This day in history...

On April 29, 1862, US Marines dispatched by Admiral David Farragut remove the Louisiana state flag from New Orleans City Hall, signifying the Union's capture of the city. New Orleans' principal defense against attack from the south centered on four fixed fortifications, including Ft. Jackson and Ft. St. Phillip, flanking the Mississippi River 70 miles south of the city. Over the previous ten days, Farragut's naval squadron dueled with these two forts, eventually getting 13 ships through the gauntlet. With no further defense against a river assault, Confederate forces in the city withdrew to Vicksburg. Although the citizen government never formally surrendered, Farragut entered and claimed the city with little destruction, making New Orleans one of the few major southern cities to survive the war without major damage.


Shortly after midnight on April 29, 1945, Adolph Hitler marries longtime companion Eva Braun in a private civil ceremony in Hitler's Berlin bunker. Nazi Party minister of progaganda Joseph Goebbels and party official Martin Bormann were witnesses. About 36 hours later, the Hitlers would take their own lives. Eva was a 17-year old assistant to the official Nazi Party photographer when she met Hitler (age 40) in 1929. They rarely appeared together in public throughout Hitler's rise to power, Hitler wishing to present an image of a sexy (he believed) yet chaste leader. Biographers believe Eva never took an interest in politics. Their bodies were burned after death; the remains, along with those of Goebbels, his family, other party officials and the Hitler's dogs, were buried near a Soviet compound in East Germany after the war. Soviet records indicate five boxes of remains at the burial site were exhumed and thrown into the Elbe River in 1970; it is unknown if they included the remains of Adolph and Eva.


On April 29, 1852, British physician, theologian and lexicographer Peter Roget publishes his first thesaurus. There are no other words for the groundbreaking publication, though some may be innovative, cutting-edge, revolutionary, avant-garde...The first edition of Roget's Thesaurus contained 15,000 words. The Eighth Edition, published in 2019, contains more than 400,000, and the name Roget is trademarked in many parts of the world, including the UK.

 

On May 1, 1971, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, marketed as Amtrak, begins operation. In the early part of the 20th century, 98% of all intercity travel in the U.S. was done by trains. The emergence of airlines, busses and private autos reduced the amount to 67% in 1940, and after a resurgence in WWII, down to 32% in 1957. Congress tried 3 times to create a passenger rail conglomerate in the 60's, succeeding in 1969. Twenty of the 26 existing passenger rail services joined the NRPC. In 2021, Amtrak served more than 12 million passengers in 46 states and Canada.


On May 1, 1952, the De Havilland Comet 1 debuts as the first jet airliner, flying from London to Johannesburg for BOAC. Even with 5 stops, the 21-hour flight is nearly twice as fast as propeller driven airliners. About 115 were built, mostly flown by airlines servicing European routes. But the Comet proved to be as dangerous as she was fast, with several fatal accidents in its first few years of service. In some cases, the accidents were attributed to the previously unknown phenomenon of metal fatigue, caused by the stress of high speed. Later versions of the Comet underwent several design changes to increase its safety before being taken out of service in 1997.


On May 1, 1939, the Iron Horse, New York Yankees first baseman Lou Gehrig, benches himself to end his streak of 2,130 consecutive games played. Gehrig had been with the Yankees for two seasons but saw little playing time before taking over for a slumping Wally Pipp at first base on June 1, 1925. During the 14 years of his playing streak he would win six World Series, 2 American League MVP awards, a league batting title, a Triple Crown, a spot in the first 7 All Star games, and was named team captain of the Yankees. But at the beginning of the '39 season he was beginning to show the effects of the onset of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a rare form of muscular dystrophy now known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. It would take his life just two years later. His consecutive game streak would last for 59 years, broken by Cal Ripken, Jr. from 1982 to 1998.

 

On May 6, 1910, George V succeeds his father Edward VII as king of Great Britain. Second in line to the throne on his birth in 1865, George became the direct heir to the throne when his older brother Albert died in battle in 1892. A member of the ruling House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, George would reject the Germanic heritage of the family name due to anti-German sentiment in 1910, adopting the English Windsor for the ruling family. Perhaps his greatest political achievement was the Parliament Act of 1911, which established the supremacy of the elected House of Commons over the House of Lords. He died of smoking-related health problems in 1936.


On May 6, 1889, the Eiffel Tower opens during the International Exposition in Paris. At 1,083 feet tall, it nearly doubles the height of the Washington Monument, surpassing it as the world's tallest man-made structure until topped by NYC's Chrysler Building in 1930 (an antennae added in 1957 increased the total height to 1,100 feet). It remains the second tallest man-made structure in France, with the highest observation platform in the European Union. The Eiffel Tower is part of the "Banks of the Seine River" UNESCO World Heritage Site. (March 1889 photo)


On May 6, 1915, the SY (Steam Yacht) Aurora, base ship of Sir Ernest Shackelton's Trans-Arctic Expedition, breaks its moorings during a gale in McMurdo Sound. Cut off from land by pack ice and with damage to her rudder, the Aurora would drift around the Southern Ocean for 312 days with a meagerly supplied crew of 18 aboard, while 10 men of the expedition were stranded ashore. Finally freed of the pack ice by a February 1916 thaw, First Officer Joseph Stenhouse (Captain Aeneas Mackintosh was among the shore party) sailed to Port Chalmers, New Zealand, where the Aurora's owners blamed him for the mishap and relieved him of command. A new crew sailed the ship back to McMurdo to rescue the shore party.

 

On May 8, 1792, Congress passes the Militia Act, requiring all male citizens between the ages of 18 and 45 to be enrolled in their respective state militias. Congress' inability (under the Articles of Confederation) to deal with Shays' Rebellion in 1787 accentuated the need for a Constitution in general, and a mandated militia in particular. The Militia Act was tested almost immediately, when several thousand Pennsylvania farmers, angered over a federal excise tax on whiskey, assembled near Pittsburgh and threatened to march on the city. President Washington assembled a militia of about 15,000, who broke up the rebellion with their mere presence.


On May 8, 1919, Australian journalist Edward G. Honey (below) proposes a new form of remembrance. In a letter to the London Daily News, Honey - a WWI veteran - proposes that the first anniversary of the WWI Armistice in November be marked with five minutes of national silence. Honey calls this a "very sacred intercession" and while saying church services to commemorate the armistice would also be appropriate, "five minutes of bitter-sweet silence would be service enough." HIs idea didn't take immediate root, but when a member of the House of Lords made a similar proposal, King George V decreed that in 1920, the moment of the Armistice signing would be marked with two minutes of silence. The "moment of silence" is now a common memorial practice in the UK and the USA.


On May 8, 1877, the Westminster Kennel Club (named for the hotel in which it was formed a year earlier) holds the First Annual New York Bench Show of Dogs at Gilmore's Garden, the forerunner to Madison Square Garden. The 3-day show is such an immediate hit that organizers stage a 4th day. The 1,200 entries in that first show include two hounds once owned by General George Custer, and two more hounds bred by the Queen of England. Now often known simply as Westminster, the show is America's second longest continuously running sporting event, eclipsed only by the Kentucky Derby. (below: Wasabi (Pekingese), the 2021 Best in Show)

 

On May 9, 1941, Royal Navy vessels escorting a supply convoy damage and capture the German submarine U-110 northwest of Ireland. Aboard, British sailors find the latest version of an Enigma device, the machine that codes German messages, along with several code books. Captured crew members later indicated that U-110 commander Fritz-Julius Lemp ordered the ship abandoned, believing it was sinking. When he realized the sub was not foundering, Lemp attempted to reboard, presumably to destroy the Enigma machine and codes. No further trace of Lemp was found. Although Polish intelligence had broken some of the Enigma codes before the war began, British intelligence now has the actual device to study.


On May 9, 1671, Irish agitator "Colonel" Thomas Blood attempts to steal the Crown Jewels of England. The attempt was the culmination of several weeks worth. Disguised as a parson, Blood visited the Tower of London where the Jewels were on public display, along with a female accomplice posing as his wife. His wife feigned a stomach illness, seeking the help of the Tower master and his wife, which was given. Over the next several weeks, Blood ingratiated himself to the Tower master Talbot Edwards, until asking for a viewing of the Jewels on May 9. He and his accomplices then knocked Edwards out, flattened the St. Edward's Crown with a mallet, sawed the Sceptre With The Cross in two and stashed the Sovereign's Orb. The getaway was foiled when Edward's son, a soldier, unexpectedly showed up. Inexplicably, King Charles II not only pardoned Blood for the attempt, he gave him a plot of land in Ireland that was worth more than the reward given Edward's son for preventing the crime.

 

On May 10, 1774, Louis XVI and his bride, the Austrian archduchess Marie Antoinette, ascend to the throne of France on the death of Louis' grandfather, Louis XV. They are 19 and 18 years old, respectively, and had been married (in a political arrangement) nearly 4 years. Historical accounts of their lavish lifestyle are much more true of Marie than Louis, who was a very earthy young man who spent a lot of his free time with the royal locksmith and carpenter, learning their crafts. Marie was a party girl, who on one occasion even set the clocks in their private chambers ahead to trick Louis into going to bed early while she attended a dance without him. But she was much more connected with the common citizenry than history gives her credit for (she never said "let them eat cake."). Nevertheless, their rule was unpopular enough that it ended with revolution and the guillotine.


On May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill replaces Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister of Great Britain. Chamberlain's fall from grace had begun with his signing of the Munich Agreement in 1938, giving Hitler the resource-rich Sudetenland and paving the way for his conquest of Czechoslovakia. And it didn't bring "peace in our time," as Chamberlain stated, leading the House of Commons to cast a vote of no-confidence in the PM. Churchill quickly proved a much more able wartime PM.


On May 10, 1996, 8 climbers from 4 separate expeditions die in a storm on Mt. Everest, the deadliest day (to that point) in the history of climbing the world's tallest mountain. Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first conquered Everest in 1953, but in the ensuing decades, improvements in climbing technology made the mountain accessible to even mid-level climbers. Between 1980 and 2001, 91 climbers died attempting to scale Everest, leading many in the ecotourism industry to call for the nation of Nepal to place limits on number and skill level of climbers permitted on the mountain. It hasn't happened yet; in 2019, the nation sold a record-breaking 408 permits, at $11,000 a pop. Covid in '20 and '21 and the Russia-Ukraine War this spring have reduced the numbers.