This Day In History

May 31 1889
Relentless rain and inadequate maintenance causes the South Fork Dam to fail, unleashing a 35-foot-high wall of water on Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Then 2,209 people are entombed beneath a pile of debris half a mile wide.



May 31 1921
After a white woman claims that a black man had grabbed her arm in an elevator, the largest race riot in U.S. history breaks out in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Marauding whites set fire to the exclusively-negro Greenwood district, leveling its 35 city blocks of black-owned businesses. The official death toll is reported as 36, but later historians estimate it was more like 300.



May 31 1963
Nun Nu Thanh Quang, a Buddhist monk, immolates himself at the Dieu de Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam.



May 31 1996
Timothy Leary dies quietly in his sleep, thereby failing his intended mission of suiciding live on the Internet. On a brighter note, a longstanding Moody Blues prophecy is fulfilled.




May 31 2005
Actor Christian Slater is arrested in New York City after a woman complains of ass-grabbery to police. Slater denies everything and is charged with third-degree sexual abuse.

This Day In History

May 30 1942
Returning home from a night of drinking and reminiscing about the recent death of John Barrymore, movie star Errol Flynn flips on the lights and is horrified to discover Barrymore's corpse propped up in a living room chair. Some of Flynn's friends had given a funeral director $200 to borrow the body for a couple of hours.

This Day In History

May 22 1957
A B-36 bomber accidentally drops a 10 megaton hydrogen bomb over an uninhabited area near Albuquerque, New Mexico. The conventional charges detonate on impact, leaving a radioactive crater 12 feet deep and 25 feet wide.

May 22 1968
The nuclear submarine U.S.S. Scorpion sinks to the bottom with all 99 aboard perishing, after it is reassigned to a spy mission and begins to head towards the Canary Islands. Navy Warrant Officer John Walker (a mole) had certainly reported enough to the KGB to allow them to read the Scorpion's encrypted transmissions. For reasons yet unknown, Navy officials of the U.S. and Soviet Union agree not to discuss the circumstances of this incident or the sinking of a Soviet sub the same year.

May 22 1981
Peter Sutcliffe is convicted of murdering 13 women in the Yorkshire Ripper trial. In the words of the presiding judge: "It is difficult to find words that are adequate in my judgment to describe the brutality and gravity of these offences and I say at once I am not going to pause to seek those words. I am prepared to let the catalogue of crimes speak for itself."

This Day In History

May 20 1989
Attempting to clear Tiananmen Square of student activists and quell 100 million others protesting throughout the country, China declares martial law in Beijing. Two weeks later, after they continue to loiter in the Square, thousands of students are massacred by government troops.

May 20 1999
The dissolving body parts of eight people are discovered inside six plastic barrels sitting in an abandoned bank vault in Snowtown, Australia.

This Day In History

May 18 1980
The body of Ian Curtis, lead singer of dirge band Joy Division, is discovered hanging in the kitchen by his wife. Curtis killed himself on the eve of Joy Division's U.S. tour. His surviving bandmates go on to form New Order.

May 18 1980
After a 5.1 magnitude earthquake in Washington state, 57 people are killed in an avalanche of volcanic mud in the eruption of Mount St. Helens. The volcano spews out 200 million cubic yards of of pumice, ash, and debris which covers 24 square miles of the valley below.

This Day In History

May 17 1924
Two youths discover a human skull on the banks of the Leine in Hanover, Germany. And although two more skulls are found a month later, police ignore it until a sackful of bones turn up on the riverbank. Dragging the Leine yields another 500 bones, belonging to about 27 victims. Eventually, police arrest Fritz Haarmann for the crimes. He would lure runaway boys back to his apartment, where they would be raped, killed, and cut into steaks. Then the unlicensed butcher would sell the meat as beef on the black market. All told, he killed between 40 and 50 boys.

May 17 1965
Magazine The Nation publishes Hunter S. Thompson's first-hand experiences with the Hell's Angels motorcycle club. The bikers would eventually stomp Thompson when they demanded payment for his time spent. A year later, Random House published his book Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.

May 17 1974
During a gun battle with members of the Symbionese Liberation Army, the LAPD fires tear gas into their Watts hideout. The canisters ignite a fire which soon consumes the house. Three other SLA members, including kidnapped heiress Patty Hearst, watch the events unfold on TV in their motel room down the street from Disneyland.

May 17 1980
A three-day race riot breaks out after an all-white jury acquits four white Miami police officers of killing Arthur McDuffie, a black insurance salesman. The cops had beaten him with their flashlights and billyclubs, and he died in the hospital. 18 fatalities and more than $100 million in property damage are the final result.

This Day In History

May 16 1984
Intergender wrestling champion and conceptual comic Andy Kaufman pretends to die of lung cancer. In order to make it really convincing, Andy underwent months of radiation therapy and six weeks of psychic surgery in the Philippines. And he never made any more public appearances.

May 16 1986
In the most notorious retcon in the history of television, Pam Ewing wakes up to find her husband Bobby in the shower -- no small feat, considering he's been dead for a whole season. In order to revivify Bobby's character, the Dallas writers resorted to dismissing the entire preceding year as nothing more than Pam's protracted dream.

May 16 1990
Sammy Davis, Jr. dies of throat cancer in Beverly Hills. After the legendary Rat pack singer/entertainer is buried with $70,000 in jewelry, the family discovers that Mr. Bojangles was broke and left millions of dollars in unpaid back taxes. His widow then orders the body exhumed so they can repo the jewelry.

May 16 1990
Attached to a ventilator and swimming in antibiotics, Muppet creator Jim Henson dies of a severe case of pneumonia in a New York hospital. In keeping with his express wishes, no one is permitted to wear black at Henson's funeral service, which features 5,000 fans waving painted butterflies and a live band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In."

This Day In History

May 15 1985
Graduate student John Hauser loses most of his right hand in a UC Berkeley computer room when he opens an innocent-looking box attached to a looseleaf binder. It is the second device left in this building from the Unabomber. In fact, the engineering professor who applies the tourniquet to Hauser's arm was the victim in the previous attack, three years prior.

May 15 1997
Federal prosecutors in the Unabomber trial file the necessary paperwork requesting the death penalty for Ted Kaczynski.

This Day In History

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 pseudo-religious cults in modern history.

May 9 1979
Northwestern University graduate student John Harris opens a cigar box left sitting on a table in the Technological Institute. The resulting blast only manages to inflict minor lacerations and burns. It is later determined to be the second explosive device fabricated by the Unabomber.

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.

This Day In History

May 8 1902
Mt. Peleé erupts on the West Indies island of Martinique. A wall of superheated ash and rock cascades down the slopes, slamming directly into the community of Saint Pierre. The shockwave and intense heat even manage to destroy twenty ships in the harbor. Only two of the town's 28,000 residents survive the cataclysm.

May 8 1991
In a room at Little Rock's Excelsior Hotel, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton exposes his penis to state employee Paula Jones and propositions her to perform fellatio. In her civil deposition, Jones will later claim to have witnessed certain "distinguishing characteristics" of the governor's genitalia, the precise nature of which soon becomes the subject of much speculation. For her trouble, Jones eventually receives an out-of-court settlement for $850,000 and a nude pictorial in Penthouse magazine.

May 8 1998
Former Senator and onetime Presidential candidate Bob Dole tells television interviewer Larry King that he participated in the Viagra impotence drug trials, and thoroughly enjoyed himself in the process. Dole's name soon becomes synonymous with erectile dysfunction.

May 8 1999
Actress Dana Plato, who played Kimberly Drummond on Diff'rent Strokes, dies in Oklahoma of an overdose of Valium and Loritab. Just the previous day, Plato had appeared on the Howard Stern syndicated radio program claiming to be clean and sober.

This Day In History

May 7 1959
Small-time boxing promoter Don King is arrested in Cleveland on suspicion of drug dealing. His criminal record includes a 1955 arrest for arson, a 1954 arrest for murder, and others.



May 7 2001
Ronnie Biggs, England's escaped "Great Train Robber," returns to face the music after 35 years as a fugitive. After serving just fifteen months of a 30-year sentence, Biggs escaped from prison and fled to Brazil, where he avoided extradition by fathering the baby of a 19-year-old stripper. Partially paralyzed by a couple of strokes, Biggs returns to England for one last pint of beer before he dies. Instead he is taken into custody at Heathrow airport and promptly sent to Belmarsh prison to serve out the remainder of his sentence.

This Day In History

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 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," although it probably also involved the flammable silver paint the Germans used to coat the thing.

Two-in-one-day:

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.

May 6 1993
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.

This Day In History

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 1982
Secretary Janet Smith in the computer science department at Vanderbilt University is injured when she opens a package from the Unabomber.

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

This Day In History

May 4 1970
28 Ohio National Guardsmen kill four students and wound nine others at Kent State University. The Guardsmen had read them the riot act, but the students refused to disperse. So they shot them.



May 4 1991

Bing Crosby's son Dennis Crosby puts a shotgun to his head, ending his life in a boarding house in California. A younger brother, Lindsay, had also killed himself with a shotgun two years earlier.




May 4 2001
After dinner at Vitello's in Studio City, film and television actor Robert Blake remembers that he left something at the restaurant. When he returns to the car, he discovers his wife, Bonnie Lee Bakley, slumped over in the passenger seat. She had been shot in the head by person or persons unknown. Bakley later dies of her injury. One year later, Blake is charged with the murder.

This Day In History

May 3 1963
Eugene "Bull" Connor directs security forces in Birmingham, Alabama to unleash police dogs on civil rights protesters, and then blast them with high-pressure fire hoses. Unfortunately for segregationists, television networks bring the footage to a shocked national audience. In the wake of the overwhelming public response, President Kennedy quips that Connor "has done more for civil rights than almost anybody else."

May 3 1988
The White House confirms stories that President Ronald Reagan's travel and public appearances are scheduled around astrological data furnished by a mystic in San Francisco. The astrologer also supplies input to the timing of critical international events, such as a recent arms control summit in Iceland.

This Day In History

May 1 1776
Adam Weishaupt founds the Bavarian Illuminati, the secret society which controls your mind as part of its plot to overthrow organized religion and control the global economy. If you don't believe it, ask yourself what novus ordo seclorum is doing on your dollar bill.

May 1 1997
Sportscaster Frank Gifford is caught on video having sex with TWA flight attendant Suzen Johnson at the New York Regency Hotel. On the tape, Johnson is heard moaning: "Oh, God that's so good. Oh my, you're so big. I knew you would be -- I just knew you would be." A tabloid paid Johnson $75,000 to fornicate with Gifford, and she later goes on to pose nude in Playboy for a six-figure check.

May 1 2003
Commander in Chief George W. Bush rides shotgun aboard a Navy S-3B Viking jet, lands on the USS Abraham Lincoln, marking the first time a president has boarded an aircraft carrier by plane. Underneath a large "Mission Accomplished." sign, he announces that major combat operations in Iraq have ended.