ALSO TODAY IN 1674 - Horse racing became a nag to the good people of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and the sport was prohibited in the colony. 1831 - The independent constitutional monarchy of Belgium named Prince Leopold as its first king. 109 years later, less one week, King Leopold’s descendant, Leopold III, surrendered to Germany. 1896 - Henry Ford took a trial run in his Ford automobile around the streets of Detroit, MI. 1917 - Laura E. Richards and Maude H. Elliott, along with their assistant, Florence Hall, received the first Pulitzer Prize for a biography. The title of their work was Julia Ward Howe. With Americans of Past and Present Days, by Jean Jules Jusserand, received the first prize for history; while Herbert B. Swope picked up the first reporter’s Pulitzer. He wrote for the New York World. Altogether, these were the very first Pulitzer Prizes ever awarded. 1931 - The first rocket-glider flight was made by William Swan in Atlantic City, NJ. 1934 - The Dorsey Brothers, Tommy and Jimmy, recorded Annie’s Cousin Fanny on the Brunswick label. The track featured trombonist Glenn Miller, who also vocalized on the tune. 1939 - Sylvan Goldman introduced the first grocery-store shopping cart in Oklahoma City, OK. The original shopping cart was actually a folding chair mounted on wheels. 1944 - Leonidas Witherall was first broadcast on the Mutual Broadcasting System. Witherall was a detective who looked just like William Shakespeare. 1949 - Jack Kramer defeated Bobby Riggs and won the men’s pro-tennis title. 1962 - The legendary sportscaster Clem McCarthy died. McCarthy was the first to announce the running of the Kentucky Derby back in 1928. 1964 - Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers tied Bob Feller’s 1951 record by pitching a third career no-hit baseball game. Koufax blanked the Philadelphia Phillies 3-0. He struck out a dozen Phillies’ batters. 1974 - Cleveland Indians public relations experts thought that ‘Ten Cent Beer Night’ would bring out the fans and otherwise help the slumping Indians -- a team no one cared to watch. The promotion was a disaster. Oh, sure, there was plenty of dime brew sold at Municipal Stadium that night. But there were soon plenty of drunken, surly, unruly fans, too, which made it possible for the Indians to forfeit the ball game to the Texas Rangers. Municipal Stadium could seat some 60,000 fans and only 22,000 showed up for the frolic and merriment. 1984 - For the first time in 32 years, golfing-great Arnold Palmer failed to make the cut for the U.S. Open golf tournament. Palmer missed making the tourney by two strokes. 1987 - Edwin Moses, who had won a total of 122 consecutive victories in the 400-meter hurdles, was defeated by Danny Harris in Madrid, Spain. It had been ten years since Moses had lost the event. 1989 - Democracy took a hard blow this day in Peking as the People’s Army of China opened fire on crowds of demonstrators. What began as a student demonstration on behalf of democracy a month and a half earlier, had become a demonstration of hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life defying the government ban on the students’ action. Armored tanks of the People’s Army literally rolled over demonstrators as the world watched in horror as the tragedy unfolded on live TV. The government issued statements claiming that only a few had died. Other estimates of the deaths in Tiananmen Square ranged from hundreds to several thousand. There is no contradiction of the fact that thousands of demonstrators were later jailed.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 10:55:07 +0000
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