May 16
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out its first awards (Oscars), at a dinner party for approximately 250 individuals held in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, Calif.. – 1929.
Japanese mountaineer, Junko Tabei, becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. -1975.
May 17
U.S. Supreme Court outlaws segregation in public schools. – 1954.
In Washington, D.C., the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities begins televised hearings on the escalating Watergate affair. – 1973
Marcia Kadish, 56, and Tanya McCloskey, 52, of Malden, Mass., marry at Cambridge City Hall in Massachusetts, to become the first legally-married same-sex partners in the United States. Over the course of the day, 77 other same-sex couples tied the knot across the state, and hundreds more applied for marriage licenses. – 2004.
May 18
In what may have been baseball’s first labor strike, the Detroit Tigers refuse to play after team leader Ty Cobb is suspended: He went into the stands and beat a fan who had been heckling him. Cobb was reinstated and the Tigers went back to work after the team manager’s failed attempt to replace the players with a local college team. – 1912.
A crowd of protesters, estimated to number more than one million, marches through the streets of Beijing, China to call for a more democratic political system. Just a few weeks later, the Chinese government moved to crush the protests when thousands were killed and more than 10,000 were arrested in what came to be known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre. – 1989.
Mount St. Helens in Washington erupts, and causes a massive avalanche and kills 57. Ash from the volcanic eruption fell as far away as Minnesota. – 1980.
May 19
Explosion in Coal Creek, Tenn. kills 184 miners. – 1902.
Shootout in Matewan, W. Va. between striking union miners, led by police chief Sid Hatfield, and coal company agents. Ten died, including seven agents. – 1920.
British prime minister Winston Churchill and U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt set a date for the cross-Channel landing that would become D-Day, May 1, 1944. That date will prove a bit premature, because bad weather becomes a factor. – 1943.
Thirty-one dockworkers are killed, 350 workers and others are injured, when four barges carrying 467 tons of ammunition blow up at South Amboy, N.J.. They were transporting mines that had been deemed unsafe by the Army and were being shipped to the Asian market for sale. – 1950.
May 20
The U.S. Congress passes the Homestead Act which allows adults over the age of 21, male and female, to claim 160 acres of land from the public domain. Eligible persons had to cultivate the land and improve it by building a barn or house, and live on the claim for five years, at which time the land became theirs with a $10. filing fee. – 1862.
San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nev., tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, which marks the birth of one of the world’s most famous garments: Blue jeans. – 1873.
The Railway Labor Act took effect today. It was the first federal legislation protecting workers’ rights to form unions. – 1926.
May 21
In Washington, D.C., humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons found the American National Red Cross, an organization established to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and natural disasters. – 1881.
Connecticut becomes the first state to pass a law regulating motor vehicles by limiting their speed to 12 mph in cities and 15 mph on country roads. – 1901.
American pilot Charles A. Lindbergh lands at Le Bourget Field in Paris, to successfully complete the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight and the first nonstop flight between New York to Paris, which took 33½ hours. – 1927.
May 22
A massive wagon train, made up of 1,000 settlers and 1,000 head of cattle, sets off down the Oregon Trail from Independence, Mo., known as the “Great Emigration.” -1843.
Civil Service Retirement Act of 1920 gives federal workers a pension. – 1920.
Sources: History.com, Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards and Adam Wright, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council.
• “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
— George Santayana, Philosopher