Hello. Welcome to your weekend and thank you for sharing some of your time with us. We’re glad you are here!
As you head out today we aim to start if off in a simpler way. Ease into Saturday with our weekly “scroll down memory lane.” It’s just a simple way to look back at events that happened on these days in history before we head out to make new history today. So, grab your favorite sippin drink and let’s scroll!
Tomorrow is Sunday, May 18th, the 138th day of the year.
On this day:
In 1652, Rhode Island enacted the first law declaring slavery illegal.
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was nominated for President of the United States by Republican Party leaders.
In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court endorsed racial separation with its ruling in the Plessy versus Ferguson case. The decision sanctioned separate but equal public facilities for blacks and whites. The ruling was overturned 58 years later with the historic Brown vs. Board of Education ruling.
In 1914, “The Mariner” became the first steamboat with cargo to pass through the Panama Canal.
In 1917, U.S. Congress passed the Selective Services Act. The act called up soldiers to fight in World War I.
In 1927, Andrew Kehoe of Bath, Michigan, set off a bomb at a local elementary school. The blast killed 43 people. He later killed the school superintendent, his wife, and then himself.
In 1947, the great race horse Seabiscuit died at the age of 14.
In 1953, Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier flying her plane over Rogers Dry Lake, California.
In 1979, an Oklahoma City jury awarded more than ten-million dollars to the estate of Karen Silkwood. She was a laboratory technician who was contaminated by radiation at a Kerr-McGee plutonium plant and then killed in a hit-and-run accident while on her way to pass information about the plant to a newspaper reporter. Her story was the basis for the film “Silkwood.”
In 1980, Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state erupted after lying dormant for more than 100 years. The explosion killed more than 55 people and destroyed 160-thousand acres of forest. Geologists say the eruption was 500 times as powerful as the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War Two.
In 1995, “Bewitched” actress Elizabeth Montgomery died at the age of 62.
In 2012, the Facebook social networking website made its debut as a publicly traded company. The company began trading at 38-dollars a share on Nasdaq. The initial public offering made founder Mark Zuckerberg the 29th richest person in the world.
In 2018, a shooting at Santa Fe High School in the Houston, Texas metropolitan area left 10 people dead and thirteen more injured. Police identified the shooter as 17-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis.
In 2018, all 34 of Chile’s bishops offered their resignation to Pope Francis over child sexual scandals.
In 2020, dams at Michigan’s Tittabawassee River were breached. This caused thousands of people to evacuate.
In 2022, President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act, requiring suppliers to fulfill orders to baby formula manufacturers first. This came after a nationwide shortage of baby formula.
That brings us here to this day. Whatever plans you have ahead, here’s hoping there are moments along the way to record on the pages of your own personal history books.
Thanks for stopping by!
