On May 11, 868, a copy of the Diamond Sutra (a collection of Buddhist aphorisms, essentially a guide to Buddhist living) is printed on a scroll and affixed with the date. It was discovered with several other manuscripts in 1900 by a Taoist monk in a cave near Dunhuang, China, and authenticated by the British Library. Believed to be printed with wood block type, it predates the Gutenburg Bible, widely considered the earliest book printed with movable type, by six centuries. (There are wood block documents believed to be older, but this is the earliest known work printed with an actual date.) It includes a note at the end that it was intended "for universal free distribution," making it the earliest known work expressly created for the public domain. The existing copy of the Diamond Sutra is in the British Library, and can be seen in its entirety on their website. On May 11, 1889, a group of bandits ambush a US Army paymaster and his escort in the Arizona Territory. Eight of the soldiers escorting paymaster Major Joseph Wham were wounded, and the bandits made off with $28,000 in gold and silver intended for soldiers at four forts in the territory. Eleven men would later be arrested and 8 stood trial, though all were acquitted. The money was never recovered. Despite the failure of Wham and his escort to protect the payroll, two of the soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor for their performance under fire, and 8 others received a Certificate of Merit. (Remington painting of the ambush) On May 11, 1981, Cats premiers at the New London Theatre in London. It would have its Broadway debut in October, 1982. Essentially a musical review, with poems from T.S. Eliot's 1939 anthology "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" set to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cats portrays the annual "Jellicle ball" of a tribe of cats as they choose which of their number will ascend to the Heaviside Layer (Cat Heaven). Cats is arguably the most successful stage show of all time not written by William Shakespeare. It ran for 21 years - 8,949 performances - in London, which is still a record, and for 7,485 performances over 18 year on Broadway, which was a record at the time (now 4th all time). A German translation holds the record for performances in that country, running for more than 15 years in Hamburg, and a Japanese translation has run continuously in a theater built specifically for the show in that country for more than 10,000 performances since 1983.
Interesting point about the printed Buddhist document. While the first movable printing was done 600+ years before Gutenberg, it was the impact of Gutenberg that changed the world. Often the acknowledged “first “ isn’t always the first but it is the one that catches fire and changes the world. The Chinese isolated themselves and never usefully developed their inventions….like gunpowder. Likewise while Columbus wasn’t the first European to “discover” America he created the impetus that made the last 500+ years earth shattering. It take more that a great idea it must be accompanied by the right environment.
On May 12, 1328, Pietro Rainalducci is elevated as Antipope Nicholas V by Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Bavarian. Nicholas will be the last of the antipopes, a series of men selected by either religious or secular factions to diminish the Church's authority in the Empire. In the case of Nicholas, he was elevated after Emperor Louis ordered Pope John XXII deposed for heresy and was himself excommunicated. Nicholas' "antipapacy" was short-lived; two years after being elevated (during which time he was also excommunicated), he presented the pope with a written confession of his sins and was pardoned. May 12, 1864 is the bloodiest day of the Battle of Spotsylvania. George Meade's Army of the Potomac had been in almost continuous contact with Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia since May 5, Meade ordered by Union Armies commander Ulysses S. Grant to relentlessly pursue Lee. They had been engaged at Spotsylvania since May 8, and over the previous 4 days, Lee had established a long line of defensive earthworks. But Lee mistook Federal troop movements for a withdrawal and repositioned much of his artillery, so when Winfield Hancock's II Corps attacks, he is opposed only by dug in infantry. The result is 22 hours of fighting, much of it hand-to-hand, at a section of Lee's defense that will become known as the "Bloody Angle." Casualties are about 17,000 on both sides. By the time both armies withdraw on May 21, the combined casualty count has climbed to 32,000, making Spotsylvania one of the five bloodiest battles of the war. On May 12, 1979, Tracy Austin beats Chris Evert in a 3rd set tiebreaker in the semifinals of the Italian Open of tennis. The loss snaps a streak of 125 consecutive wins on clay for Evert, who had been dominating women's tennis for most of the 1970's. She lost just 8 sets during the win streak, and responded to the loss by rattling off another streak of 64 wins. Evert remains one of the most prolific performers in women's tennis history; her 157 singles titles include 18 Grand Slam championships, and her 34 Grand Slam title appearances is a women's record. From 1974 to 1986, she won at least one Grand Slam title per year, a 13-year record that still stands. From 1972-1988 she was never outside the top 3 in the world's singles rankings, and from '74-78, and '80-81 she finished each year ranked number one. In 1995 she was unanimously elected into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.
On May 13, 1780, more than 250 colonists of the Watauga Association sign the Cumberland Compact, creating a system of laws for what is considered the first colony west of the Appalachian Mountains. The compact will be the foundation for the Constitution of the State of Tennessee when it rises from the Watauga colony in 1796. The only existing copy of the Cumberland Compact is in legible condition and is displayed in the Tennessee State Archives in Nashville. On May 13, 1958, Australian adventurer Ben Carlin arrives in Montreal, Canada in a heavily modified WWII surplus Ford GPA dubbed the Half-Safe. In doing so, he became the first person to circumnavigate the globe in an amphibious vehicle. Carlin and his American wife Elinore originally departed Montreal in late 1947, but it took 5 attempts before they successfully crossed the Atlantic. Elinore would abandon the expedition in Australia; Ben continued alone. By the time he returned to Montreal he had traveled a little more than 11,000 miles by sea and just under 39,000 miles by land in about 10 years. The trip cost about $35,000. Carlin died in 1981; he left the Half-Safe to his Australian grammar school in Guildford, which has it displayed in a glass case. (The Carlins in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1951) On May 13, 1950, the Federation Internationale de'lAutomobile, better known as Formula 1, holds its premiere race in Silverstone, England. Formula 1 would become the governing body for Grand Prix racing, a series of closed course races around the world, usually organized as nationally-sponsored event. Grand Prix events had been held, mostly in Europe, since the 1920's, with no central organization. Italian driver Guiseppi Farina (below) would win the first F1 race in an Alpha Romeo. The 2022 Formula 1 schedule includes 23 races on every continent except Antarctica.
On May 15, 1911, SCOTUS breaks up two monopolies. The Court (under Chief Justice Edward D. White (below), the only Chief Justice from Louisiana) would rule that Standard Oil of New Jersey had achieved a monopoly on the oil refining industry over the previous 40 years, mostly by buying up the competition. SCOTUS ordered Standard broken up into 34 regional companies, many of which are still in existence, some of which have re-merged; most notably Exxon Mobil. On the same day, SCOTUS ruled that American Tobacco Co. of North Carolina (one of the original 12 members of the Dow Jones) had attempted to monopolize the tobacco industry, and was broken up into 4 companies. American Tobacco went defunct in 1994. The other 3, R.J. Reynolds, Liggett & Meyers, and Lorillard, are still among the dominant American cigarette manufacturers. On May 15, 1905, the city of Las Vegas (Spanish for "the meadows") is founded on the site of a Mormon fort/supply depot midway between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. It was incorporated by the State of Nevada in 1911. Las Vegas developed slowly until 1931, the year the state legalized casino gaming and construction on Hoover Dam began not far from the city. Dam construction increased population; and gambling began to take off following WWII. Las Vegas today bills itself as "The Entertainment Capital of the World" and is the 26th largest city in the U.S. On May 15, 1940, the brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald open their first restaurant - actually a "hamburger stand" - in San Bernardino, CA. The McDonald brothers had developed their "speedee service system" for preparing large quantities of food quickly over the previous two years. Business was brisk, and they had expanded to 8 locations by the time they met and soon partnered with aggressive businessman Ray Kroc in 1955. By 1961, Kroc had forced the brothers out of the company, and McDonald's was booming. McDonald's today has nearly 38,000 outlets in more than 100 countries, and serves about 69 million customers a day. The company's "Golden Arches" logo (adopted in 1962) is one of the world's most recognizable corporate symbols. (photo shows the McDonald's in Downey, CA, its 3rd location and oldest still operating) On May 15, 1986, American hip-hop artists Run DMC release Raising Hell. Its the third studio album for Queens, NYC natives Joseph Simmons (Run), Darryl McDaniels (DMC) and Jason Mizell (Jam Master J), who in their first two albums had experimented with incorporating rock guitar riffs with their rap tracks. With Raising Hell, they raised the bar, partnering with Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry on a remake of the band's 1975 hit "Walk This Way", which would be Run DMC's only song to reach the top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100. Raising Hell would be the first rap album to climb to number one on Billboard's R&B album chart. It went certified triple platinum in 1987, and in 2018 was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or artistically significant." Run DMC was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009, the second rap/hip-hop group so honored. RUN DMC - Walk This Way (Official HD Video) ft. Aerosmith - YouTube
On May 16, 1771, Colonial North Carolina militia break up a revolt of the "North Carolina Regulators" in modern-day Alamance County. The "Battle of Alamance", which saw about 25 militia and 9 Regulators killed (but a couple hundred Regulators wounded and 7 later hanged for treason) ends about 5 years of the Regulators' trying to oust local officials they saw as corrupt cronies of the king. Although many current historians see this event as a local matter, others consider it to be the opening salvo leading to the Revolutionary War. (photo shows the battlefield presently; a memorial marker is at the left) On May 16, 1888, Croatian-born immigrant to America and electrical engineer Nikola Tesla addresses the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in NYC, during which he lays out his vision for widespread distribution of electric power to homes and businesses alike. Tesla would also demonstrate his model of a two-phase induction motor (below) which generated 1/2 horsepower of alternating current. Within a year, manufacturer George Westinghouse would license Tesla's motor. On May 16, 1866, Congress authorizes the minting of a five-cent coin, to be made of 75% copper and 25% nickel. Because of this high nickel content, the coin will come to be known as the nickel. The original nickel (below left, actually known as the "shield nickel") is called by the American Journal of Numismatists "the ugliest of all known coins." It was replaced by the "Liberty Head" nickel in 1883 and the "Buffalo Head" in 1913. In 1938, the U.S. mints in Philadelphia and San Francisco introduced the "Jefferson nickel" we know today. In 2020, Mint officials revealed that it now costs 7 cents to produce a single nickel, and is exploring possibilities of changing the content to less expensive metals.
On May 17, 1792, the New York Stock Exchange is founded. Twenty-four stockbrokers standing under a buttonwood tree outside 68 Wall St. sign what will be called The Buttonwood Agreement, which had only two provisions; the brokers would only do business with each other, eliminating the need for auctioneers, and a standard commission percentage for all transactions was set. The NYSE is the world's largest stock exchange today, with daily trades approaching a worth of $200 billion. On May 17, 1996, President Bill Clinton signs an amendment to the Law Enforcement Act of 1994 to require the release of relevant information to protect the public from sexually violent offenders - Megan's Law. The amendment requires that law-enforcement officials notify local schools, day-care centers, and residents of the presence of registered sex offenders in their communities. The action was championed by the parents of Megan Kanka, a 7-year old New Jersey child who was raped and murdered by a known child sexual predator who had moved in across the street. Although the predator had registered in compliance with the Wetterling Act of '94, Megan's parents argued that was insufficient. New Jersey passed the new guidelines into law in 1994, becoming just the sixth state to put notification into the hands of law enforcement. On May 17, 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum is published. The fantasy tells the story of Dorothy Gale, a Kansas teen who is carried by a tornado to the Land of Oz, which she can not leave until she had defeated the Wicked Witch of the West. Because of its direct references to real American places (namely Kansas and Omaha), many literary historians consider the novel to be the first American fairy tale. Baum would give the first copy off the press to his sister; The Wonderful Wizard of Oz would sell more than 3 million copies before entering the public domain in 1956. Baum would write 13 official sequels to the novel (he wrote the original without thoughts of even one sequel). It would also inspire 3 silent films before the classic 1939 blockbuster movie, a 1902 stage play, the 1974 soul musical adaptation The Wiz (written for the stage and made into a movie in 1978), 3 TV series and the current Broadway musical Wicked.
On May 18, 1860, the Republican Party nominates Abraham Lincoln as its candidate for the upcoming Presidential election. Formed in 1854 by abolitionists and former Whigs (that party would dissolve in 1856), the Republicans had virtually no presence in the south in its formative years and lost in its first presidential election (1856, John Fremont) to Democrat James Buchanan. Lincoln rose to prominence in '58 during his run for Senator of Illinois and his series of debates on slavery with Stephen Douglas. In November, Lincoln would earn only 40% of the popular vote, but Democrats Douglas and John Breckinridge would split the party, giving Lincoln the presidency. It was the first of 12 Republican wins over the next 16 Presidential elections, before FDR rattled off 4 consecutive wins for the Democrats On May 18, 1917, Congress passes the Selective Service Act, giving President Woodrow Wilson (below) the authority to conduct a military draft. The U.S. had formally entered World War I six weeks earlier, with an all-volunteer army of barely 100,000 men with which to fight. The Selective Service Act required all men between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for military service, and within a few months, roughly 10 million had done so. Although the ranks of the military would swell immensely due to volunteerism, more than half the Americans who would eventually fight in WWI - 2.8 out of 4.8 million - were draftees. On May 18, 1926, popular evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappears from Venice Beach near Los Angeles. McPherson, a Presbyterian, was the first evangelist to actively use mass media - in this case, radio - in her ministry. At the height of her popularity, its estimated nearly 10% of all Los Angeles residents were members of her FourSquare Church. Supporters feared she had drowned, but there were also skeptics, who noted that radio personality Ken Ormiston, a friend and rumored lover of McPherson, went missing around the same time. Church members were preparing her memorial service five weeks later when McPherson called authorities from a hospital in an Arizona border town, claiming to have been kidnapped and taken to Mexico, where she escaped. A grand jury investigation found no evidence of kidnapping but did turn up witnesses who said she was with Ormiston the whole time. McPherson avoided an obstruction of justice charge (probably by paying a fine under the table) but her mass appeal was gone, though her church continued to thrive. She died in 1944.
On May 19, 1916, representatives of Great Britain and France reach a secret accord to divide a large portion of the Ottoman Empire between them following World War I. The Sykes-Picot agreement, named for the diplomats who negotiated the split, divided much of the Arab lands under Ottoman rule into spheres of influence. France would control what is now Lebanon and much of Syria. Great Britain would control southern and central Mesopotamia. (Russia had been given control of the Turkish capitol of Constantinople and the Dardanelles in an earlier agreement.) Arab leaders were appalled when the details became public; they had assumed they would receive independence when the Empire was defeated. Although a new agreement reached in 1920 restored Arab autonomy and created the modern borders for Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iran and Iraq, the resentment of Arabs towards Europeans triggered by Sykes-Picot lingers to this day. On May 19, 1984, a part-time ice cream truck driver breaks the game-show bank. The contestant was Michael Larson of Lebanon, Ohio. He appeared on CBS Network's Press Your Luck, in which players faced a "big board" with 18 squares and a moving light called the "randomizer." As the board and randomizer continuously changed, players used a plunger button to halt the movements, winning whatever prize or cash was in the square lit by the randomizer. Players would lose everything they had accumulated if the randomizer stopped on a cartoon demon called the "Whammy." Larson spent months preparing for his appearance by watching taped episodes of Press Your Luck, and eventually realized the "randomizer" wasn't random at all; there was a pattern to the lights and board changes. Memorizing both, Larson appeared on the show and used what he learned to accumulate more than $110,000 in cash and prizes, an all-time single day game show record at the time. Network officials reviewing the tape later noticed Larson's reactions to his own success were peculiar, and initially branded him a cheater. When they realized what had actually happened, they paid Larson in full and changed the board's algorhythm to eliminate the pattern. Larson squandered his new-found wealth on bad investments within 2 years. On May 19, 1962, Marilyn Monroe sucks the air out of Madison Square Garden. The event was a Democratic Party fundraiser and early birthday party for President John F. Kennedy (birthdate May 29). Kennedy's brother-in-law, actor Peter Lawford, acted as master of ceremonies and poked fun at Monroe's famed lack of punctuality by introducing her twice before her actual scheduled arrival. When she finally took the stage wearing a mid-length fur over a formal gown, he introduced her as "the late Marilyn Monroe." A large portion of the 15,000 in attendance audibly gasped when Monroe then dropped the fur, revealing a sheer gown covered in rhinestones that was so tight, she was clearly wearing no underwear. (Hollywood lore says she actually had to be sewn into the dress, a story that is not confirmed.) The tightness of the gown may also explain the breathless version of "Happy Birthday" Monroe proceeded to sing. The appearance was one of the last in public for Monroe, who died the following August. The dress is now the most expensive of all time, having been sold at auction in 2016 for $4.8 million. (Monroe with JFK (right) and his brother Robert backstage at the Garden after the party)
