On this day

World War II

1940 - Rotterdam falls to the Germans, after heavy air bombing, Around 980 people perish, and 78,000 are homeless, after the raid.

1941 - The Home Guard's first birthday is celebrated at Buckingham Palace.

1941 - Karl Richter, a German spy is arrested in East Anglia, shortly after parachuting in.

1942 - Hitler obsessed with winning the Russian war, refuses Admiral Donitz's plea for all-out war on allied merchant shipping.

1943 - The British Army's allied first offensive in Burma, ends in total failure, after six months of campaigning.

1944 - British Intelligence officers decode a cipher message from Goering, uncovering a campaign to trick Allied bombers into raiding inactive airfields.

1945 - In a Japanese air raid, around 2,500 tons of incendiary bombs are dropped on Nagoya by 472 US B-29 bombers.

(14-05-2013 09:10 )4evadionne Wrote:  1941 - Karl Richter, a German spy is arrested in East Anglia, shortly after parachuting in.

Karl (aka Karel) Richter was a 29 year old Sudeten German who was caught and executed in 1941 for being a spy. He had parachuted into England on 12 May 1941 and was captured just two days later after hiding out in a field. It was his first mission.

Richter became a spy after trying to escape from Germany. He was deported from Sweden because he did not have the right papers. When he arrived back in Germany he was sent to a concentration camp. Richter was then offered his freedom if he agreed to become a spy.

Richter's first mission was to pass some equipment to another spy in England, check whether this spy was really a double agent and then gather information on roads and railways, use of gas masks and National Identity Cards. After hiding for two days without food, Richter felt very ill and decided to find help. He wandered on to a busy road where two lorry drivers spotted him and offered him a lift, but instead of being grateful and keeping his head down for some unknown reason he became hostile and abusive towards them. The lorry drivers later reported him to a policeman who took him to the station for questioning. Richter was found to be carrying forged documents and other suspicious items so the police handed him over to the Security Service.

After many hours of questioning Richter admitted that he was a German spy and gave the Security Service full details of his mission. A search was also made of the field where he landed and other items such as a radio transmitter, torch and automatic pistol were found.

Richter was charged with treason and sentenced to death, and in his autobiography the hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, recalled how Richter gave him and the warders serious trouble in the condemned cell when he went to execute him on the 10th of December 1941. Richter, a large and powerful man, threw himself head first against the cell wall when he realised that the time had come and then, when he had recovered, fought with Pierrepoint, assistant hangman Harry Allen and the warders until Pierrepoint managed to get his hands strapped behind him and began to lead the procession out to the gallows.

Richter's arms were so strong that he managed to burst the leather strap and had to be further restrained. Just as Pierrepoint had finished the preparations on the gallows and was in the act of pushing the lever, Richter jumped and loosened the noose causing it to catch under his top lip instead of remaining under his jaw. However, his neck was still broken by the force of the drop.

World War II

1940 - The Dutch army surrenders to the Germans.

1940 - The destroyer HMS Valentine is beached after being bombed off Walcheren.

1941 - The first British Jet prototype, the "Gloster Pioneer" makes it's maiden flight, under Gloster Aircraft Company's chief test pilot Gerry Sayer from RAF Cranwell in Lincolnshire.

1941 - In Washington, relations between Vichy France and the US degenerate as the senate passes a bill empowering the government to seize foreign shipping in US harbours.

1942 - The Japanese murder 100 Chinese Families in reprisal for the Doolittle Raid.

1942 - In the Arctic Sea, the cruiser HMS Trinidad, is scuttled by hits from enemy bombs.

1943 - A Japanese submarine I-177 sinks the Australian hospital ship Centaur off Brisbane with the loss of 268 lives.

1943 - Axis forces in Yugoslavia, launched their fifth offensive named "Operation Black" aimed at smashing the local resistance from Tito's partisan army.

1944 - The mass evacuation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz-Birkenau, begins in earnest at the rate of 4,000 a day.

1945 - The last pocket of German Resistance in Yugoslavia surrenders at Slovenski Gradek.

1945 - In the Philippines US forces launch fresh attacks on Mindanao and Negros.

1811 - Paraguay declares independence from Spain.

1850 - Bloody Island Massacre: A large number of Pomo Native American Indians, many of them women and children, are slaughtered by a regiment of the U.S. Cavalry led by Nathaniel Lyon.

1905 - Las Vegas is established as a railroad town following the auction sale of 110 acres owned by the San Pedro Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad.

1928 - The first Mickey Mouse cartoon is privately screened to a small theatre audience. It is called 'Plane Crazy'.

1940 - McDonalds opens its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California.

1948 - During their tour of England, Australia's cricket team sets a first class world record that still stands today by scoring 741 runs in one day against Essex.

1953 - Don Murphy organizes the first Pinewood Derby, a race for the cubs of the Boy Scouts of America. The scouts make their own cars from wood.

1957 - Early and worrying signs that the arms race is escalating as Britain tests its first H-Bomb in a detonation over Christmas Island.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...510335.stm

1963 - The final Mercury Project mission launches. Mercury-Atlas 9 with astronaut Gordon Cooper, who becomes the first American to spend more than one day in space.

1972 - Okinawa reverts to Japanese control after being governed by US military forces since the end of World War II.

1993 - Masked police commandoes storm the Commandant Charcto nursery school in Paris, France and kill the lone gunman. All 21 children are saved along with their teacher, who was hailed a hero for her efforts at keeping the the kids calm during the crisis.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...510707.stm

2001 - A court ruling in the UK puts an end to the over the counter drug industry's fixed prices policy. The high drugs prices were one of many price fixings this year that led to some politicans, including then Trade and Industry secretary Stephen Byers, labelling the country as 'rip-off Britain'.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...511177.stm

2010 - Jessica Watson becomes the youngest person to sail non-stop and unassisted around the world on her return to Sydney. The feat was achieved just three days before her 17th birthday.

May 15th 1963 - Leroy Gordon "Gordo" Cooper is launched into space in Mercury 9

Born in Oklahoma in 1927, Cooper came from a military family. He joined the US Marine Corps but was too young by just a few months to see action in WW2. He transferred to the USAF and served in West Germany before returning to the US where he clocked up more than 7,000 hours as a test pilot.

He was selected as one of the original "Mercury 7" astronauts and was given what turned out to be the last Mercury flight. Cooper had a reputation for being laid back, and proved this when the launch countdown was delayed - he fell asleep in the capsule and the control room had to wake him from his slumbers.

His 34-hour flight meant that he got the chance to snooze on a more official basis and he became the first American to sleep in space. Toward the end of the flight there were mission-threatening technical problems. During the 19th orbit, the capsule had a power failure. Carbon dioxide levels began rising, and the cabin temperature jumped to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38°C). Cooper fell back on his understanding of star patterns, took manual control of the tiny capsule and successfully estimated the correct pitch for re-entry into the atmosphere. Some precision was needed in the calculation, since if the capsule came in too steep, g-forces would be too large and the capsule would burn up, and if its trajectory were too shallow, it would bounce off the atmosphere and be sent back into space. Cooper drew lines on the capsule window to help him check his orientation before firing the re-entry rockets. "So I used my wrist watch for time," he later recalled, "my eyeballs out the window for attitude. Then I fired my retrorockets at the right time and landed right by the carrier." Cooper's cool-headed performance and piloting skills led to a basic rethinking of design philosophy for later space missions.

Cooper flew again in 1965 as Commander of the two-man Gemini 5 with Pete Conrad, as was Commander of the back up crew for Apollo 10. This should have put him in line for a moon flight on what became Apollo 14 but the maverick in him had been rankling the NASA management for some time, and he was passed over in favour of Alan Shepherd.

Aware that his space days were over, he left NASA in 1970 and served as a technical consultant with a number of private firms. During the 1970s, he worked for The Walt Disney Company as a vice-president of research and development for Epcot.

However, Cooper is best remembered among the space fraternity for his views on the existance of UFOs.

Cooper claimed to have seen his first UFO while flying over West Germany in 1951, although he denied reports he had seen a UFO during his Mercury flight.

In 1957, when Cooper was 30 and a Captain, he was assigned to Fighter Section of the Experimental Flight Test Engineering Division at Edwards AFB in California. He acted as a test pilot and project manager. On May 3 of that year, he had a crew setting up an Askania Cinetheodolite precision landing system on a dry lake bed. This cinetheodolite system would take pictures at one frame per second as an aircraft landed. The crew consisted of James Bittick and Jack Gettys who began work at the site just before 0800, using both still and motion picture cameras. According to his accounts, later that morning they returned to report to Cooper that they saw a "strange-looking saucer" like aircraft that did not make a sound either on landing or take-off.

According to his accounts, Cooper realized that these men, who on a regular basis have seen experimental aircraft flying and landing around them as part of their job of filming those aircraft, were clearly worked up and unnerved. They explained how the saucer hovered over them, landed 50 yards away from them using three extended landing gears and then took off as they approached for a closer look. Being photographers with cameras in hand, they of course shot images with 35mm and 4×5 still cameras as well as motion picture film. There was a special Pentagon number to call to report incidents like this. He called and it immediately went up the chain of command until he was instructed by a general to have the film developed (but to make no prints of it) and send it right away in a locked courier pouch. As he had not been instructed to not look at the negatives before sending them, he did. He said the quality of the photography was excellent as would be expected from the experienced photographers who took them. What he saw was exactly what they had described to him. He did not see the movie film before everything was sent away. He expected that there would be a follow up investigation since an aircraft of unknown origin had landed in a highly classified military installation, but nothing was ever said of the incident again. He was never able to track down what happened to those photos. He assumed that they ended up going to the Air Force's official UFO investigation, Project Blue Book, which was based at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

He maintained until his death that the U.S. government is indeed covering up information about UFOs. He gave the example of President Harry Truman who said on April 4, 1950, "I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on Earth." He also pointed out that there were hundreds of reports made by his fellow pilots, many coming from military jet pilots sent to respond to radar or visual sightings from the ground. In his memoirs, Cooper wrote he had seen other unexplained aircraft several times during his career, and also said hundreds of similar reports had been made. He further claimed these sightings had been "swept under the rug" by the U.S. government. Throughout his later life Cooper expressed repeatedly in interviews he had seen UFOs and described his recollections for the documentary Out of the Blue.

In later years Cooper suffered from Parkinson's Disease and he died from heart failure in 2004 at the age of 77. In 2007 his ashes were blasted into space on the privately run Spaceloft Rocket, along with the ashes of over 200 other people, including those of the actor James Doohan, who played Scotty in Star Trek.

1959, Elvis Presley scored his fourth No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'A Fool Such As I / I Need Your Love Tonight.' His first ballad to hit No.1.

1961, Floyd Cramer was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'On The Rebound.' The US singer's only UK No.1. The Nashville pianist played on many Elvis Presley hits.

1963, During a UK tour, The Beatles performed at the Royalty Theatre in Chester. The set list was: ‘Some Other Guy’, ‘Thank You Girl’, ‘Do You Want to Know a Secret’, ‘Please Please Me’, ‘You Really Got a Hold on Me’, ‘I Saw Her Standing There’, and ‘From Me To You’.

1965, Bob Dylan’s single 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' peaked at No.39 in the US charts, giving Dylan his first US top 40 hit. John Lennon was reported to find the song so captivating that he didn't know how he'd be able to write a song that could compete with it.

1967, Paul McCartney met American photographer Linda Eastman for the first time, during a Georgie Fame concert at the Bag O'Nails nightclub in London, England. They married on March 12, 1969.

1968, George Harrison and Ringo Starr attended the premiere of 'Wonderwall' at the Cannes Film Festival. The 1968 film by first-time director Joe Massot starred Jack MacGowran and Jane Birkin, and featured cameos by Anita Pallenberg. The soundtrack was composed by then-Beatle George Harrison. The film provides the name for the Oasis track 'Wonderwall', which was inspired by George Harrison's score.

1969, John Lennon's 'Life With The Lions' was released on Apple's avant-garde imprint Zapple. One side of the album was recorded on a cassette player at London's Queen Charlotte Hospital during Yoko Ono's pregnancy which ended in a miscarriage.

1971, Crosby Stills Nash & Young scored their second US No.1 album with '4 Way Street.' The live album featured recordings from shows at The Fillmore East, New York, and The Forum, Los Angeles.

1974, Frank Zappa and his wife announced the birth of their third child, a boy named Ahmet Rodan, after the Japanese movie monster that lived of a steady diet of 707 planes.

1976, The Rolling Stones went to No.1 on the US album chart with 'Black And Blue', the group's sixth US No.1 album. The band's first studio album released with Ronnie Wood as the replacement for Mick Taylor featured the hit 'Fool To Cry'.

1981, Former Sex Pistol John Lydon's band Public Image Ltd performed a show at New York's Ritz Club posing behind a video screen while the music was played from tapes. They were showered with missiles and eventually booed off stage.

1982, Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney started a seven week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'Ebony And Ivory'. The song gave McCartney his 24th US No.1 as a songwriter. The title was inspired by McCartney hearing Spike Milligan say "black notes, white notes, and you need to play the two to make harmony folks!". It was later named as the tenth worst song of all time by Blender magazine and in 2007 was named the worst duet in history by BBC 6 Music listeners.

1991, Manic Street Preacher guitarist Richey Edwards carved '4 real' into his arm with a razor blade while being interviewed by music paper The NME.

1992, Barbara Lee of the Chiffons died from a heart attack the day before her 45th birthday. Had the 1963 US No.1 single 'He's So Fine.'

1993, Janet Jackson started a eight week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'That's The Way Love Goes', her sixth US No.1, a No.2 hit in the UK.

1994, Blur scored their first UK No.1 album with ‘Parklife’, which went on to spend over two years on the chart. The album featured four UK hit singles: 'Girls & Boys', 'End of a Century', 'Parklife' and 'To the End'. In the year following its release the album came to define the emerging Britpop scene. The album cover for Parklife was among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail for a set of "Classic Album Cover" postage stamps issued in January 2010.

Source: http://www.thisdayinmusic.com

16 May 1943 - A final blast destroys The Warsaw Ghetto.

A month after he launched the operation which he reckoned would only take a few days, SS Major-General Stroop reported to Himmler:
"The Warsaw Ghetto is no more". Besides the 14,000 Jews killed in the fighting or sent to the Treblinka death camp, another 42,000 were being deported to labour camps near Lublin.

Stroop rounded off his destruction of the Ghetto in the late evening by blowing up the Thomaebi synagogue. Only eight buildings survived, the police lodgings, quarters for factory guards and a hospital.

The remnants of the Jewish resistance driven from their bunkers by poison gas, still refused to give in. One man attacked the Germans with stones; he was beaten with rifle butts, mercilessly kicked and left to soak in his own blood.

Though Stroop said that the ghetto had been destroyed, small groups of Jews were still in hiding, and others escaped through the sewers to seek refuge in the Christian districts of Warsaw.

One wrote in his diary:
"Though our hearts are still beating, there will never be a joy of life in them."

1963, The first Monterey Folk Festival took place over three days in Monterey, California. The festival featured Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Peter Paul and Mary. The 1967 Monterey Rock festival is remembered for the first major American appearances by Jimi Hendrix and The Who, as well as the first major public performances of Janis Joplin. It was also the first major performance by Otis Redding in front of a predominantly white audience.

1964, Bob Dylan made his first major concert UK appearance when he played at the Royal Festival Hall in London with an afternoon show listed as a ‘Folksong Concert’. Dylan's 18-song set included the live debut of Mr. Tambourine Man and took place on a Sunday afternoon. In the interval, Dylan received a telegram from John Lennon seeking a meeting which never materialised.

1966, During a UK tour, Bob Dylan appeared at The Free Trade Hall in Manchester. This was the concert where a member of the audience shouted out ‘Judas’ at Dylan unhappy with the singers move from acoustic to rock. Dylan replied with ‘You’re a liar’, the entire concert was eventually officially released in The Bootleg Series by Sony Music in 1999.

1967, The Tremeloes were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with their version of a Four Seasons song, (the B-side to Rag Doll), 'Silence Is Golden', the group's only UK No.1.

1967, Working at Abbey Road studios The Beatles began recording a new John Lennon song ‘You Know My Name (Look Up the Number)’. The song was not finished until November 1969, and was not released until March 1970 (as the B-side of the ‘Let it Be’ single).

1969, It was reported that for the first time ever album sales had overtaken single sales in the UK. 49,184,000 albums were produced during 1968 compared with 49,161,000 singles.
1969, Joni Mitchell was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, on sale for 35 Cents, (2/6).

1971, Dawn were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Knock Three Times', the group's first of two UK No.1's. Singer Tony Orlando had retired from singing when he was persuaded to front Dawn for studio recordings.

1975, Elton John was awarded a Platinum Record for sales of a million copies of the LP 'Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy', the first album ever to be certified Platinum on the day of its release.

1975, Led Zeppelin played the first of five sold-out nights to 17,000 fans at Earls Court Arena, London England. The set list included: Rock And Roll, The Song Remains The Same, The Rain Song, Kashmir, No Quarter, Going To California, Dazed And Confused, Stairway To Heaven, Whole Lotta Love, and Black Dog. Tickets cost £1 ($1.70) - £2.50 ($4.25).

1980, This year's Eurovision song contest winner Johnny Logan was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'What's Another Year.' The second Eurovision winner for Ireland, Logan won it again in 1987 and wrote a further winner in 1992.

1986, Spitting Image started a three-week run at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'The Chicken Song.' Spitting Image had become the 'must see' Sunday night UK TV show, which mocked politicians and public figures.

1986, Whitney Houston started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'Greatest Love Of All', the singers third US No.1, a No.8 hit in the UK.
1987, A fire destroyed Tom Petty's house in Los Angeles, the cost was estimated at $800,000.

1989, Former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman's first Sticky Fingers restaurant opened in London.

1989, The first night of a 12-date UK tour for R.E.M. starting at Leicester De Montfort Hall. (Promoting the new single, 'Orange Crush').

1990, Nirvana played the last date of a North American tour at the Zoo in Boise, Idaho. This was Chad Channing's final gig with the band, drummer Dave Grohl replaced him in Sept of this year after his band Scream had split-up.

1996, US blues guitarist Johnny Guitar Watson died of a heart attack while on tour in Yokohama, Japan. According to eyewitness reports, he collapsed mid guitar solo. His last words were "ain't that a bitch."

1996, Kevin Gilbert, multi instrumentalist and songwriter, died of accidental asphyxiation. Member of Giraffe, worked with Sheryl Crow, co-wrote her 1994 UK No.4 hit 'All I Want To Do.'

2002, Sharon Sheeley, US songwriter, died aged 62. Hits include 'Poor Little Fool' US No.1 for Ricky Nelson in 1958 and 1959 hit for Eddie Cochran 'Somethin' Else'. Sheeley survived the car crash that killed Eddie Cochran during a 1960 UK tour.

2002, Lance Bass of boy-band *NSYNC underwent hospital treatment to correct an irregular heartbeat. Bass was hoping to qualify for a seat onboard a Russian rocket flight to the International Space Station.

2003, Singer with Stone Temple Pilots, Scott Weiland, was arrested on suspicion of drug possession after being stopped during a routine traffic search in Los Angeles, He was released on $10,000 (£6,125) bail.

2005, Akon was at No.1 on the UK singles with ‘Lonely’, Gwen Stefani held the US No.1 spot with ‘Hollaback Girl’ and Snoop Dogg and Justin Timberlake were at No.1 on the Australian chart with ‘Signs.’

2006, Paul McCartney and his wife Heather Mills admitted that they had given up the fight to save their marriage, saying that after four years together, they were going their separate ways.

2008, Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty posted a two-minute clip of themselves playing with newborn mice on Youtube. The video showed Doherty and Winehouse in a bare room, making rambling comments, picking up the mice and talking to them.

2008, Madonna was at No.1 on the US album chart with her eleventh studio album 'Hard Candy'. The album reached number one in thirty-seven other countries.

2009, Black Eyed Peas went to No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Boom Boom Pow', their second UK No.1 hit.

2009, Green Day went to No.1 on the UK album chart with their eighth studio album '21st Century Breakdown'.

2012, Donna Summer, the 1970s pop singer known as the Queen of Disco, died of lung cancer,(R.I.P) an illness she believed she contracted from inhaling toxic particles released after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York. She won five Grammy Awards, six American Music Awards, and had three multi-platinum albums, including the hits 'Hot Stuff', 'Love to Love You, and 'Baby' and 'I Feel Love'.

Source: http://www.thisdayinmusic.com

World War II: 18 May

1940 - Paris: Paul Reynaud, the French prime minister, recalls the Defender of Verdun - Marshal Philippe Petain to his cabinet.

1941 - Gdynia: The German battleship Bismark the largest ship in the German fleet, sets sail on her first Atlantic raid escorted by the cruiser Prinz Eugen .

1942 - USSR: Two entire Soviet armies are annihilated by German and Roumanian Panzer and infantry divisions at the Battle of Kerch.

1943 - London: Montgomery gets more applause than the cast when he attends a performance of Arsenic and Old Lace.

1944 - Monte Cassino: Europe's oldest monastic abbey is finally captured by allied troops, after more than three months of bombardment by shell fire and air attack.

1944 - Norway: An RAF Catalina sinks the U-boat U241, two days after the sinking of U240 by a RAF Sunderland.

1945 - Okinawa: US troops launch an assault on the capital Naha, which turns into the modern equivalent of Flanders trench warfare - a slow bitter, muddy and bloody confrontation costing thousands of lives.

World War II: 19 May

1940 - Britain: Churchill makes his first broadcast as prime minister, calling Nazism "the foulest and most soul destroying tyranny that has darkened and stained the pages of history."

1941 - Iraq: British forces based at Habbaniyah, capture Fallujah.

1941 - Germany: In exchange for greater collaboration from the Vichy regime, 100,000 French PoW's are released.

1942 - Ottawa: President Roosevelt announces "Canada is becoming the aerodrome of democracy" as Allied representatives met to co-ordinate air strategy.

1943 - Atlantic: Grand Admiral Donitz's son Peter is killed when his U-boat is one of four destroyed by British ships escorting convoy SC-130

1944 - Stalag Luft III: In one of the worst atrocities of the war involving PoWs, the Gestapo shoot 50 Allied airmen who were recaptured after escaping from the prison camp near Sagan, in Silesia.

1945 - Flensburg: Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi Party's unofficial philosopher, responsible for formulating the party's race policies is arrested.