Today in Your History
A look at the people, events and popular culture that shaped our lives
AARP Members Only Access, May 2022
- |
- Photos
-
- 1 of
PHOTO BY: Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection
May 24: Mae Jemison stars on ‘Star Trek’ (1993)
On Sept. 12, 1992, Dr. Mae Jemison made history as the first Black woman to travel in space. During the eight-day mission, she began each shift with a quote from the television series: “Hailing frequencies open.” The following May, thanks to an invitation from actor LeVar Burton, she boldly went where no other space traveler had gone before, when she became the first true-life astronaut to appear on Star Trek. In the Season 6 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation titled “Second Chances,” Jemison played Lieutenant Palmer, and she credited watching Nichelle Nichols (Uhura from the original Star Trek) as a child with inspiring her to become an astronaut. Nichols, for her part, visited Jemison on set during filming. “It’s part of the imagination, and all of science, all of space exploration, everything we do in the world is about imagination and using your creativity to expand beyond your normal boundaries,” Jemison said of the series. In the years since her appearance, two more astronauts joined her ranks. E. Michael Fincke and Terry Virts had cameo roles on Star Trek: Enterprise, and last year, William Shatner pulled off the same feat in reverse: After starring on Star Trek, Captain Kirk himself became the oldest person to ever travel to space when, at the age of 90, he flew aboard Blue Origin. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 2 of
PHOTO BY: Shutterstock
May 23: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’ funeral (1994)
After her death from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at her Manhattan home, former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery in a ceremony as elegant and understated as the woman herself. Following a funeral at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in Manhattan, where Sen. Ted Kennedy delivered the eulogy, the proceedings moved to Virginia for the burial. Among the honorary pallbearers who followed her coffin was Jack Walsh, a retired Secret Service agent who had guarded her children, Caroline and John, during their youth. President Bill Clinton delivered graveside remarks, in which he said, “God gave her very great gifts and imposed upon her great burdens. She bore them all with dignity and grace and uncommon common sense.... May the flame she lit so long ago burn ever brighter here and always brighter in our hearts. God bless you, friend, and farewell.” Kennedy Onassis was buried alongside her late husband, John F. Kennedy, and their two babies who died at birth, next to the eternal flame that she lit after his assassination three decades earlier. At the end of the service, the bell at Washington National Cathedral rang 64 times to mark the 64 years she lived. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 3 of
PHOTO BY: Douglas C. Pizac/AP Photo
May 22: Carson signs off ‘The Tonight Show’ (1992)
When you think back to Johnny Carson’s final days on The Tonight Show, you might remember that emotional scene in which Bette Midler sang “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)” as Carson looked on teary-eyed. Midler and Robin Williams were Carson’s final guests, though they actually appeared on his penultimate episode as host, on May 21. On his final show the next night, Carson had no guests and instead presented a retrospective of clips from his 30 years at the helm of The Tonight Show. He finished the episode seated on a stool in the center of the stage and offered his emotional farewell: “And so it has come to this: I, uh ... am one of the lucky people in the world. I found something I always wanted to do, and I have enjoyed every single minute of it. I want to thank the people who’ve shared this stage with me for 30 years: Mr. Ed McMahon, Mr. Doc Severinsen and you people watching. I can only tell you that it has been an honor and a privilege to come into your homes all these years and entertain you. And I hope when I find something that I want to do and I think you would like and come back, that you’ll be as gracious in inviting me into your home as you have been. I bid you a very heartfelt good night.” The next day, NBC estimated that 55 million Americans had tuned in to watch Carson’s final episode, making it the most-watched late-night episode in TV history. The previous record holder? The Dec. 17, 1969, episode of The Tonight Show, in which the falsetto-voiced singer Tiny Tim married Miss Vicki. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 4 of
PHOTO BY: Benjamin Luzon/AP Photo
May 21: Susan Lucci wins her first Emmy (1999)
Even if you didn’t know anything about soap operas in the 1990s, chances are you’d heard of Susan Lucci and her record-breaking losing streak. Between 1978 and 1998, the actress behind All My Children’s Erica Kane had picked up a whopping 18 Daytime Emmy nominations without a win. She became a pop culture punch line — shorthand for a perpetual also-ran. And then, on May 21, 1999, in a ceremony at The Theater in Madison Square Garden, actor Shemar Moore took to the stage, introduced the nominees and changed Lucci’s life with four simple words: “The streak is over!” The audience roared their approval, with Rosie O’Donnell visibly sobbing from the audience and host Oprah Winfrey, arms raised, cheering from the wings. When Lucci finally got the crowd to quiet down, she began her acceptance speech with, “I truly believed this would never happen.” She recounted how her kids made her cards and gifts to cheer her up after her previous losses, and when the show’s producers tried to play her off the stage after about three minutes, the audience loudly hollered for her to stay, as the camera panned to her All My Children costar Kelly Ripa shouting, “No!” Lucci finished her speech by saying, “I’m going back to that studio on Monday, and I’m gonna play Erica Kane for all she’s worth!” So why did she win that year? Los Angeles Times critic Thomas O’Neil chalked it up to Lucci changing her strategy for which scenes to submit for consideration. In the past, she’d chosen, as O’Neil put it, “huge, Wagnerian performances that rattled judges when viewed out of context of a daily melodramatic series.” In 1999, she instead sent in two continuous episodes that included a full range of acting styles: three crying scenes, a slap, and moments of real love as she tended to her daughter Bianca, who was hospitalized for anorexia. “The tape was 48 minutes — 15 minutes longer than any other nominee’s — and it was packed with every Roman candle Lucci could light,” O’Neil wrote. “It’s no surprise that her 19th nomination exploded so brilliantly on Emmy night.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 5 of
PHOTO BY: Ng Han Guan/PA
May 20: China’s Three Gorges Dam opens (2006)
Nearly 90 years after the Chinese Nationalist Party leader Sun Yat-sen first proposed damming the Yangtze River, China unveiled what was perhaps its most staggering engineering feat since the Great Wall of China, on May 20, 2006. Rising 610 feet and stretching 1.4 miles wide, the mighty Three Gorges Dam is superlative in every way: It’s the largest concrete structure in the world, with the most water displaced by a dam project, creating a 400-mile reservoir that’s longer than Lake Superior. At a cost of $25 billion, it was designed to protect citizens from the disastrous periodic flooding that has been known to ravage this basin. Still, it was not without its controversies. The project displaced at least 1.3 million people, and the newly formed reservoir destroyed entire cities and towns, some of which housed architectural and archaeological artifacts that date back two millennia. Perhaps the most shocking fact about the dam is that it’s so massive it actually slowed down the rotation of the Earth! By storing 39 trillion kilograms (or 42 billion tons) of water some 175 meters above sea level, the planet’s “moment of inertia” is raised, which increases the length of a day by 0.06 microseconds and shifts the poles by about 2 centimeters. We have to say it: Dam. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 6 of
PHOTO BY: Christopher Furlong/PA Images via Getty Images
May 19: Harry and Meghan get married (2018)
In front of a crowd of 600 at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle tied the knot, making her one of Britain’s first biracial royals — there’s some debate over the ethnicity of the 18th century’s Queen Charlotte. Markle wore a dress by British designer Clare Waight Keller for Givenchy, plus a diamond bandeau tiara made in 1932 and lent to her by the Queen and a 16-foot silk tulle veil featuring embroidered flowers from the 53 Commonwealth member countries and California’s state flower, the poppy. Harry wore an Army uniform and got special permission from his grandmother to keep his closely cropped beard (men usually need to go clean-shaven in military uniform). Guests included Sir Elton John, George and Amal Clooney, David and Victoria Beckham, and Oprah Winfrey, who later famously interviewed the couple when their relationship with the royal family became strained. The ceremony included moving words by the Most Rev. Bishop Michael Curry, the first Black presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, who quoted Martin Luther King Jr. and African American spirituals. After the ceremony, the new Duke and Duchess of Sussex were driven around Windsor in a horse-drawn carriage as an estimated 100,000 supporters crowded the streets. “This wedding was about the future,” wrote BBC royal correspondent Jonny Dymond, “a different future for the royal family.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 7 of
PHOTO BY: Tami Chappell TLC/Reuters/Alamy
May 18: Johnson pitches perfect game at 40 (2004)
At 6-foot-10, Randy Johnson, one of the tallest big league players of all time, earned the nickname “The Big Unit.” On May 18, 2004, the pitcher added another impressive superlative to his résumé in a game between his Arizona Diamondbacks and the Atlanta Braves. At age 40, he pitched the 17th perfect game in Major League history, becoming the oldest player to ever rack up such an achievement. Johnson threw 117 pitches, with 13 strikeouts, in what was the second no-hitter of his career. “Not bad for being 40 years old,” he joked after the game. “Everything was locked in.” Ironically, the game occurred almost exactly a century after the previous oldest record holder, Cy Young himself, threw the league’s third-ever perfect game at the age of 37 on May 5, 1904. Robby Hammock, the Diamondbacks catcher during Johnson’s fateful game, said, “Every time you catch [Johnson], you feel that something like this has a chance to happen. … He’s so intense, and it’s something he has out there on the mound that makes me that much better.” Unsurprisingly, Johnson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2015, and the five-time Cy Young Award winner’s plaque in Cooperstown describes him as “a towering and intimidating lefthander whose crackling fastball and devastating slider paralyzed hitters for more than two decades.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 8 of
PHOTO BY: Winslow Townson/AP Photo
May 17: Mass. legalizes gay marriage (2004)
On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to officially recognize gay marriage, after the state’s highest court struck down the heterosexuals-only section of its marriage law. At the Cambridge city hall, there was a celebratory mood as the clock ticked down to midnight, when more than 260 gay and lesbian couples began filling out their marriage license forms. The first in line to fill out paperwork were Marcia Hams and Susan Shepherd, who had been together for 27 years before their relationship could finally be recognized as a marriage. “I feel overwhelmed,” the 57-year-old Hams told The New York Times. “I feel ready to collapse.” Her 52-year-old wife added, “There’s some kid somewhere that’s watching this, and it’s going to change his whole life.” While there were some expected protesters, who had traveled from as far away as Kansas, there were also balloons, banners, rainbow flags and supporters to cheer on the newlyweds. At that point in 2004, Massachusetts was one of the few places in the world to legalize gay marriage, along with the Netherlands, Belgium and three Canadian provinces. It wasn’t until more than a decade later that same-sex marriage was legalized in all 50 states with the landmark Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 9 of
PHOTO BY: Tabei Kikaku Co Ltd/AP/Shutterstock
May 16: Junko Tabei summits Mount Everest (1975)
On this date in 1975, nearly 22 years after Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first to reach the top of Mount Everest, Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei became the first woman to summit the world’s tallest mountain. After tackling Annapurna III in 1970, she put together a crew of female Japanese climbers — many of them working women and mothers — to take on Everest. Tabei received partial funding from a newspaper and a television station, but she taught piano lessons to earn the rest, and she made her own pants, sleeping bag padding and waterproof gloves from items like old curtains and a car cover. Her climb up Everest was particularly dramatic. On May 4, Tabei’s encampment was struck by an avalanche; she was buried in snow and pulled out by her ankles, and it was two days before she even could walk again. Finally, on May 16, the 4-foot-9 climber made it to the top of Everest on her hands and knees, reaching a flat area at the peak she described as “smaller than a tatami mat.” She buried a thermos of coffee in the snow to awaken the mountain goddess, and later said of the experience, “All I felt was relief.” Tabei continued climbing, and in 1992, she became the first woman to complete the Seven Summits, the highest mountain on each continent. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 10 of
PHOTO BY: Pool Pool/John Angelillo/AP Photo
May 15: Obama dedicates 9/11 museum (2014)
During a solemn ceremony on May 15, 2014, almost 13 years after the deadly September 11 terrorist attacks in lower Manhattan, President Barack Obama gathered with survivors, the families of those who lost their lives, rescue and recovery workers, and residents of the surrounding neighborhood to dedicate the new National September 11 Memorial & Museum. Designed by architects Davis Brody Bond, the museum is entered through a steel-and-glass pavilion from Norwegian firm Snøhetta, and the subterranean collection includes some 10,000 artifacts, 23,000 photographs, 1,900 oral histories and 500 hours of videos. The museum joined the outdoor memorial, which opened on Sept. 11, 2011, and features two waterfall pools that sit in the footprints of the former Twin Towers; the largest human-made waterfalls on the continent, they funnel water into central voids that architect Michael Arad said are meant to depict “absence made visible.” Surrounding the pools are the names of the 2,983 people killed during the 2001 attacks and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. “Here at this memorial, this museum, we come together,” President Obama said to a crowd that included Mayor Michael Bloomberg and governors Chris Christie (New Jersey) and Andrew Cuomo (New York). “We stand in the footprints of two mighty towers, graced by the rush of eternal waters. We look into the faces of nearly 3,000 innocent souls... Here, we tell their story so that generations yet unborn will never forget.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 11 of
PHOTO BY: Joseph Del Valle/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images
May 14: The series finale of 'Seinfeld' airs (1998)
When it comes to the series finales of beloved sitcoms, most go soft and sentimental; unsurprisingly, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David chose to zig where others zagged, and the resulting May 14, 1998, episode “The Finale” is one of the most polarizing in the show’s nine seasons. In the episode, George and Jerry finally sell their pilot idea to NBC, and they decide to celebrate by taking a private plane to Paris with Kramer and Elaine. Along the way, they make an unexpected landing in a small Massachusetts town, and when they witness a man being carjacked and do nothing to help him, they’re arrested under a new Good Samaritan law. During the ensuing trial, dozens of old guest stars from the series show up to testify, including Teri Hatcher as Jerry’s old girlfriend Sidra, Larry Thomas as “the Soup Nazi” and Frances Bay as the marble rye lady, with Geraldo Rivera and Keith Hernandez playing themselves. In the end, the quartet is sentenced to a year in prison for criminal indifference. The episode was the fourth-most-watched series finale in television history, with an estimated 76.3 million viewers, behind only M*A*S*H, Cheers and The Fugitive. Nevertheless, despite those monster ratings, critics were not kind. Robert Bianco wrote in USA Today, “The show was mocking all the insults that have been lobbed at its four friends: that they’re selfish, self-absorbed, callous, anti-social and inhuman. After last night, you can add reprehensible.” And Entertainment Weekly critic Ken Tucker called the episode “off-key and bloated.” In 2015, Julia Louis-Dreyfus appeared on the final episode of Late Show With David Letterman, and she joked during the Top Ten segment, “Thanks for letting me take part in another hugely disappointing series finale.” And while Seinfeld himself had defended the finale over the years, he said in 2017 at an interview during the New Yorker Festival, “I sometimes think we really shouldn’t have even done it. There was a lot of pressure on us at that time to do one big last show, but big is always bad in comedy.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 12 of
PHOTO BY: POOL/AFP via Getty Images
May 13: Pope John Paul II survives shooting (1981)
Late in the afternoon on May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was riding around St. Peter’s Square in the then-open-topped “Popemobile,” greeting a crowd of adoring believers numbering over 10,000, when the celebratory mood was pierced by the sound of gunfire: At a range of only about 15 feet, 23-year-old Mehmet Ali Ağca aimed his 9 mm pistol at the pope, and hit him twice in the abdomen and once each in his right arm and pinkie finger. The would-be assassin was a member of the Turkish ultranationalist group the Grey Wolves, and he had escaped from an Istanbul prison in 1979 while on trial for the murder of a liberal newspaper editor. When he was apprehended in Vatican City, he kept repeating to the police, “I couldn’t care less about life.” The pope was rushed to the hospital, where he lost massive amounts of blood, but a 5 hour, 25 minute surgery stabilized his condition. Once in custody, Agca proved an unreliable witness, first claiming he was working for Palestinian militants, then the Bulgarian secret service, then the KGB, before later saying he was a reincarnation of Jesus Christ. The shooter was sentenced to life in prison, but the pope later visited him in 1983, talked to him for 20 minutes and forgave him, which led to his pardon in 2000 and extradition to Turkey, where he was rearrested for the 1979 murder. In a strange twist, the assassination attempt was on the feast day of Our Lady of Fátima, and the pope said that he believed the Virgin Mary had foretold the shooting when she appeared to three children in 1917 and later rescued him by guiding the bullets away from his internal organs. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 13 of
PHOTO BY: Miramax/courtesy Everett Collection
May 12: 'Pulp Fiction' premieres at Cannes (1994)
Hot off his 1992 directorial debut Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino overcame the sophomore slump in a major way when, at the age of 31, he debuted his big, bold follow-up, Pulp Fiction, at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival. An eventual Oscar winner for best original screenplay, the film featured an impressive ensemble cast that included Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, Ving Rhames and John Travolta. Tarantino’s crime drama was violent, funny and stylish, but most prognosticators expected top honors, the Palme d’Or, to go to Polish director Krzysztof Kieslowski’s more high-minded Three Colors: Red, the finale of a celebrated trilogy that represented the best of European cinema. When the jury, led by Clint Eastwood, announced that Pulp Fiction had won, a woman in the balcony shouted: “Kieslowski! Kieslowski! Pulp Fiction is s---.” Taking the stage, Tarantino said that he didn’t expect to win a jury prize, “because I don’t make the kind of movies that kinda bring people together. I kinda make movies that kinda split people apart.” But Tarantino’s opus would go on to prove its value in the years that followed. As Time critic Richard Corliss wrote about the festival 20 years later, “Those of us in that select crowd, including Roger Ebert and Todd McCarthy, knew we were seeing something special. It became the most influential movie of its decade.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 14 of
PHOTO BY: Yves Forestier/Sygma via Getty Images
May 11: France mints the first euro coins (1998)
On this date in 1998, at a plant outside Bordeaux, French Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn pressed a button that would change the course of European financial history: The first euro coins were minted, ushering in an era of shared currency for much of the continent. “In a few years, we will have this money in our pockets, and this illustrates the fact that we are moving to a new, concrete reality for 300 million people,” Strauss-Kahn said of the new silver-colored coins, which featured a French pattern on one side and a borderless map of Europe on the other. Designed to boost trade, the euro went into service as a noncash monetary unit in 1999, and currency notes and coins first began hitting Europeans’ wallets on Jan. 1, 2002. The French factory where it all began was designed to churn out about 12 million coins in eight denominations daily as part of a continent-wide effort to produce 70 billion euros’ worth of currency before the 2002 deadline. As The New York Times reported at the time, “the euro will end the 638-year reign of the franc,” which King John the Good had created in 1360 to indicate that his region was free of English rule — or, in French, franc des anglois. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 15 of
PHOTO BY: Marvel Comics
May 10: First issue of 'The Incredible Hulk' (1962)
Sixty years ago today, Marvel Comics debuted its newest hero, Dr. Bruce Banner and his enormous muscle-bound alter ego, in the first issue of The Incredible Hulk. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, that premiere installment — which cost 12 cents — introduces Banner, a nuclear scientist who’s working on inventing a gamma bomb. When he sees a teenager sneaking onto the test site, he races to rescue him, only to find himself in the line of gamma rays when the device detonates. As a result, Banner begins transforming nightly into an angry monstrous form, though he didn’t originally look like the Hulk you might know from later comics and Marvel Cinematic Universe movies: His skin in that first issue was a pale gray, but the Marvel art team decided to make him green in the second issue, because he would be easier to color. That first run of Incredible Hulk comics only lasted six issues before being canceled, but audiences developed a soft spot for the gargantuan dude who couldn’t control his temper, and he made repeated guest appearances throughout the Marvel world, before the publisher gave him his own magazine once again in April 1968. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 16 of
PHOTO BY: Kevin Wolf/AP Photo
May 9: 'The Huffington Post' launches (2005)
Arianna Huffington, the daughter of a Greek newspaper owner, launched The Huffington Post on this date in 2005, and it was a new kind of media outlet: a group blog of sorts with hundreds of guest contributors (including celebrities) and left-leaning commentary to compete with sites like Drudge Report. “We launched that day, a Monday, to decidedly mixed reviews,” Huffington later wrote on the website’s 10th anniversary. “As I remember it, critics were lining up to predict it wouldn’t last. One hour after we launched, a reviewer compared HuffPost to a combination of Ishtar, Heaven’s Gate and Gigli. A year later she emailed me and asked if she could blog for the site, and of course I said yes.” Huffington founded the website with former AOL executive Kenneth Lerer, future BuzzFeed cofounder Jonah Peretti and the late Andrew Breitbart, who would go on to form his own right-wing media outlet. The site’s first tagline was the cheeky, “Delivering news and opinion since May 9, 2005,” and it later began calling itself “The Internet Newspaper,” eventually earning that ultimate marker of journalistic greatness: In 2012, senior military correspondent David Wood won the Pulitzer Prize in national reporting for his 10-part series “Beyond the Battlefield.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 17 of
PHOTO BY: Blueee/Alamy
May 8: The Beatles release Let It Be (1970)
On May 8, 1970, the Beatles released what would be their final studio album, Let It Be, though it wasn’t the last music they made together as a foursome. They recorded the tracks for Let It Be in January 1969, but the music sat on the shelf for more than a year before its release; in between, they recorded Abbey Road and released it on Sept. 26, 1969. The album — which included such songs as “Across the Universe,” “The Long and Winding Road” and the title track — stayed on the U.S. charts for 55 weeks, with a four-week stint at No. 1, and it also spawned a documentary film that was released in the States on May 13. Among Beatles fans, Let It Be has always proven a bit controversial, and it comes in at a relatively modest No. 342 on Rolling Stone’s 2020 updated list of the 500 greatest albums of all time: “Let It Be is the sound of the world’s biggest pop group at war with itself. John Lennon is at his most acidic; George Harrison’s ‘I Me Mine’ is about the sin of pride. Only Paul McCartney sounds focused, as if the title song were his personal survival mantra.” At the Grammys the following year, the album won best original score written for a motion picture, and the title track lost record of the year to Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 18 of
PHOTO BY: Alekander Nordahl/AP Photo
May 7: The Scream is recovered after its theft (1994)
Edvard Munch’s The Scream, perhaps the most famous painting to ever come out of Scandinavia, was the victim of one of the most notorious art-world heists of the 20th century. On Feb. 12, 1994, the same day the Winter Olympics started in nearby Lillehammer, thieves busted in through a window of Oslo’s National Gallery and made off with the masterpiece. The break-in took only 50 seconds to pull off, and the thieves left behind a note: “Thousand thanks for the bad security!” Norwegian authorities sprang into action to recover the stolen painting, and the case got weird fast: A former Lutheran minister and head of the Norwegian antiabortion movement said in a radio interview that if the national television station aired a documentary on abortion, “the painting will reappear.” The police didn’t take his claims seriously and instead turned to Scotland Yard for help, eventually finding pieces of the painting’s frame at a bus stop in the Oslo suburbs. In a sting operation worthy of a detective thriller, two British police officers went undercover and pretended they were interested in buying The Scream for $375,000. They tracked the painting down to a hotel in the southern Norway beach town of Aasgaarstrand, where Munch created some of his most famous pieces, and they recovered it on May 7; according to Knut Berg, the director of the National Gallery in Oslo, it was undamaged, save for a microscopic pinprick. “The thieves must have handled it with extreme caution,” Berg said. “It was wonderful to see the painting again, and we hope to have it back on the wall on Wednesday.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 19 of
PHOTO BY: NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images via Getty Images
May 6: The Friends series finale airs (2004)
On May 6, 2004, NBC’s long-running sitcom hit came to an end after 10 blockbuster seasons with an hour-long series finale called, appropriately, “The Last One.” Each of the core six friends finds a happy ending — with perhaps one exception: Ross and Rachel finally reconcile and get back together; Monica and Chandler have twins via a surrogate and move to the suburbs; Phoebe had already gotten married to Mike (Paul Rudd) a few episodes prior; and then there’s Joey, whose fate is left a bit more up in the air to accommodate his namesake spin-off that would begin airing in September. The episode ends with the camera panning around Monica and Chandler’s empty apartment to the soundtrack of Jefferson Airplane’s “Embryonic Journey.” The finale attracted an estimated 52.5 million viewers, and while that number is certainly impressive, it was only the second-highest audience for a Friends episode — after “The One After the Super Bowl” in 1996 — and the fourth-most-watched series finale, after M*A*S*H (106 million), Cheers (80.4 million) and Seinfeld (76.3 million). —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 20 of
PHOTO BY: Bettmann/Getty Images
May 5: Shepard first American in space (1961)
A U.S. Naval Academy graduate and veteran of the Pacific theater of World War II, Alan Shepard Jr. was one of the original seven astronauts selected by NASA for its Mercury program in 1959. On April 15, 1961, the Soviet Union reached a milestone in the space race when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth. Less than a month later, the American rocket Freedom 7 blasted into space from Cape Canaveral in Florida, and Shepard reached an altitude of 116 miles, where he completed a 15-minute, 22-second suborbital flight. Much of the romance that would later come to define space travel wasn’t present in that first trip: Shepard was strapped in tight, so he never experienced weightlessness; he couldn’t look out at the stars because of the awkward placement of the windows; and a filter on the periscope meant everything down below looked black and white! Soon, Shepard was splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean, just north of the Bahamas, and within a few days, he was attending a ceremony at the White House, where President John F. Kennedy awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal. By the end of the month, based on the heroism of Shepard, Kennedy was making his famous address to a joint session of Congress in which he said that the nation “should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 21 of
PHOTO BY: Press Association via AP Images
May 4: Thatcher becomes prime minister (1979)
Thanks to a blistering cold spell and more than 2,000 strikes, the winter of 1978-79 in the United Kingdom was dubbed “The Winter of Discontent,” and the ruling Labour Party government under Prime Minister James Callaghan took the brunt of the blame from the public. In the general election of May 1979, the Conservatives enjoyed a decisive victory, with the largest electoral swing since the end of World War II. As part of that sweeping win, Margaret Thatcher — an Oxford-educated chemist-turned-politician — became the first female prime minister, kicking off a period of intense political polarization in the United Kingdom. “For a nation that still thinks of Pitt and Churchill, Gladstone and Disraeli when it thinks of prime ministers,” R.W. Apple Jr. wrote in The New York Times at the time, “the election of a woman, the first to be prime minister in any European country, somehow came as a surprise even though it had been widely expected.” On the steps of No. 10 Downing St., she spoke to the press about her excitement and quoted Saint Francis of Assisi: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.” Depending on whom you asked over the course of her 11 years in office, she either represented harmony, truth, faith and hope — or she brought about the very discord, error, doubt and despair that she supposedly fought against. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 22 of
PHOTO BY: Wodicka/ullstein bild via Getty Images
May 3: The first spam email is sent (1978)
On this date in 1978, Gary Thuerk, the marketing manager at Digital Equipment Company, sent out an email to about 400 members of ARPAnet, which has been called the first internet. The email, which was written in an annoying all-caps style, began, “DIGITAL WILL BE GIVING A PRODUCT PRESENTATION OF THE NEWEST MEMBERS OF THE DECSYSTEM-20 FAMILY,” before listing off specifics about the presentations (time, place, etc.) and the early computers that would be on display. Recognize that style? The message is often credited as history’s first spam email! “I knew I was pushing the envelope,” Thuerk later told Computerworld. “I thought of it as e-marketing. We wanted to reach as many people as possible to let them know about our new product.” Response was overwhelmingly negative, and Thuerk said that a representative from ARPAnet “chewed [him] out” and made him promise not to send out spam again, but he had the last laugh: By his estimates, the email campaign led to an estimated $13 million to $14 million in DEC sales. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 23 of
PHOTO BY: The Weather Channel
May 2: The Weather Channel debuts (1982)
In 1982, television’s juiciest shows veered toward catfights and shoulder pads, but Good Morning America forecaster John Coleman thought viewers might tune into a very different kind of drama: the daily spectacles of hurricanes, blizzards, tornadoes, extreme temperatures and more basic meteorology news, such as how the weather might affect your commute. On May 2, 1982, he helped launch the Weather Channel, and he served as its first president. All throughout the day and night, a team of about 30 forecasters analyzed maps, offered outlooks for travelers and warned of inclement weather, and the live feeds were intercut with taped segments about weather trivia and phenomena. Richard Zoglin, the critic for The Atlanta Constitution, wrote that television undoubtedly “helped make [weather] a star,” though he wondered if it could sustain this much content. “But an entire TV channel devoted to weather?” he wrote. “That, in the view of some industry observers, may be going too far, an example of cable ‘narrowcasting’ carried to a ridiculous extreme. Yet, the Weather Channel, a 24-hour, satellite-beamed cable service … is trying to prove the skeptics wrong.” Over the years, the channel has become a cable news fixture, especially during severe weather events, and in 2008, NBC teamed up with the private equity firms Bain Capital and the Blackstone Group to acquire the Weather Channel for a price reported at nearly $3.5 billion. —Nicholas DeRenzo
-
- 24 of
PHOTO BY: Amtrak
May 1: Amtrak goes into service (1971)
In October 1970, President Richard Nixon signed the Rail Passenger Service Act, thus consolidating America’s intercity passenger rail lines, which had previously been run by private railroads. At that time, 20 railroads around the country decided to turn over their passenger services to the newly formed company — which was briefly known as Railpax before adopting the name Amtrak — and 13 lines made the original cut. On May 1, shortly after midnight, a Clocker train left New York City for Philadelphia, ushering in the start of the Amtrak era, and the company started with 184 trains a day across 323 stations. “The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, known as Amtrak, took over the remnants of the nation’s long-neglected, deficit-ridden intercity passenger railroads yesterday with little evident confusion, customarily low patronage and a number of whistle-stop ceremonies,” Robert D. McFadden reported in The New York Times. “The semi-nationalization of the passenger rails, achieved after months of debate and challenges in Congress and the Federal courts, was ushered in without fanfare or trouble in most cities.” Nixon wasn’t exactly a fan of rail travel, but he chose to rescue the industry because he didn’t want it to die on his watch. As Nick Stockton recently wrote in Wired, “He apparently wanted to expedite Amtrak’s demise so it wouldn’t be a long-term burden on taxpayers.” And yet, much like the Little Engine That Could, Amtrak chug-chug-chugs on. —Nicholas DeRenzo
Members Only Access content
Find exclusive interviews, smart advice, free novels, full documentaries, fun daily features and much more — all a benefit of your AARP membership — on Members Only Access.
Find exclusive interviews, smart advice, free novels, full documentaries, fun daily features and much more — all a benefit of your AARP membership — on Members Only Access.
Not a member? Join
Already a member? Link Your Membership
Renew your membership today and save 25% on your next year when you sign up for Automatic Renewal. Get instant access to discounts, programs, services, and the information you need to benefit every area of your life.
Featured AARP Member Benefits
-
Health & Wellness
AARP® Vision Discounts provided by EyeMed
Members and their families save on prescription eyewear
learn moreSee more Health & Wellness offers > -
Hotels & Resorts
AARP Travel Center Powered by Expedia: Hotels & Resorts
Members save on hotel stays
learn moreSee more Hotels & Resorts offers > -
Entertainment
AARP Games
Free online games and puzzles including classic Atari games
learn moreSee more Entertainment offers > -
Magazines & Resources
AARP Rewards
Learn, earn and unlock exclusive members-only offers with AARP Rewards
learn moreSee more Magazines & Resources offers >