On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II is shot as he negotiates the crowds in the Vatican's St. Peter's Square. The assailant, 23-year-old escaped Turkish murderer Mehmet Ali Agca, fired four shots, one of which hit the pontiff in the abdomen, narrowly missing vital organs, and another that hit the pope’s left hand. The other two bullets hit people in the crowd; both survived. The pope underwent more than five hours of surgery and spent 3 weeks recovering. Agca, who first said he acted alone, then said he acted on behalf of Bulgarian intelligence and implicated the KGB, and finally said he was ordered by God Himself to kill the pope, was sentenced to life in prison.


On May 13, 1846, the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly votes to declare war on Mexico. Relations between the neighboring countries had crumbled over the previous 2 years as Texas won its independence from Mexico but later applied for statehood.

Some 100 English colonists arrive along the west bank of the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.


On May 13, 1940, Winston Churchill takes the helm as Great Britain’s new prime minister. In his address to Parliament, Churchill states his new policy will consist of nothing less than “to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.”

On May 14, 1804, an expedition of 45 men led by U.S. Army Captain William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, private secretary to President Thomas Jefferson, departs St. Louis to explore territory acquired in the Louisiana Purchase the year before. The two and a half year mission would bring back a wealth of information about what is now the American Northwest.

On May 14, 1796, Edward Jenner, an English country doctor from Gloucestershire, scratches fluid drawn from a cowpox blister (cowbox is blisters raised on a cow's udder) into the skin of an 8-year old boy. While still a medical student, Jenner noticed that milkmaids who had contracted a disease called cowpox, which caused blistering on cow’s udders, did not catch smallpox. On July 1, Jenner inoculates the boy again, this time with smallpox matter, and no disease developed. Jenner has developed the first successful vaccine for smallpox, which has killed millions over the centuries. Jenner's discovery leads to vaccines against numerous deadly diseases over the next 200 years. By 1970, smallpox is declared eliminated worldwide.

On May 14, 1948, in Tel Aviv, Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaims the State of Israel, establishing the first Jewish state in 2,000 years. Ben-Gurion is Israel’s first premier.

On May 14, 1973, Skylab, America’s first space station, is successfully launched into an orbit around the earth. Built from the recovered third stage of one of the Saturn V moon rockets, Skylab would be manned for 700 hours off and on over the next year, her crews (3 different crews of 3 occupied her) bringing back valuable data about the effects of living in space long-term. Five years after the final mission, Skylab's orbit deteriorated and burned up in the atmosphere, scattering debris across the Indian Ocean and the Australian Outback.


On May 14, 1998, the final episode of Seinfeld airs on NBC. The program, starring comedian Jerry Seinfeld as himself, is described throughout its 9-year run as "a show about nothing." Its also one of the highest rated on TV, though the 75 minute finale, in which the main characters are arrested, convicted and jailed for violating a small Massachusetts town's "Good Samaritan" law, received mixed reviews from fans and critics alike.

On May 15, 1972, former Alabama Governor George Wallace is shot by 21-year old Arthur Bremer during an outdoor rally in Laurel, Maryland. Wallace had been one of the South's staunchest segregationists during the turbulent 60's but was running for the Democratic Party presidential nomination on a more moderate platform, with some success, when he was shot. The shooting left him permanently paralyzed from the waist down, several months of convalescence would force his withdrawal from the campaign, despite winning the Maryland and Michigan primaries the day after the shooting. (no audio on film clip)


On May 15, 1800, President John Adams orders the federal government to pack up and leave Philadelphia and set up shop in the nation’s new capital in Washington, D.C. Moving the government and its bureaucracy of 125 federal employees will take one month.

On May 15, 1988, the Soviet government begins withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, ending 8 years of occupation.


On May 15 1942, gasoline rationing began in 17 Eastern states as an attempt to help the American war effort during World War II.

On May 15, 1941, England's Gloster Aircraft Corporation successfully test-flies the Gloster-Whittle E 28/39, in the first test of an Allied aircraft using jet propulsion.


On May 15, 2007, some 20,000 users of the English-based website 4chan click a link that promises a trailer for the upcoming video game Grand Theft Auto IV. Instead, they get....the video to Rick Astley's hit single, "Never Gonna Give You Up." They are the first internet users to get "rick rolled," a prank that will spread like wildfire. Countless web surfers over the next year will click links promising all kinds of visual treats, only to get Astley instead. The prank hit its height during the televising of the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, when Astley sang his hit song live in an unannounced performance.

On May 16, 1868, the Senate acquits President Andrew Johnson of committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Johnson had been impeached by the House on 11 vague articles, mostly related to his resistance to implementing Civil War Reconstruction policies.

In the May 16, 1985 edition of the scientific journal Nature, the British Antarctic Survey says it has detected abnormally low levels of ozone over the South Pole. Their discovery becomes known as the Ozone Hole, a thinning of the layer of the atmosphere that blocks the sun's most harmful ultraviolet radiation.

On May 16, 1988, US Surgeon General C. Everett Koop reports on the addictive properties of nicotine, described as on par with cocaine and heroin. A dedicated campaigner against smoking, his public advocacy will be credited with helping spur declines in cigarette use during his tenure and beyond.


On May 16, 1980, Los Angeles Lakers rookie point guard Earvin “Magic” Johnson steps in for injured center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and scores 42 points, leading the Lakers to a Game 6 win over the Philadelphia 76ers and clinching the Lakers' first NBA championship since 1972.

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously, in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, that racial segregation in public educational facilities is unconstitutional. The specific case, in which an African American girl named Linda Brown was denied admission to a Topeka, Kansas elementary school because of her skin color, will become the precedent for abolishing racial segregation in all public facilities and practices.

On May 17, 2004, Marcia Kadish, 56, and Tanya McCloskey, 52, of Malden, Massachusetts are the principles in America's first legal same-sex marriage. Over the course of the day, 77 other same-sex couples tied the knot across the state, and hundreds more applied for marriage licenses. Same-sex marriage will become legal nationwide in October, 2015.

On May 17, 1970, Norwegian ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl and a multinational crew set out from Morocco across the Atlantic Ocean in Ra II, a papyrus sailing craft modeled after ancient Egyptian sailing vessels. Heyerdahl was attempting to prove his theory that Mediterranean civilizations sailed to America in ancient times and exchanged cultures with the people of Central and South America. The Ra II crossed the 4,000 miles of ocean to Barbados in 57 days.


On May 17, 1875, Aristedes wins the first Kentucky Derby at a new track in Louisville, which will later be named Churchill Downs.

On May 17, 1943, the crew of the Memphis Belle, one of a group of American bombers based in Britain, becomes the first B-17 crew to complete 25 missions over Europe. Unlike the historic mission portrayed in the 1990 film of the same name, the Memphis Belle's 25th mission, a bombing raid on a German submarine base in Lorient, was without incident, the type bombing crews referred to as a "milk run." The crew and plane were sent home on a publicity tour afterward; the Memphis Belle is now displayed at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, and underwent a complete restoration in 2005.


On May 17, 1965, the Federal Bureau of Investigation releases its findings on the "Louie, Louie" controversy. "Louie, Louie," was written by Richard Berry in 1955, the lyrics revolving around a sailor from the Caribbean lamenting to a bartender named Louie about missing his far-away love. In 1963, the song was covered by The Kingsmen. Recorded in one take and in extremely poor conditions, most of the lyrics were garbled. No one knows who started it or why, but protests against the song's "pornographic lyrics" soon began, eventually being brought to the attention of U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. At that point, FBI Laboratories sprang into action, interviewing Berry, the heads of The Kingsmen's record label, and analysts who listened to the record at every phonograph speed available to the public, and a few that weren't. The verdict: the lyrics of "Louie, Louie" were 'unintelligible at any speed," not so much a not guilty as a we don't know. "Louie, Louie" is one of the most covered tunes in rock and roll history.

Only version I've ever heard where I could understand the lyrics:

On May 18, 1980 at 8:32 a.m, Mt. St. Helens, a volcanic peak in the Northwest U.S. Cascade Mountains, violently erupts, killing 57 people and devastating some 210 square miles of wilderness. The volcano has been giving hints of an impending eruption for nearly 2 months. This morning, a medium strength earthquake causes a massive landslide on the mountain's north face, and the volcano blows its top. By day's end, Mt. St. Helen's had lost 1,700 feet of its previous 9,680 feet of elevation, 57 people and countless animals are dead, and the mountain's north side, along with a huge swath of land at the base, are a wasteland.


On May 18, 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court makes racial segregation legal, by ruling in Plessy v Ferguson that a Louisiana law providing for “equal but separate accommodations for the white and colored races” on its railroad cars is constitutional.The ruling makes segregation the law of the land for exactly one day less than 58 years, when SCOTUS outlawed public segregation in Brown v Board of Education (see yesterday's entry).

On May 18, 1943, Adolph Hitler gives Field Marshall Erwin Rommel a verbal order launching Operation Alaric, the German occupation of Italy in the event its Axis partner either surrendered or switched its allegiance. This operation was considered so top secret that Hitler refused to issue a written order. On Hitler's verbal command, Rommel began to assemble 11 divisions for the occupation of Italy to prevent an Allied foothold in the peninsula.

On May 18, 2012, Facebook, the world’s largest social network, holds its initial public offering (IPO) and raises $16 billion. It was the largest technology IPO in American history to that date, and the third-largest IPO ever in the United States, after those of Visa and General Motors.

On May 18, 1974 in the Rajasthan Desert, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon, a fission bomb similar in explosive power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. India is now the world's 6th member of the "nuclear club" (joining the US, USSR, UK, China and France) and the only bomb nation that is not a member of the UN Security Council.