 volumes. The collection includes books by Einstein and Freud.



During the bibliocaust, Goebbels declares: "We have directed our dealings against the un-German spirit; consign everything un-German to the fire."


May 10 1940 -
Winston Churchill was sworn in as British Prime Minister. Three days after being sworn in, he told parliament that he could offer only "blood, toil, tears, and sweat."



This was grudgingly deemed satisfactory by a palpably disappointed parliament, but only after he agreed to be fitted with an IV.


May 10 1941 -
Running out of fuel and unable to find a suitable spot to land his Messerschmitt, Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess bails out over Scotland.



When Hess claims to have made the trip in order to negotiate a peace treaty with England, the Nazis declare that he was a psychotic ho "lived in a state of hallucination." After the war, Hess is confined to Spandau prison until his apparent suicide in 1987.


May 10 1969 -
The Battle of Dong Ap Bia begins with an assault on Hill 937.



It will ultimately become known as Hamburger Hill.


May 10 1977 -
Joan Crawford succumbs to stomach cancer at the age of 73. In the early days of her career, Crawford had performed in several stag films, and later spent a considerable sum buying back the prints to destroy them.



Her final words were purportedly, "Damn it...Don't you dare ask God to help me," which were directed at her housekeeper, who had begun to pray out loud.

You can bet there are no wire coat hangers in Heaven.


May 10 1994 -
Former building contractor, children's party clown, and jail house artist John Wayne Gacy is executed by lethal injection. Police found 28 shallow graves in the crawlspace beneath Gacy's house in 1978.



After a dinner which included fried chicken, fried shrimp, and french fries, Gacy is strapped to a gurney. When asked if he has any last words, the serial killer obliges with: "Kiss my ass."


And so it goes.