May 29 is the 149th day of the year (150th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 216 days remaining until the end of the year.
Holidays
- Army Day (Argentina)
- Ascension of Bahá’u’lláh (Bahá’í Faith)
- Christian feast day:
- Democracy Day (Nigeria)
- Earliest day on which Feast of the Sacred Heart can fall, while July 2 is the latest; celebrated 19 days after Pentecost. (Catholic Church)
- International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers (International)
- Oak Apple Day (England), and its related observance:
- Statehood Day (Rhode Island and Wisconsin)
- Veterans Day (Sweden)
History
In 363, The Roman emperor Julian defeats the Sasanian army in the Battle of Ctesiphon, under the walls of the Sasanian capital, but is unable to take the city.
In 1108, Battle of Uclés: Almoravid troops under the command of Tamim ibn Yusuf defeat a Castile and León alliance under the command of Prince Sancho Alfónsez.
In 1167, Battle of Monte Porzio – A Roman army supporting Pope Alexander III is defeated by Christian of Buch and Rainald of Dassel
In 1176, Battle of Legnano: The Lombard League defeats Emperor Frederick I.
In 1328, Philip VI is crowned King of France.
In 1414, Council of Constance.
In 1453, Fall of Constantinople: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih captures Constantinople after a 53-day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire. (some believe this signalled the end of the Middle Ages).
In 1660, English Restoration: Charles II is restored to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland.
In 1677, Treaty of Middle Plantation establishes peace between the Virginia colonists and the local Natives.
In 1719, South Carolina was formally made a crown colony
In 1727, Peter II becomes Czar of Russia.
In 1733, The right of Canadians to keep Indian slaves is upheld at Quebec City.
In 1765, Patrick Henry denounced the Stamp Act before Virginia’s House of Burgesses. Responding to a cry of “Treason!” Henry replied, “If this be treason, make the most of it!”
In 1780, American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Waxhaws, the British continue attacking after the Continentals lay down their arms, killing 113 and critically wounding all but 53 that remained.
In 1790, Rhode Island becomes the last of the original United States’ colonies to ratify the Constitution and is admitted as the 13th U.S. state.
In 1798, United Irishmen Rebellion: Between 300 and 500 United Irishmen are massacred by the British Army in County Kildare, Ireland.
In 1807, Mustafa IV became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of Islam.
In 1848, Wisconsin is admitted as the 30th U.S. state.
In 1852, Jenny Lind leaves New York after her two-year American tour.
In 1861, The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce is founded, in Hong Kong.
In 1864, Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico arrives in Mexico for the first time.
In 1866, Winfield Scott, American general and politician (b. 1786) dies in West Point, New York. He was a United States Army general, and unsuccessful presidential candidate of the Whig Party in 1852.
Known as “Old Fuss and Feathers” and the “Grand Old Man of the Army,” he served on active duty as a general longer than any other man in American history, and many historians rate him the best American commander of his time. Over the course of his 53-year career, he commanded forces in the War of 1812, the Black Hawk War, the Mexican-American War, the Second Seminole War, and, briefly, the American Civil War, conceiving the Union strategy known as the Anaconda Plan that would be used to defeat the Confederacy. He served as Commanding General of the United States Army for twenty years, longer than any other holder of the office.
A national hero after the Mexican-American War, he served as military governor of Mexico City. Such was his stature that, in 1852, the United States Whig Party passed over its own incumbent President of the United States, Millard Fillmore, to nominate Scott in that year’s United States presidential election. At a height of 6’5″, he remains the tallest man ever nominated by a major party. Scott lost to Democrat Franklin Pierce in the general election, but remained a popular national figure, receiving a brevet promotion in 1855 to the rank of lieutenant general, becoming the second American since George Washington to hold that rank.
In 1867, The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 (“the Compromise”) is born through Act 12, which establishes the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In 1868, The assassination of Michael Obrenovich III, Prince of Serbia, in Belgrade.
In 1886, The pharmacist John Pemberton places his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in The Atlanta Journal.
In 1900, N’Djamena is founded as Fort-Lamy by the French commander Émile Gentil.
In 1900, Trademark “Escalator” registered by Otis Elevator Co.
In 1903, In the May Coup, Alexander I, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, are assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand (Crna Ruka) organization.
In 1903, Bruce Price, American architect, designed the Château Frontenac and American Surety Building (b. 1845) dies. He was an American architect and an innovator in the Shingle Style. The stark geometry and compact massing of his Tuxedo Park, New York cottages influenced Modernist architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright and Robert Venturi. He also designed Richardsonian Romanesque institutional buildings, Beaux-Arts mansions, and Manhattan skyscrapers. In Canada, he designed Chateauesque railroad stations and grand hotels for the Canadian Pacific Railway, including Windsor Station in Montreal and Château Frontenac in Quebec City.
In 1912, 15 young women are fired by Curtis Publishing for dancing the “Turkey Trot” during their lunch break.
In 1913, Igor Stravinsky‘s ballet score The Rite of Spring receives its premiere performance in Paris, France, provoking a riot.
In 1914, The Ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland sinks in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence with the loss of 1,024 lives.
In 1916, The official flag of president of the U.S. was adopted.
In 1916, US forces invade Dominican Republic, stay until 1924.
In 1918, Armenia defeats the Ottoman Army in the Battle of Sardarabad.
In 1919, Albert Einstein‘s theory of general relativity is tested (later confirmed) by Arthur Eddington and Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin.
In 1919, Robert Bacon, American colonel and politician, 39th United States Secretary of State (b. 1860) dies. He worked in the business world, including partnership with J.P. Morgan & Co. for many years starting in 1894. He acted as J.P. Morgan‘s chief lieutenant and participated in the formation of the U.S. Steel Corporation and the Northern Securities Company. The pressure of the job shot his nerves, and he left the company in 1903.
He was named Assistant Secretary of State in 1905, a position which held until 1909— he was acting Secretary while Elihu Root was in South America in 1906. He became full Secretary only for the last 38 days of the term of President Theodore Roosevelt (with whom he was friends at Harvard), from January 27 to March 5, 1909. Bacon obtained the advice and consent of the Senate for the Panama Canal treaties with Colombia and Panama. He served as United States Ambassador to France from 1909 until 1912. He became a Fellow of Harvard in 1912.
In 1919, Charles Strite of Minnesota filed a patent for his pop-up toaster. It was invented in 1918. Background is that he wanted to improve upon the burnt toast situation in the company cafeteria, and incorporated springs and a pop-up timer. This idea was eventually manufactured as a restaurant volume toaster.
In 1919, The Republic of Prekmurje is founded.
In 1931, Michele Schirru, a citizen of the United States, is executed by Italian military firing squad for intent to kill Benito Mussolini.
In 1928, Fritz von Opel reaches 200 kph in experimental rocket car.
In 1932, World War I veterans begin to assemble in Washington, D.C., in the Bonus Army to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945.
In 1935, First flight of the Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter aeroplane.
In 1939, The Albanian fascist leader Tefik Mborja is appointed as member of the Italian Chamber of Fasces and Corporations.
In 1940, The first flight of the Vought F4U Corsair.
In 1942, Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and John Scott Trotter and his Orchestra record Irving Berlin‘s “White Christmas“, the best-selling single in history.
In 1942, John Barrymore, American actor (b. 1882) dies from cirrhosis of the liver and kidney failure, complicated by pneumonia. was an American actor on stage, screen and radio. A member of the Drew and Barrymore theatrical dynasties, he initially tried to avoid the stage, and briefly attempted a career as an artist, but appeared on stage together with his father Maurice in 1900, and then his sister Ethel the following year. He began his career in 1903 and first gained attention as a stage actor in light comedy, then high drama, culminating in productions of Justice (1916), Richard III (1920) and Hamlet (1922); his portrayal of Hamlet led to him being called the “greatest living American tragedian”. After a success as Hamlet in London in 1925, Barrymore left the stage for 14 years and instead focused entirely on films. In the silent film era, he was well received in such pictures as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), Sherlock Holmes (1922) and The Sea Beast (1926). During this period, he gained his nickname, the Great Profile. His stage-trained voice proved an asset when sound films were introduced, and three of his works, Grand Hotel (1932), Twentieth Century (1934) and Midnight (1939) have been inducted into the National Film Registry.
Barrymore’s personal life has been the subject of much attention before and since his death. He struggled with alcohol abuse from the age of 14, was married and divorced four times, and declared bankruptcy later in life. Much of his later work involved self-parody and the portrayal of drunken has-beens. His obituary in The Washington Post observed that “with the passing of the years – and as his private life became more public – he became, despite his genius in the theater, a tabloid character.” Although film historians have opined that Barrymore’s “contribution to the art of cinematic acting began to fade” after the mid-1930s, Barrymore’s biographer, Martin Norden, considers him to be “perhaps the most influential and idolized actor of his day”.
In 1943, Norman Rockwell’s portrait of “Rosie the Riveter” – symbolizing American women employed as substitute industrial workers during the war – appeared on the cover of “The Saturday Evening Post.”
In 1944, British troops occupy Aprilia Italy.
In 1945, First combat mission of the Consolidated B-32 Dominator heavy bomber.
In 1945, US first Marine division conquerors Shuri-castle Okinawa.
In 1948, Creation of the United Nations peacekeeping force the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization.
In 1950, The St. Roch, the first ship to circumnavigate North America, arrives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
In 1953, Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay’s (adopted) 39th birthday.
In 1954, First of the annual Bilderberg conferences.
In 1964, The Arab League meets in East Jerusalem to discuss the Palestinian question, leading to the formation of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
In 1968, The Truth In Lending Act was signed.
In 1969, General strike in Córdoba, Argentina, leading to the Cordobazo civil unrest.
In 1972, US President Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev issued a joint statement after Nixon’s week-long visit to Moscow.
In 1973, Tom Bradley is elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles, California defeating incumbent Sam Yorty. He retired in 1993.
In 1982, Pope John Paul II becomes the first pontiff to visit Canterbury Cathedral.
In 1982, Falklands War: British forces defeat the Argentines at the Battle of Goose Green.
In 1983, President Reagan and the leaders of six other major industrialized nations opened an economic summit conference in the colonial Virginia House of Burgesses in Williamsburg.
In 1985, Heysel Stadium disaster: Thirty-nine association football fans die and hundreds are injured when a dilapidated retaining wall collapses.
In 1985, Amputee Steve Fonyo completes cross-Canada marathon at Victoria, British Columbia, after 14 months.
In 1988, The U.S. President Ronald Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union when he arrives in Moscow for a superpower summit with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
In 1989, Signing of an agreement between Egypt and the United States, allowing the manufacture of parts of the F-16 jet fighter plane in Egypt.
In 1989, bowing to public demand, the Supreme Soviet allowed Boris N. Yeltsin to take a seat in the standing legislature.
In 1990, The Russian parliament elects Boris Yeltsin as president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.
In 1992, Undeclared presidential candidate Ross Perot held a rally in Orlando, Florida, that was carried by two-way television satellite to five other states and shown nationally on C-SPAN.
In 1993, The Miss Sarajevo beauty pageant is held in war torn Sarajevo drawing global attention to the plight of its citizens.
In 1993, Federal health officials announced that an unidentified disease with no known cause had taken 10 lives on or near the Navajo Reservation in the southwestern United States.
In 1994, Khallid Abdul Muhammad, a former spokesman for the Nation of Islam, was shot and wounded after delivering a speech at the University of California, Riverside; a defrocked Nation of Islam minister, James Edward Bess, was charged.
In 1997, In closing arguments, Timothy McVeigh’s attorney urged jurors not to be swayed by sympathy for the Oklahoma City bombing victims, after a prosecutor delivered a wrenching summation that portrayed McVeigh as a terrorist who killed children in the warped belief he was a patriot.
In 1997, Zaire rebel leader Laurent Kabila was sworn in as president of what was again being called the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In 1997, Lt. Kelly Flinn, the Air Force’s first female B-52 bomber pilot, was discharged following an investigation stemming from adultery charges against her. The same day, the Army relieved Brig. Gen. Stephen Xenakis of his command of the Dwight David Eisenhower Army Medical Center at Fort Gordon, Ga., because of an apparently “improper relationship” with a civilian nurse who was caring for his wife.
In 1998, Barry Goldwater, American general and politician (b. 1909) dies at the age of 89 at his long-time home in Paradise Valley, Arizona, of complications from the stroke. He a businessman and five-term United States Senator from Arizona (1953–65, 1969–87) and the Republican Party‘s nominee for president in the 1964 election.
Goldwater is the politician most often credited for sparking the resurgence of the American conservative political movement in the 1960s. He also had a substantial impact on the libertarian movement.
Goldwater rejected the legacy of the New Deal and fought through the conservative coalition against the New Deal coalition. He mobilized a large conservative constituency to win the hard-fought Republican primaries. Goldwater’s conservative campaign platform ultimately failed to gain the support of the electorate and he lost the 1964 presidential election to incumbent Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson by one of the largest landslides in history, bringing down many Republican candidates as well. The Johnson campaign and other critics painted him as a reactionary, while supporters praised his crusades against the Soviet Union, labor unions, and the welfare state. His defeat allowed Johnson and the Democrats in Congress to pass the Great Society programs, but the defeat of so many older Republicans in 1964 also cleared the way for a younger generation of American conservatives to mobilize. Goldwater was much less active as a national leader of conservatives after 1964; his supporters mostly rallied behind Ronald Reagan, who became governor of California in 1967 and the 40th President of the United States in 1981.
Goldwater returned to the Senate in 1969, and specialized in defense policy, bringing to the table his experience as a senior officer in the Air Force Reserve. In 1974, as an elder statesman of the party, Goldwater successfully urged President Richard Nixon to resign when evidence of a cover-up in the Watergate scandal became overwhelming and impeachment was imminent. By the 1980s, the increasing influence of the Christian right on the Republican Party so conflicted with Goldwater’s views that he became a vocal opponent of the religious right on issues such as abortion, gay rights, and the role of religion in public life. After narrowly winning re-election to the Senate in 1980, he chose not to run for a fifth term in 1986, and was succeeded by fellow Republican John McCain. A significant accomplishment in his career was the passage of the Goldwater–Nichols Act of 1986, which restructured the higher levels of the Pentagon by placing the chain of command from the President to the Secretary of Defense directly to the commanders of the Unified Combatant Commands.
In 1999, Olusegun Obasanjo takes office as President of Nigeria, the first elected and civilian head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule.
In 1999, Space Shuttle Discovery completes the first docking with the International Space Station.
In 1999, Charlotte Perrelli representing Sweden wins Eurovision Song Contest 1999 in Jerusalem with the song Take Me to Your Heaven.
In 1999, Hikers found a skeleton in a minivan at the bottom of a canyon near Malibu, Calif. It turned out to be the remains of Iron Butterfly bassist Philip “Taylor” Kramer, who’d been missing since Feb. 1995.
In 2001, Once again the U.S. Supreme Court steps in when it shouldn’t and rules that the disabled golfer Casey Martin can use a cart to ride in tournaments. Of course no one else can!
In 2004, The National World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
In 2008, A doublet earthquake, of combined magnitude 6.1, strikes Iceland near the town of Selfoss, injuring 30 people.
In 2012, A 5.8-magnitude earthquake hits northern Italy near Bologna, killing at least 24 people.
In 2014, Ignatius Aphrem II is enthroned as the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch.
In 2014, Susan C. Durfee, Third Grade Teacher at Adrian Burnett Elementary School, a former Teacher of the Year, tendered her resignation with Knox County Schools over the what some say is a casualty of Common Core.
In 2014, The NSA releases emails to discredit Snowden. The Obama administration released an email exchange on Thursday to refute National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden’s claim that he raised concerns about the agency’s mass surveillance programs before fleeing and leaking secret documents. In the email, Snowden merely asks an NSA lawyer if executive orders override laws. Snowden said the emails released by the NSA were “incomplete,” because they didn’t include messages he sent to other NSA offices. [ZDNet]
In 2015, One World Observatory at One World Trade Center opens.
In 2017, In a May 26 post on Facebook, Rev. Graham said, “The New England Patriots announced they will be the first NFL team to sponsor a ‘Gay Bowl.’ They’re sponsoring Gay Bowl 17, which is a national championship tournament for LGBT flag football teams. The Patriots have the right to do whatever they want,” he said, “but I’m disappointed that a great team from such a wonderful area of the country would promote a sinful lifestyle like this.” According to its website, the Gay Bowl “is the national LGBT flag football tournament, put on every Columbus Day weekend by the National Gay Flag Football League (NGFFL). The tournament will feature teams participating in three divisions; Open ‘A’, Open ‘B’ and a Women’s division.” The clear agenda of the Gay Bowl is to promote homosexuality, lesbianism, and transgenderism and endorse the gay way of life. Through flag football, sports, this agenda is easily targeted to children and families.