Today in History for May 29, 2016

John Pemberton

May 29, 1500 – Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias died at the age of 48 (some sources say 49) in a shipwreck near the Cape of Good Hope. He sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, reaching the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic, the first European known to have done so.

May 29, 1677 – The Treaty of Middle Plantation established peace between the Virginia colonists and the local Natives.

May 29, 1721 - South Carolina was formally incorporated as a royal colony.

May 29, 1736 – American “Founding Father” and first Virginia governor Patrick Henry was born in Hanover County, Colony of Virginia, British America.

May 29, 1765 - Patrick Henry denounced the Stamp Act before Virginia's House of Burgesses.

May 29, 1780 – During the American Revolutionary War, at the Battle of Waxhaws near Lancaster, S.C., the British, under commander Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton, continued attacking after the Continentals laid down their arms, killing 113 and critically wounding all but 53 that remained.

May 29, 1781 - Captain John Barry, commander of the American warship Alliance captured the HMS Atlanta and the HMS Trepassy.

May 29, 1790 – Rhode Island became the last of the original United States' colonies to ratify the Constitution and was admitted as the 13th U.S. state.

May 29, 1825 – During his tour of the United States, the Marquis de Lafayette visited Braddock, Pa.

May 29, 1848 – Wisconsin was admitted as the 30th U.S. state.

May 29, 1862 - P.T. Beauregard began moving troops out of Corinth, Miss. The evacuation was completed the next day.

May 29, 1862 – During the Civil War, a skirmish was fought at Whitesburg, Ala.

May 29, 1862 – During the Civil War, skirmishes were fought near Seven Pines, Virginia; near Boonville and Corinth, Mississippi; at Kickapoo Bottom, Arkansas; and near Wardensville, West Virginia.

May 29, 1863 - Ambrose Burnside offered his resignation over the Vallandigham affair. Lincoln refused to accept it.

May 29, 1863 – The siege at Vicksburg, Miss. entered Day 11.

May 29, 1864 - Union troops lost another foot race with the Confederates in a minor stop on the long and terrible campaign between Ulysses S. Grant’s Army of the Potomac and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Grant was getting frustrated. After the Totopotomoy, Grant slid south to Cold Harbor, just 10 miles from Richmond. His impatience may have gotten the best of him. At Cold Harbor, Grant would commit the foolish mistake of hurling his troops at well-fortified Confederates, creating a slaughter nearly unmatched during the war

May 29, 1864 – During the Civil War, an “action” occurred at Moulton, Ala.

May 29, 1864 – During the Civil War, skirmishes were fought on the Fordoche Bayou Road in Louisiana and at Hamlin, West Virginia.

May 29, 1865 – During the Civil War, a skirmish was fought near Austin, Nevada.

May 29, 1865 - Andrew Johnson granted a Presidential pardon to those who directly or indirectly aided the Southern war effort. He restored property rights to the South with the exception of slaves. Unlike Lincoln's declaration in December 1863, Johnson created an exception for property owners whose holdings totaled $20,000 dollars or more.

May 29, 1865 - President Andrew Johnson appointed William Holden as provisional governor of North Carolina, a blueprint for his plans of Presidential Reconstruction. Holden was instructed to call a constitutional convention of men who had signed an oath of allegiance to the United States.

May 29, 1874 – English author G.K. Chesterton was born Gilbert Keith Chesterton in London.

May 29, 1880 – German philosopher Oswald Spengler was born in Blankenburg, Germany.

May 29, 1886 – The pharmacist John Pemberton placed his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in The Atlanta Journal.

May 29, 1886 - The County Convention was scheduled to meet on this Saturday, according to The Monroe Journal.

May 29, 1900 – Charles Pawson Atmore, General Passenger Agent of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, passed away from apoplexy at the age of 66 in Louisville, Ky. He was buried in the Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Ky.

May 29, 1901 - Seven days into the Constitutional Convention of 1901 a petition submitted by Booker T. Washington and 23 other African-American leaders was read to convention delegates, all of whom were white. The petition asked that the black Alabamian be given "some humble share in choosing those who shall rule over him." Nevertheless, with the ratification of the Constitution of 1901 in November, blacks--along with poor whites--were effectively disfranchised.

May 29, 1903 – Comedian Bob Hope was born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, near London, England. His family moved to the United States when he was four years old, and he grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. Hope died in 2003, two months after his 100th birthday.

May 29, 1906 – English author T.H. White was born Terence Hanbury White in Bombay, India, to English parents employed by the British civil service. He is best known for his sequence of Arthurian novels, “The Once and Future King,” first published together in 1958.

May 29, 1909 – The Conecuh Record reported that about four inches of rain fell in Evergreen, Ala. on this day and 1-1/2 inches fell the day before.

May 29, 1911 – The government thermometer reached 100 degrees on this day in Evergreen, Ala.

May 29, 1913 – Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” premiered at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris.

May 29, 1914 – English explorer, hunter and author Henry Seton-Karr passed died at the age of 61 in Canada’s greatest maritime disaster when the Empress of Ireland sank in the St. Lawrence River when he was returning to England from a hunting trip in British Columbia.

May 29, 1914 – Edgar Lee Masters published the first poem of what would later be collected and published as “The Spoon River Anthology” in 1915.

May 29, 1915 – The Bowles baseball team beat Skinnerton, 17-12, on this Saturday.

May 29, 1916 - The New York Giants won their 17th consecutive road game.

May 29, 1916 - Author Virginia Pounds Brown was born in Birmingham, Ala.

May 29, 1917 - John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was born in Brookline, Mass.

May 29, 1918 – Wm. T. Broughton and Zeilin Simpson, who both died in World War I, were inducted into the Army and sent to Camp Sevier, S.C. for training.

May 29, 1922 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that organized baseball was a sport, and not subject to antitrust laws.

May 29, 1922 – In connection with the ongoing commencement exercises at the State Secondary Agricultural School in Evergreen, Ala., a baseball game was scheduled to be held on this Monday at 3:30 p.m.

May 29, 1942 - A movie version of Alabama author Octavus Roy Cohen's book “Gallant Lady” was released.

May 29, 1946 – German SS officer Martin Gottfried Weiss, after being found guilty of "violating the laws and usages of war," was executed by hanging at Landsberg prison at the age of 40.

May 29, 1950 – The St. Roch, the first ship to circumnavigate North America, arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

May 29, 1951 - C.F. Blair became the first man to fly over the North Pole in single engine plane.

May 29, 1952 – Country music legend Hank Williams and his wife, Audrey, were divorced.

May 29, 1953 – Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay of Nepal became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay's (adopted) 39th birthday. "A symmetrical, beautiful, snow cone summit," Hillary said of the peak that is 29,028 feet above sea level.

May 29, 1954 - The first meeting of the annual Bilderberg group, a secretive, invitation-only gathering with the elite from such fields as politics, commerce, and banking, was held.

May 29, 1955 – New Hope Baptist Church at Natchez, Ala. held its 100th anniversary homecoming.

May 29, 1955 - John Hinckley Jr., who attempted to assassinate U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was born in Ardmore, Okla.

May 29, 1959 – Repton High School was scheduled to hold its graduation exercises at 8 p.m. in Repton, Ala. Starr Smith of Montgomery was to deliver the graduation address, and Principal E.H. Penny was to deliver the diplomas.

May 29, 1962 – First baseman Fred Whitfield, a native of Vandiver, Ala., made his first Major League start, two days after his Major League debut. He went 1-for-4 for the St. Louis Cardinals at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field with his first hit coming in the fourth inning, a RBI single off Al McBean that scored Red Schoendienst.

May 29, 1962 - Buck (John) O’Neil became the first black coach in Major League Baseball when he accepted the job with the Chicago Cubs.

May 29, 1963 - A delegation of Monroe County, Ala. residents planned to meet with Gov. George Wallace and State Superintendent of Education Austin Meadows in Montgomery on this Wednesday to discuss Monroe County as a location for a new prospective junior college.

May 29, 1965 – Repton High School was scheduled to hold graduation exercises on this Saturday night at 8 p.m. in the school auditorium in Repton, Ala. Dorothy Waller was the valedictorian, and Willene Powell was the salutatorian. Twenty-three seniors were expected to receive diplomas.

May 29, 1965 - Dick Allen of the Philadelphia Phillies hit a 529-foot home run out of Connie Mack Stadium.

May 29, 1967 - Noel Gallagher, the lead guitarist, co-lead vocalist and principal songwriter of the rock band Oasis, was born in Longsight, Manchester, England.

May 29, 1967 - Economist and “Freakonomics” co-author Steven Levitt was born in St. Paul, Minn.

May 29, 1972 – Sparta Academy held its first ever graduation exercises on this day at 8 p.m. at Stuart-McGehee Field in Evergreen, Ala. Members of the class included Forrest Brantley, Robert Carleton, Terry Chapman, Martha Gaines, Gary Gibson, Donnie Griggers, Beth Harper (salutatorian), Kitty Horton, Deborah Josey, Crawford King (valedictorian), Mary Ann Mack, Charlotte McCreary, Mike McKenzie, Joey Nix, Carey Stinson, Larry Tranum, Mike Turner, Shelia Ward and Dwight Watson.

May 29, 1972 - In a joint communique issued by the United States and the Soviet Union following the conclusion of summit talks with General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev during President Richard Nixon’s visit to Moscow (the first visit ever by an U.S. president), both countries set forth their standard positions on Vietnam. The United States insisted that the future of South Vietnam should be left to the South Vietnamese without interference. The Soviet Union insisted on a withdrawal of U.S. and Allied forces from South Vietnam and an end to the bombing of North Vietnam.

May 29, 1974 - U.S. President Richard Nixon agreed to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts.

May 29, 1976 – Major League Baseball infielder and outfielder Jerry Hairston Jr. was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He went on to play for the Baltimore Orioles, the Chicago Cubs, the Texas Rangers, the Cincinnati Reds, the New York Yankees, the San Diego Padres, the Washington Nationals, the Milwaukee Brewers and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

May 29, 1976 – NBA power forward and center Raef LaFrentz was born in Hampton, Iowa. He went on to play for Kansas, the Denver Nuggets, the Dallas Mavericks, the Boston Celtics and the Portland Trail Blazers.

May 29, 1981 – The Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham, Ala. were designated a National Historic Landmark.

May 29, 1984 - The Boston Red Sox retired the No. 9 jersey of Ted Williams and the No. 4 jersey of Joe Cronin.

May 29, 1986 - The first issue of "The Frisco Citian" newspaper was published in Frisco City, Ala.

May 29, 1987 – In Monroeville, Ala., Alabama Bureau of Investigations agent Simon Benson conducted a tape-recorded interview in the county courthouse with Karen Kelly, whom he suspected of lying about the Vickie Lynn Pittman murder, according to Pete Earley’s book “Circumstantial Evidence.”

May 29, 1990 - Rickey Henderson stole his 893rd base, breaking Ty Cobb's record.

May 29, 1992 - Tim Raines of the Chicago White Sox stole his 700th career base.

May 29, 2001 - In New York, four followers of Osama bin Laden were convicted of a global conspiracy to murder Americans. The crimes included the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people.

May 29, 2003 – High Ground Burial in Baldwin County, Ala. and the Dulaney Cemetery in Wilcox County, Ala. were added to the Alabama Historic Cemetery Register.

May 29, 2004 – The National World War II Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C.

May 29, 2015 – NFL defensive back and Olympic track athlete Henry Carr, a native of Montgomery, Ala., died at the age of 73 in Griffin, Ga. He played football at Arizona State and for the New York Giants.