On This Day in History

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 16, 1918, the United States Congress passes the Sedition Act, a piece of legislation designed to protect America’s participation in World War I.
Along with the Espionage Act of the previous year, the Sedition Act was orchestrated largely by A. Mitchell Palmer, the United States attorney general under President Woodrow Wilson. The Espionage Act, passed shortly after the U.S. entrance into the war in early April 1917, made it a crime for any person to convey information intended to interfere with the U.S. armed forces’ prosecution of the war effort or to promote the success of the country’s enemies.
Aimed at socialists, pacifists and other anti-war activists, the Sedition Act imposed harsh penalties on anyone found guilty of making false statements that interfered with the prosecution of the war; insulting or abusing the U.S. government, the flag, the Constitution or the military; agitating against the production of necessary war materials; or advocating, teaching or defending any of these acts. Those who were found guilty of such actions, the act stated, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both. This was the same penalty that had been imposed for acts of espionage in the earlier legislation.
Though Wilson and Congress regarded the Sedition Act as crucial in order to stifle the spread of dissent within the country in that time of war, modern legal scholars consider the act as contrary to the letter and spirit of the U.S. Constitution, namely to the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. One of the most famous prosecutions under the Sedition Act during World War I was that of Eugene V. Debs, a pacifist labor organizer and founder of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) who had run for president in 1900 as a Social Democrat and in 1904, 1908 and 1912 on the Socialist Party of America ticket.
After delivering an anti-war speech in June 1918 in Canton, Ohio, Debs was arrested, tried and sentenced to 10 years in prison under the Sedition Act. Debs appealed the decision, and the case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where the court ruled Debs had acted with the intention of obstructing the war effort and upheld his conviction. In the decision, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes referred to the earlier landmark case of Schenck v. United States (1919), when Charles Schenck, also a Socialist, had been found guilty under the Espionage Act after distributing a flyer urging recently drafted men to oppose the U.S. conscription policy. In this decision, Holmes maintained that freedom of speech and press could be constrained in certain instances, and that The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
Debs’ sentence was commuted in 1921 when the Sedition Act was repealed by Congress. Major portions of the Espionage Act remain part of United States law to the present day, although the crime of sedition was largely eliminated by the famous libel case Sullivan v. New York Times (1964), which determined that the press’s criticism of public officials, unless a plaintiff could prove that the statements were made maliciously or with reckless disregard for the truth, was protected speech under the First Amendment.

[Schmidt Meister]

May 16th In Music

1964 - Mary Wells started a two week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'My Guy'. Written and produced by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles.

1966 - The Beach Boys released the classic album Pet Sounds widely ranked as one of the most influential records ever released and has been ranked at No.1 in several music magazines lists of greatest albums of all time, including New Musical Express, The Times and Mojo Magazine. In 2003, it was ranked No.2 in Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, (The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's came first).

1970 - Randy Bachman leaves The Guess Who to produce an album for Winnipeg band Brave Belt, which he eventually joins. Bachman recruits fellow Winnipeg bassist and vocalist C.F. Turner, and the band Bachman-Turner Overdrive is born.

1970 - Crosby Stills Nash & Young went to No. 1 on the US album chart with 'Deja Vu'. The album featured three Top 40 singles: 'Teach Your Children,' 'Our House,' and 'Woodstock'. In 2003, the album was ranked number 148 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

1986 - Host Johnny Carson and his bandleader Doc Severinsen wear fake beards in honor of ZZ Top, who perform "Sharp Dressed Man" and "Tush" on The Tonight Show

1987 - U2 started a three week run at No. 1 on the US singles chart 'With Or Without You', the group's first US No. 1. The third track from their 1987 album, The Joshua Tree, was the group's most successful single at the time. Their next single, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," follows to No. 1, cementing their superstar status.

1990 - Muppets creator Jim Henson dies of streptococcal toxic shock syndrome at 53. Henson made music a key component of The Muppet Show, which featured a gnarly house band (The Electric Mayhem) and welcomed many superstars eager to interact with his creatures. Willie Nelson, Don Knotts, Leo Sayer, Linda Ronstadt, Elton John, Julie Andrews, John Denver and Loretta Lynn all appeared on the show.

Birthdays:

1946 - Roger Earl. Drummer for Foghat, Savoy Brown. Born in Hampton Court Palace, London, England.

1947 - Darrell Sweet. From Scottish hard rock band Nazareth, who had the 1976 US No. 8 single, 'Love Hurts'. Born in Bournemouth, England. Died on 4.30.1999.

1948 - Alto Reed. American saxophonist. He is best known as a long-time member of Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band and also worked with many artists including Grand Funk Railroad, Little Feat, Otis Rush, Spencer Davis, The Blues Brothers, The Ventures and George Thorogood. He died on 12.30.2020 age 72.

1949 - William Spooner. Guitarist, Grateful Dead. Born in Phoenix, Arizona.

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 17, 1769, George Washington launches a legislative salvo at Great Britain’s fiscal and judicial attempts to maintain its control over the American colonies. With his sights set on protesting the British policy of “taxation without representation,” Washington brought a package of non-importation resolutions before the Virginia House of Burgesses.
The resolutions, drafted by George Mason largely in response to England’s passage of the Townshend Acts of 1767, decried Parliament’s plan to send colonial political protestors to England for trial. Though Virginia’s royal governor promptly fired back by disbanding the House of Burgesses, the dissenting legislators were undeterred. During a makeshift meeting held at the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia’s delegates gave their support to the non-importation resolutions. Maryland and South Carolina soon followed suit with the passing of their own non-importation measures.
The non-importation resolutions lacked any means of enforcement, and Chesapeake tobacco merchants of Scottish ancestry tended to be loyal to their firms in Glasgow. However, tobacco planters supported the measure, and the mere existence of non-importation agreements proved that the southern colonies were willing to defend Massachusetts, the true target of Britain’s crackdown, where violent protests against the Townshend Acts had led to a military occupation of Boston, beginning on October 2, 1768.
When Britain’s House of Lords learned that the Sons of Liberty, a revolutionary group in Boston, had assembled an extra-legal Massachusetts convention of towns as the British fleet approached in 1768, they demanded the right to try such men in England. This step failed to frighten New Englanders into silence, but succeeded in rallying Southerners to their cause. By impugning colonial courts and curtailing colonial rights, this British action backfired: it created an American identity where before there had been none.

[Schmidt Meister]

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.
The Memphis Belle performed its 25th and last mission, in a bombing raid against Lorient, a German submarine base. But before returning back home to the United States, film footage was shot of Belle‘s crew receiving combat medals. This was but one part of a longer documentary on a day in the life of an American bomber, which included dramatic footage of a bomber being shot out of the sky, with most of its crew parachuting out, one by one. Another film sequence showed a bomber returning to base with its tail fin missing. What looked like damage inflicted by the enemy was, in fact, the result of a collision with another American bomber.
The Memphis Belle documentary would not be released for another 11 months, as more footage was compiled to demonstrate the risks these pilots ran as they bombed “the enemy again and again and again, until he has had enough.”

[Schmidt Meister]

May 17th In Music

1975 - Earth, Wind & Fire's LP That's The Way Of The World hits No. 1.

1989 - The Doobie Brothers release their reunion album, Cycles, which gets them back on the radio with the hit single "The Doctor."

Birthdays:

1948 - Bill Bruford. English drummer. He was the original drummer for the rock group Yes, from 1968–1972, and then joined King Crimson. He worked as the touring drummer for Genesis in 1976 and 1978.

1952 - Roy Adams. Drummer for The Climax Blues Band. Born in Birmingham, England.

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 18, 1917, some six weeks after the United States formally entered the First World War, the U.S Congress passes the Selective Service Act, giving the U.S. president the power to draft soldiers.
When he went before Congress on April 2, 1917, to deliver his war message, President Woodrow Wilson had pledged all of his nation’s considerable material resources to help the Allies, France, Britain, Russia and Italy, defeat the Central Powers. What the Allies desperately needed, however, were fresh troops to relieve their exhausted men on the battlefields of the Western Front, and these the U.S. was not immediately able to provide. Despite Wilson’s effort to improve military preparedness over the course of 1916, at the time of Congress’s war declaration the U.S. had only a small army of volunteers, some 100,000 men, that was in no way trained or equipped for the kind of fighting that was going on in Europe.
To remedy this situation, Wilson pushed the government to adopt military conscription, which he argued was the most democratic form of enlistment. To that end, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which Wilson signed into law on May 18, 1917. The act required all men in the U.S. between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for military service. Within a few months, some 10 million men across the country had registered in response to the military draft.
The first troops of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), under commander in chief General John J. Pershing, began arriving on the European continent in June 1917. The majority of the new conscripts still needed to be mobilized, transported and trained however, and the AEF did not begin to play a substantial role in the fighting in France until nearly a year later, during the late spring and summer of 1918. By that time, Russia had withdrawn from the conflict due to internal revolution, and the Germans had launched an aggressive new offensive on the Western Front. In the interim, the U.S. gave its allies much-needed help in the form of economic assistance: extending vast amounts of credit to Britain, France and Italy; raising income taxes to generate more revenue for the war effort; and selling so-called liberty bonds to its citizens to finance purchases of products and raw materials by Allied governments in the United States.
By the end of World War I in November 1918, some 24 million men had registered under the Selective Service Act. Of the almost 4.8 million Americans who eventually served in the war, some 2.8 million had been drafted.

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 18, 1860, Abraham Lincoln, a one-time U.S. representative from Illinois, is nominated for the U.S. presidency by the Republican National Convention meeting in Chicago, Illinois. Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was nominated for the vice presidency.
Lincoln, a Kentucky-born lawyer and former Whig representative to Congress, first gained national stature during his campaign against Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois for a U.S. Senate seat in 1858. The senatorial campaign featured a remarkable series of public encounters on the slavery issue, known as the Lincoln-Douglas debates, in which Lincoln argued against the spread of slavery while Douglas maintained that each territory should have the right to decide whether it would become free or slave. Lincoln lost the Senate race, but his campaign brought national attention to the young Republican Party. In 1860, Lincoln won the party’s presidential nomination.
In the November election, Lincoln again faced Douglas, who represented the Northern faction of a heavily divided Democratic Party, as well as Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge and Constitutional Union candidate John Bell. On November 6, 1860, Lincoln defeated his opponents with only 40 percent of the popular vote, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. The announcement of Lincoln’s victory signaled the secession of the Southern states, which since the beginning of the year had been publicly threatening secession if the Republicans gained the White House.
By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven states had seceded, and the Confederate States of America had been formally established, with Jefferson Davis as its elected president. One month later, the American Civil War began when Confederate forces under General P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 18, 1980, at 8:32 a.m. PDT, Mount St. Helens, a volcanic peak in southwestern Washington, suffers a massive eruption, killing 57 people and devastating some 210 square miles of wilderness.
Called Louwala-Clough, or “the Smoking Mountain,” by Native Americans, Mount St. Helens is located in the Cascade Range and stood 9,680 feet before its eruption. The volcano has erupted periodically during the last 4,500 years, and the last active period was between 1831 and 1857. On March 20, 1980, noticeable volcanic activity began with a series of earth tremors centered on the ground just beneath the north flank of the mountain. These earthquakes escalated, and on March 27 a minor eruption occurred, and Mount St. Helens began emitting steam and ash through its crater and vents.
Small eruptions continued daily, and in April people familiar with the mountain noticed changes to the structure of its north face. A scientific study confirmed that a bulge more than a mile in diameter was moving upward and outward over the high north slope by as much as six feet per day. The bulge was caused by an intrusion of magma below the surface, and authorities began evacuating hundreds of people from the sparsely settled area near the mountain. A few people refused to leave.
On the morning of May 18, Mount St. Helens was shaken by an earthquake of about 5.0 magnitude, and the entire north side of the summit began to slide down the mountain. The giant landslide of rock and ice, one of the largest recorded in history, was followed and overtaken by an enormous explosion of steam and volcanic gases, which surged northward along the ground at high speed. The lateral blast stripped trees from most hill slopes within six miles of the volcano and leveled nearly all vegetation for as far as 12 miles away. Approximately 10 million trees were felled by the blast.
The landslide debris, liquefied by the violent explosion, surged down the mountain at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour. The avalanche flooded Spirit Lake and roared down the valley of the Toutle River for a distance of 13 miles, burying the river to an average depth of 150 feet. Mudflows, pyroclastic flows, and floods added to the destruction, destroying roads, bridges, parks, and thousands more acres of forest. Simultaneous with the avalanche, a vertical eruption of gas and ash formed a mushrooming column over the volcano more than 12 miles high. Ash from the eruption fell on Northwest cities and towns like snow and drifted around the globe for two weeks. Fifty-seven people, thousands of animals, and millions of fish were killed by the eruption of Mount St. Helens.
By late in the afternoon of May 18, the eruption subsided, and by early the next day it had essentially ceased. Mount St. Helens’ volcanic cone was completely blasted away and replaced by a horseshoe-shaped crater, the mountain lost 1,700 feet from the eruption. The volcano produced five smaller explosive eruptions during the summer and fall of 1980 and remains active today. In 1982, Congress made Mount St. Helens a protected research area.
Mount St. Helens became active again in 2004. On March 8, 2005, a 36,000-foot plume of steam and ash was expelled from the mountain, accompanied by a minor earthquake. Another minor eruption took place in 2008. Though a new dome has been growing steadily near the top of the peak and small earthquakes are frequent, scientists do not expect a repeat of the 1980 catastrophe anytime soon.

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 18, 1943, Adolf Hitler launches 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. Instead, he communicated verbally his desire that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel should assemble and ultimately command 11 divisions for the occupation of Italy to prevent an Allied foothold in the peninsula.

[Schmidt Meister]

May 18th In Music

1964 - The Animals record the folk song "House Of The Rising Sun" at a London studio. A few months later, it becomes a huge hit, going to No. 1 in both the UK and US.

1985 - Simple Minds were at No. 1 on the US singles chart with 'Don't You Forget About Me'.

2001 - The movie Shrek is released, fully reviving the song "I'm a Believer" (performed by Smash Mouth in the rave-up at the end of the film).

Birthdays:

1949 - William Wallace. From Canadian rock band Guess Who who had the 1970 US No. 1 single 'American Woman'. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 19, 1943, 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, as bad weather becomes a factor.
Addressing a joint session of Congress, Churchill warned that the real danger at present was the “dragging-out of the war at enormous expense” because of the risk that the Allies would become “tired or bored or split”, and play into the hands of Germany and Japan. He pushed for an early and massive attack on the “underbelly of the Axis.”
And so, to “speed” things up, the British prime minister and President Roosevelt set a date for a cross-Channel invasion of Normandy, in northern France, for May 1, 1944, regardless of the problems presented by the invasion of Italy, which was underway. It would be carried out by 29 divisions, including a Free French division, if possible.
The D-Day invasion ended up taking place on June 6, 1944.

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 19, 1836, during a raid, Comanche, Kiowa and Caddo Native Americans in Texas kidnap Cynthia Ann Parker (who was around 9 or 10 years old) and kill her family. Adopted into the Comanche tribe, she lived with them until Texas Rangers recaptured her and forced her to return to live again among Anglo-Americans.
Silas and Lucy Parker moved their young family from Illinois to Texas in 1832. To protect themselves, they erected a solidly constructed civilian stockade about 40 miles east of present-day Waco that came to be called Parker’s Fort. The tall wooden stockade was reportedly capable of holding off “a large enemy force” if properly defended. However, when no Native American attacks materialized for many months, the Parker family and the relatives who joined them in the fort became careless. Frequently they left the bulletproof gates to the fort wide open for long periods.
On May 19, 1836, several hundred Comanche, Kiowa and Caddo Native Americans staged a surprise attack. During the ensuing battle, the Native Americans killed five of the Parkers. In the chaos, the Native Americans abducted nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker and four other white women and children. The Comanche and Caddo bands later divided women and children between them. The Comanche took Parker, and she lived with them for the next 25 years.
Like many Plains Indian tribes, the Comanche had long engaged in the practice of kidnapping their enemy’s women and children. Sometimes these captives were treated like enslaved workers who provided useful work and could be traded for valuable goods. Often, though, captives eventually became full-fledged members of the tribe, particularly if they were kidnapped as young children. Such was the case with Parker.
Anglo-Texans first learned that the young girl might still be alive four years later. A trader named Williams reported seeing Parker with a band of Comanche near the Canadian River in northern Texas. He tried to purchase her release but failed. The Comanche Chief Pahauka allowed Williams to speak to the girl, but she stared at the ground and refused to answer his questions. After four years, Parker apparently had become accustomed to Comanche ways and did not want to leave. In 1845, two other white men saw Parker, who was by then 17 years old. A Comanche warrior told them he was now her husband, and the men reported “she is unwilling to leave” and “she would run off and hide herself to avoid those who went to ransom her.”
Clearly, Parker had come to think of herself as Comanche. By all accounts, her husband, a rising young warrior named Peta Nocona, treated her well, and the couple was happily married. She gave birth to three children, two boys and a girl, and Nocona was reportedly so pleased with her that he rejected the common practice of taking several wives and remained monogamous.
Unfortunately, Nocona was also a warrior engaged in brutal war with the Anglo-American invaders, and he soon attracted the wrath of the Texas Rangers for leading several successful attacks on whites. In December 1860, a Ranger force attacked Nocona’s village. The Rangers mortally wounded Nocona and captured Parker and her daughter, Prairie Flower.
Returned to Anglo society against her will, Parker was taken to her uncle’s farm in Birdville, Texas, where she tried to run away several times. However, with her husband dead and her adopted people fighting a losing battle to survive, Parker apparently resigned herself to a life among a people she no longer understood. Prairie Flower, her one connection to her old life, died of influenza and pneumonia in 1863. Depressed and lonely, Parker struggled on for seven more years. Weakened by self-imposed starvation, she died of influenza in 1870.

[Schmidt Meister]

May 19th In Music

1979 - ABBA started a four week run at No. 1 on the UK album chart with 'Voulez-Vous' the group's fourth No. 1 album.

1979 - Supertramp went to No. 1 on the US album chart with 'Breakfast In America', the group's only US No. 1. It featured three US Billboard hit singles: 'The Logical Song', 'Goodbye Stranger' and 'Take the Long Way Home'.

Birthdays:

1945 - Pete Townshend. English musician, singer, songwriter, The Who. Had the 1965 UK No. 2 single 'My Generation' and the 1967 US No. 9 single 'I Can See For Miles' plus over 20 other UK Top 40 hit singles, 16 US Top 40 singles and rock opera albums 'Tommy' & 'Quadrophenia'. Although known primarily as a guitarist, he also plays keyboards, banjo, accordion, harmonica, ukulele, mandolin, violin, synthesizer, bass guitar, and drums. Born in Chiswick, United Kingdom.

1947 - Greg Herbert. From jazz-rock American music group Blood Sweat & Tears. They scored the 1969 US No. 2 single 'Spinning Wheel', and the 1969 US No. 12 single 'You've Made Me So Very Happy'. They had a US No. 1 with their second album Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1968. Herbert died on 1.31.1977.

1947 - Jerry Hyman. From jazz-rock American music group Blood Sweat & Tears. They scored the 1969 US No.2 single 'Spinning Wheel', and the 1969 US No.12 single 'You've Made Me So Very Happy'. They had a US No.1 with their second album Blood, Sweat & Tears in 1968. Born in Brooklyn, New York.

1949 - Dusty Hill. Bass, keyboardist, and co-vocalist with ZZ Top, who had the 1984 US No. 8 single 'Legs'. ZZ Top has had global album sales in excess of 50 million as of 2014. Along with his brother Rocky Hill and future fellow ZZ Top member Frank Beard, Hill played in local Dallas bands the Warlocks, the Cellar Dwellers, and American Blues. Born in Dallas, Texas.

1954 - Phil Rudd. Drums, AC/DC, from 1975 through 1983, and again from 1994 to 2015. Their 1980 US No. 14 album Back In Black has sold over 49 million copies). Born in Melbourne, Australia.

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 20, 1956, the United States conducts the first airborne test of an improved hydrogen bomb, dropping it from a plane over the tiny island of Namu in the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.  (Because of the time difference, it was already May 21st in the Bikini Atoll.)The successful test indicated that hydrogen bombs were viable airborne weapons and that the arms race had taken another giant leap forward.
The United States began testing nuclear weapons at Bikini Atoll in 1946. However, early bombs were large and unwieldy affairs that were exploded from the ground. The practical application of dropping the weapon over an enemy had been a mere theoretical possibility until a successful test in May 1956. The hydrogen bomb dropped over Bikini Atoll was carried by a B-52 bomber and released at an altitude of more than 50,000 feet. The device exploded at about 15,000 feet. This bomb was far more powerful than those previously tested and was estimated to be 15 megatons or larger (one megaton is roughly equivalent to 1 million tons of TNT). Observers said that the fireball caused by the explosion measured at least four miles in diameter and was brighter than the light from 500 suns.
The successful U.S. test meant that the ante in the nuclear arms race had been dramatically upped. The Soviets had tested their own hydrogen bomb in 1953, shortly after the first U.S. test in 1952. In November 1955, the Soviets had dropped a hydrogen bomb from an airplane in remote Siberia. Though much smaller and far less powerful (estimated at about 1.6 megatons) than the U.S. bomb dropped over Bikini, the Russian success spurred the Americans to rush ahead with the Bikini test.
The massive open-air blast in 1956 caused concerns among scientists and environmentalists about the effects of such testing on human and animal life. During the coming years, a growing movement in the United States and elsewhere began to push for a ban on open-air atomic testing. The Limited Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1963 by the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain, prohibited open-air and underwater nuclear testing.

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 20, 1969, after 10 days and 10 bloody assaults, Hill 937 in South Vietnam, located one mile east of the Laotian border, is finally captured by U.S. and South Vietnamese troops as part of Operation Apache Snow, a mission intended to limit enemy infiltration from Laos that threatened Hue to the northeast and Danang to the southeast. The Americans who fought there cynically dubbed Hill 937 “Hamburger Hill” because the battle and its high casualty rate reminded them of a meat grinder. Almost 100 Americans were killed and more than 400 wounded in taking the hill, amounting to a shocking 70 percent casualty rate.

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 20, 1873, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of one of the world’s most famous garments: blue jeans.
In San Francisco, Strauss established a wholesale dry goods business under his own name and worked as the West Coast representative of his family’s firm. His new business imported clothing, fabric and other dry goods to sell in the small stores opening all over California and other Western states to supply the rapidly expanding communities of gold miners and other settlers. By 1866, Strauss had moved his company to expanded headquarters and was a well-known businessman and supporter of the Jewish community in San Francisco.
Jacob Davis, a tailor in Reno, Nevada, was one of Levi Strauss’ regular customers. In 1872, he wrote a letter to Strauss about his method of making work pants with metal rivets on the stress points, at the corners of the pockets and the base of the button fly, to make them stronger. As Davis didn’t have the money for the necessary paperwork, he suggested that Strauss provide the funds and that the two men get the patent together. Strauss agreed enthusiastically, and the patent for “Improvement in Fastening Pocket-Openings”, the innovation that would produce blue jeans as we know them, was granted to both men on May 20, 1873.
Strauss brought Davis to San Francisco to oversee the first manufacturing facility for “waist overalls,” as the original jeans were known. At first they employed seamstresses working out of their homes, but by the 1880s, Strauss had opened his own factory. The famous 501 brand jean, known until 1890 as “XX”, was soon a bestseller, and the company grew quickly. By the 1920s, Levi’s denim waist overalls were the top selling men’s work pant in the United States. As decades passed, the craze only grew, and for years blue jeans were worn and beloved by men and women, young and old, around the world.
Then in 2020, the Levi Strauss Co. lost it’s mind and decided that it should offend all the straight people on the planet and started pushing radical liberal ideology and I hope they eventually suffer financially and go broke.

[Schmidt Meister]

May 20th In Music

1954 - Bill Haley and His Comets' "Rock Around The Clock" is released for the first time. It stalls on the charts, but becomes a hit a year later when it is used in the movie Blackboard Jungle.

1967 - The Young Rascals started a two week run at No. 1 on the US singles chart with 'Groovin’.

1978 - Wings' "With A Little Luck" hits No. 1 in America.

Birthdays:

1944 - Joe Cocker. English singer and musician who had the 1968 No. 1 single with his cover of The Beatles 'With A Little Help From My Friends', plus 8 other UK Top 40 singles. Scored the 1982 US No. 1 single with Jennifer Warnes 'Up Where We Belong'. Born in Sheffield, England. Cocker died on 12.22.2014.

1959 - Israel Kaʻanoʻi Kamakawiwoʻole or IZ, a Native Hawaiian singer-songwriter, musician and Hawaiian sovereignty activist. His 1993 medley of ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow / What a Wonderful World’ was featured in several films, television programs, and television commercials. He died on 6.26.1997. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Kamakawiwoʻole

1964 - Patti Russo. American singer/songwriter/actress. Best known as the female lead vocalist with Meat Loaf.

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 21, 1881, 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 in congruence with the International Red Cross.
Barton, born in Massachusetts in 1821, worked with the sick and wounded during the American Civil War and became known as the “Angel of the Battlefield” for her tireless dedication. In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln commissioned her to search for lost prisoners of war, and with the extensive records she had compiled during the war she succeeded in identifying thousands of the Union dead at the Andersonville prisoner-of-war camp.
She was in Europe in 1870 when the Franco-Prussian War broke out, and she went behind the German lines to work for the International Red Cross. In 1873, she returned to the United States, and four years later she organized an American branch of the International Red Cross. The American Red Cross received its first U.S. federal charter in 1900. Barton headed the organization into her 80s and died in 1912.

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 21, 1942, 4,300 Jews are deported from the Polish town of Chelm to the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor, where all are gassed to death. On the same day, the German firm IG Farben sets up a factory just outside Auschwitz, in order to take advantage of Jewish slave laborers from the Auschwitz concentration camps.
Sobibor had five gas chambers, where about 250,000 Jews were killed between 1942 and 1943. A camp revolt occurred in October 1943; 300 Jewish slave laborers rose up and killed several members of the SS as well as Ukrainian guards. The rebels were killed as they battled their captors or tried to escape. The remaining prisoners were executed the very next day.
IG Farben, as well as exploiting Jewish slave labor for its oil and rubber production, also performed drug experiments on inmates. Tens of thousands of prisoners would ultimately die because of brutal work conditions and the savagery of the guards. Several of the firm’s officials would be convicted of “plunder,” “spoliation of property,” “imposing slave labor,” and “inhumane treatment” of civilians and POWs after the war. The company itself came under Allied control. The original goal was to dismantle its industries, which also included the manufacture of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, so as to prevent it from ever posing a threat “to Germany’s neighbors or to world peace.” But as time passed, the resolve weakened, and the Western powers broke the company up into three separate divisions: Hoechst, Bayer, and BASF.

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 21, 1940, a “special unit” carries out its mission and murders more than 1,500 hospital patients in East Prussia.
Mentally ill patients from throughout East Prussia had been transferred to the district of Soldau, also in East Prussia. A special military unit, basically a hit squad, carried out its agenda and killed the patients over an 18 day period, one small part of the larger Nazi program to exterminate everyone deemed “unfit” by its ideology. After the murders, the unit reported back to headquarters in Berlin that the patients had been “successfully evacuated.”

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 21, 1901, Connecticut becomes the first state to pass a law regulating motor vehicles, limiting their speed to 12 mph in cities and 15 mph on country roads.
Speed limits had been set earlier in the United States for non-motorized vehicles: In 1652, the colony of New Amsterdam (now New York) issued a decree stating that “[N]o wagons, carts or sleighs shall be run, rode or driven at a gallop” at the risk of incurring a fine starting at “two pounds Flemish,” or about $150 in today’s currency. In 1899, the New York City cabdriver Jacob German was arrested for driving his electric taxi at 12 mph. The path to Connecticut’s 1901 speed limit legislation began when Representative Robert Woodruff submitted a bill to the State General Assembly proposing a motor vehicles speed limit of 8 mph within city limits and 12 mph outside. The law passed in May 1901 specified higher speed limits but required drivers to slow down upon approaching or passing horse-drawn vehicles, and come to a complete stop if necessary to avoid scaring the animals.
On the heels of this landmark legislation, New York City introduced the world’s first comprehensive traffic code in 1903. Adoption of speed regulations and other traffic codes was a slow and uneven process across the nation, however. As late as 1930, a dozen states had no speed limit, while 28 states did not even require a driver’s license to operate a motor vehicle. Rising fuel prices contributed to the lowering of speed limits in several states in the early 1970s, and in January 1974 President Richard Nixon signed a national speed limit of 55 mph into law.
Concerns about fuel availability and cost later subsided, and in 1987 Congress allowed states to increase speed limits on rural interstates to 65 mph. The National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 repealed the maximum speed limit. This returned control of setting speed limits to the states, many of which soon raised the limits to 70 mph and higher on a portion of their roads, including rural and urban interstates and limited access roads.

[Schmidt Meister]

May 21st In Music

1977 - Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album takes over the No. 1 spot in the US from the Eagles' Hotel California.

2018 - The Hootie & the Blowfish album Cracked Rear View is certified for selling 21 million copies in America, overtaking Guns N' Roses' Appetite For Destruction as the top-selling debut album of all-time in that country.

Birthdays:

1941 - Ronald Isley. From American group The Isley Brothers who first came to prominence in 1959 with their fourth single, 'Shout', and then the 1962 hit 'Twist and Shout. Sixteen of their albums charted in the Top 40. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1943 - Hilton Valentine. English musician, who was the original guitarist in The Animals who had the 1964 US No. 1 single 'House Of The Rising Sun'. Born in North Shields, Northumberland, England.

1947 - Bill Champlin. American singer, guitarist, keyboard player and songwriter who joined Chicago in 1981. He sang (with Peter Cetera) on the bands 1984 hit single 'Hard Habit to Break'. Born in Oakland, California.

1948 - Leo Sayer. British born singer-songwriter who had the 1977 US No. 1 single 'When I Need You', the Chrysalis record label their first UK No. 1. Sayer also co-wrote 'Giving It All Away', which gave Roger Daltrey of The Who his first solo hit in 1973. Born in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex, England.

1955 - Stan Lynch. American musician, songwriter and record producer who was the original drummer for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, (1977 single 'American Girl', 1989 UK No. 28 single 'I Won't Back Down', 1991 UK No. 3 album 'Into The Great Wide Open'). He partnered with longtime friend Don Henley to help put together Eagles' reunion album Hell Freezes Over and as a producer and writer, Lynch has worked with a diverse array of acts, such as The Band, Eagles, Don Henley, Jackopierce, Joe 90, Scotty Moore, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, The Jeff Healey Band, Tim McGraw and Ringo Starr. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio.

[Schmidt Meister]

Armed Forces Day honors those members of the 6 branches of the U.S. Armed Forces CURRENTLY serving. Veterans Day honors all who have served, past and present. Salute to the men and women of the finest fighting force the world has ever known.

 

 

[Schmidt Meister]

On May 22, 1939, Italy and Germany agree to a military and political alliance, giving birth formally to the Axis powers, which will ultimately include Japan.
Mussolini coined the nickname “Pact of Steel” (he had also come up with the metaphor of an “axis” binding Rome and Berlin) after reconsidering his first choice, “Pact of Blood,” to describe this historic agreement with Germany. The Duce saw this partnership as not only a defensive alliance, protection from the Western democracies, with whom he anticipated war, but also a source of backing for his Balkan adventures. Both sides were fearful and distrustful of the other, and only sketchily shared their prospective plans. The result was both Italy and Germany, rather than acting in unison, would often “react” to the precipitate military action of the other. In September 1940, the Pact of Steel would become the Tripartite Pact, with Japan making up the third constituent of the triad.

[Schmidt Meister]

May 22nd In Music

1968 - Cream’s Disraeli Gears is certified gold.

1971 - The Rolling Stones album Sticky Fingers started a four-week run at No. 1 on the US charts, the group's second US No. 1 album. The album features the first usage of the "Tongue and Lip Design" designed by John Pasche.

1976 - Wings started a five week run at No. 1 on the US singles chart with 'Silly Love Songs', McCartney's fifth US No. 1 since leaving The Beatles.

1996 - Mission: Impossible debuts in theaters. A reboot of the classic '60s TV series, it features a hit electronic reimagining of Lalo Schifrin's iconic "Burning Fuse" theme from U2's Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen.

Birthdays:

1967 - Dan Roberts. Bassist with Canadian rock band Crash Test Dummies best known internationally for their 1993 single 'Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm'. Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.