This Day in History......

[moreluck]

April 26, 1954
On this day in 1954, the Salk polio vaccine field trials, involving 1.8 million children, begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. Children in the United States, Canada and Finland participated in the trials, which used for the first time the now-standard double-blind method, whereby neither the patient nor attending doctor knew if the inoculation was the vaccine or a placebo. On April 12, 1955, researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective and it quickly became a standard part of childhood immunizations in America. In the ensuing decades, polio vaccines would all but wipe out the highly contagious disease in the Western Hemisphere.

(I remember going thru a drive-in bank lane and receiving the vaccine in a sugar cube in a little paper cup.)

 

[moreluck]

April 27, 1865
Days after the end of the Civil War, the worst maritime disaster in American history occurs when the steamboat Sultana, carrying 2,100 passengers, explodes and sinks in the Mississippi River, killing all but 400 of those aboard. The Mississippi, with its dikes and levees damaged by four years of war, stood at flood stage, and most of those who died were drowned in the surging river. All but 100 of those killed were Union veterans, and most were Yankee survivors of Andersonville and other brutal Confederate prisoner of war camps.

 

[moreluck]

April 28, 1945
On this day in 1945, “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland.

 

[moreluck]

April 29, 1945
On April 29, 1945, the U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberates Dachau, the first concentration camp established by Germany’s Nazi regime. A major Dachau subcamp was liberated the same day by the 42nd Rainbow Division.

 

[moreluck]

April 30, 1945
On this day in 1945, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler’s dreams of a “1,000-year” Reich.

 

[Covemastah]

April 29 th 1986 ,,, Roger Clemons stuck out 20 Seattle Mariners to set a major league record !!
Before he became a cheating fat rat lard a SS. Bum

 

[MyTripisCut]

April 29 th 1986 ,,, Roger Clemons stuck out 20 Seattle Mariners to set a major league record !!
Before he became a cheating fat rat lard a SS. Bum

Best pitcher of our time still.

 

[Covemastah]

Best pitcher of our time still.

No ,,,,, I'll take Pedro thanks !!!!

 

[moreluck]

May 1, 1931
On this day in 1931, President Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York City’s Empire State Building, pressing a button from the White House that turns on the building’s lights. Hoover’s gesture, of course, was symbolic; while the president remained in Washington, D.C., someone else flicked the switches in New York.

 

[moreluck]

May 2, 1947

 

[oldngray]

May 2, 1947

 

[Johney]

The killing of Osama Bin Laden by U.S. Special Forces.

 

[moreluck]

View attachment 80071

That's a riot and a half !! Thanks also for the cat in the hat poem.

 

[Covemastah]

Happy Birthday young lady !!!

 

[moreluck]

Happy Birthday young lady !!!

Thanks.

 

[moreluck]

May 3, 1986
On May 3, 1986, 54-year-old Willie Shoemaker, aboard 18/1 shot Ferdinand, becomes the oldest jockey ever to win the Kentucky Derby. The victory was just one of Shoemaker’s 8,833 wins, a record that stood until 1999, when it was broken by Laffit Pincay.

 

[moreluck]

May 4, 1776
On this day in 1776, Rhode Island, the colony founded by the most radical religious dissenters from the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony, becomes the first North American colony to renounce its allegiance to King George III. Ironically, Rhode Island would be the last state to ratify the new American Constitution more than 14 years later on May 29, 1790.

 

[moreluck]

May 5, 1961
From Cape Canaveral, Florida, Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. is launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to travel into space. The suborbital flight, which lasted 15 minutes and reached a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere, was a major triumph for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

 

[moreluck]

May 6, 1937
On this day in 1937, the German airship Hindenburg, the largest dirigible ever built, explodes as it arrives in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Thirty-six people died in the fiery accident that has since become iconic, in part because of the live radio broadcast of the disaster.

 

[moreluck]

May 7, 1902
On this day in 1902, Martinique’s Mount Pele begins the deadliest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. The following day, the city of Saint Pierre, which some called the Paris of the Caribbean, was virtually wiped off the map.