On this day

1590 - Anne of Denmark was crowned Queen Consort of Scotland at Holyroad Palace.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_of_Denmark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_consort

1814 - Constitution Day in Norway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Constitution_Day

1863 - Rosalia de Castro publishes Cantares Gallegos. It is a collection of poetry that becomes the first book published in the Galician language.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosal%C3%ADa_de_Castro
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_language

1995 - Jacques Chirac is inaugrated as president of France.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Chirac

2000 - Two Royal Marine Commandoes, Alan Chambers and Charlie Paton, become the first Britons to reach the North Pole without outside support.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...512253.stm

2004 - Massachusetts becomes the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriages.

1756 – The Seven Years' War begins when Great Britain declares war on France.

1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of the French by the French Senate.

1830 - Edwin Budding signed an agreement for his invention, the lawn mower, to go into mass production. His first customer was Regent's Park Zoo in London.

1910 - During the approach of Halley's comet, the Earth probably passed through part of its tail, which was millions of kilometers in length. The 1910 approach was also notable for being the first approach of which photographs exist.

1953 – Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier.

1954 - The European Convention on Human Rights came into force.

1974 – Nuclear test: under project Smiling Buddha, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon becoming the sixth nation to do so.

1980 – Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington, United States, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage.

1990 – In France, a modified TGV train achieves a new rail world speed record of 515.3 km/h (320.2 mph).

2003 - Les Miserables closed on Broadway after more than 16 years and 6,680 performances.

2005 – A second photo from the Hubble Space Telescope confirms that Pluto has two additional moons: Nix and Hydra.

Some interesting birthdays today

1850 – Oliver Heaviside, English physicist (d. 1925) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Heaviside

1868 – Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (d. 1918) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia

1872 – Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, British mathematician, writer and philosopher, Nobel laureate (d. 1970) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell

1920 – Pope John Paul II (born Karol Józef Wojtyła) (d. 2005) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_John_Paul_II

1942 – Nobby Stiles, English footballer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobby_Stiles

1949 – Rick Wakeman, English composer and musician (Yes) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Wakeman

1499 – Catherine of Aragon is married by proxy to Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales. Catherine is 13 and Arthur is 12.

1535 – French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail on his second voyage to North America with three ships, 110 men, and Chief Donnacona's two sons (whom Cartier had kidnapped during his first voyage).

1536 - Anne Boleyn, King Henry VIII's second wife, was beheaded in London. She was 29 years old. Although the evidence against her was unconvincing, the charges brought included incest with her brother and no less than four counts of adultery.

1568 - Queen Elizabeth I ordered the arrest of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary had previously claimed Elizabeth's throne as her own and was considered the legitimate sovereign of England by many English Catholics.

1780 – New England's Dark Day: A combination of thick smoke and heavy cloud cover causes complete darkness to fall on Eastern Canada and the New England area of the United States at 10:30 A.M.

1897 – Oscar Wilde is released from Reading Gaol Prison.

1935 - T E Lawrence, English soldier and writer (known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia) died from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash.

1971 – Mars probe program: Mars 2 is launched by the Soviet Union.

1997 – The Sierra Gorda Biosphere, the most ecologically diverse region in Mexico, is established as a result of grassroots efforts.

1191 - English King Richard I 'the Lion Heart' conquered Cyprus on his way to join the Crusaders in north west Israel.

1498 - Portuguese explorerVasco de Gama became the first European to reach India via either the Atlantic Ocean or Mediterranean Sea when he arrived at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut).

1802 – By the Law of 20 May 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte reinstates slavery in the French colonies, revoking its abolition in the French Revolution

1830 - H.D. Hyde of Reading, Pennsylvania, patented the fountain pen.

1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.

1896 – The six ton chandelier of the Palais Garnier falls on the crowd below resulting in the death of one and the injury of many others.

1902 – Cuba gains independence from the United States. Tomás Estrada Palma becomes the country's first President.

1913 - The first Chelsea Flower Show was held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital, attracting around 200,000 visitors. The show started in 1827, moving to larger venues until it settled in Chelsea.

1927 – At 07:52 Charles Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, on the world's first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He touched down at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 22:22 the next day.

1939 - Regular transatlantic air service began as a Pan American Airways plane, the Yankee Clipper, took off from Port Washington, New York, bound for Europe.

1983 – First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier.

1993 - Britain finally ratified the Maastricht Treaty which allowed greater co-operation between members of the European Union.

1996 - The death of actor John Pertwee, known for his role in the TV series Doctor Who and as the title character in the series Worzel Gummidge.

1873 - Clothing manufacturer Levi Strauss and tailor Jacob Davis were granted a patent to use copper rivets to strengthen denim overalls, leading to the first line of blue jeans made by Levi Strauss & Co.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levi_Strauss

1964 - Rudy Lewis of the Drifters dies under mysterious circumstances. He was 28.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Lewis

1965 - It was announced that British police will be equipped with tear gas guns and grenades.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...510539.stm

1970 - The Beatles' final feature film, Let It Be, premieres simultaneously in Liverpool and London.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_It_Be_(film)

1973 - Britain sends three Royal Navy ships to protect trawling / fishing boats in the disputed Icedlandic 50 mile zone. It was part of the so called "Cod War" between the UK and Iceland.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...510837.stm

1997 - Rock band U2 cause traffic chaos in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, when they paid for Traffic Control to close 5 lanes so they could shoot the video for "Last Night On Earth".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Night_..._(U2_song)
http://www.thisdayinmusic.com/

2000 - Tony and Cherie Blair celebrate the birth of their fourth child, Leo.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...510429.stm

2002 - East Timor gains independence from Indonesisa to become the first new sovereign state of the 21st Century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Timor

2006 - Heavy metal rock band Lordi, representing Finland, win the Eurovision Song Contest in Athens, Greece. It is Finland's first ever victory as the monster rockers romp home with a record 292 points.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lordi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_...ntest_2006

1856 - A crowd of about 800 pro-slavery Americans ransack the town of Lawrence, Kansas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacking_of_Lawrence

1904 - FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) is founded in Paris.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFA

1927 - Charles Lindbergh completes the first non-stop transatlantic flight on board his plane, Spirit of St Louis. His route took him from Roosevelt Field, New York to Le Bourget Airport, Paris.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_St._Louis

1950 - A tornado sweeps across southern England claiming two lives and injuring several others.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...966457.stm

1966 - Cassius Clay (Mohammed Ali) defeats Henry Cooper by stopping him in the sixth round in their World Heavyweight Championship fight at Highbury Stadium, London.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...504777.stm

1981 - The Italian government release the membership list of "Propaganda Due" - an illegal pseudo-Masonic lodge implicated in several crimes and mysteries in the country.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Due

1471 - Henry VI, King of England, was murdered in the Tower of London where he had been imprisoned by Edward IV, who then resumed the throne.

1840 - Britain claimed complete sovereignty over New Zealand.

1851 - Gold was first discovered in Australia.

1881 – The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton in Washington, D.C..

1894 - The official opening, by Queen Victoria, of the Manchester Ship Canal. At its opening it was the largest river navigation canal in the world.

1936 – Sada Abe is arrested after wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with her dead lover's severed genitals in her hand. Her story soon becomes one of Japan's most notorious scandals.

1937 – A Soviet station, North Pole-1, becomes the first scientific research settlement to operate on the drift ice of the Arctic Ocean.

1972 – Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is damaged by a vandal, the mentally disturbed Hungarian geologist Laszlo Toth.

1997 - The British government announced a complete ban on anti-personnel landmines.

1998 – In Miami, Florida, five abortion clinics are hit by a butyric acid attacker.

2005 – The tallest roller coaster in the world, Kingda Ka opens at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey.

2010 – JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, launches the solar-sail spacecraft IKAROS aboard an H-IIA rocket.

(21-05-2012 12:40 )skully Wrote:  1936 – Sada Abe is arrested after wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with her dead lover's severed genitals in her hand. Her story soon becomes one of Japan's most notorious scandals.

As much as anything, the Sada Abe scandal said more about an unspoken and unpleasant undercurrent of sexual exploitation and misogeny in Japanese society that was far from the general public perception of the country at that time (in the same way that our "Victorian values" are portayed as puritanical and upstanding when in reality they were anything but!).

Sada Abe was born into what we would describe as an upper middle-class family, but her father was a womaniser and walked out on her mother when she was a child. Abe became a rebellious teenager and drifted into alcohol and prostitution, which was widespread in Japan at that time. Her parents (who were still in touch although separated) eventually sold her to a geisha house, which was legal and regarded as a respectable form of prostitution.

However, she contracted syphilis, so left the geisha house to become a full-time prostitute in the red light district in Osaka. Although prostitution was legal, she was arrested in 1934 when the police raided the unlicensed brothel where she was working. A well-connected friend of the owner bribed the police to drop the charges against her and she became his full-time mistress, whilst working as a waitress in his restaurant. He later testified that her sexual appitite was insatiable, and the novelty of her wanting sex at least four times a night soon wore off. In 1935 she met university professor and would-be parliamentary candidate Gora Namoya, and moved to Tokyo with him, intending to give up the sex industry for good.

But Namoya couldn't satisfy her either, and she began an affair with Kichiza Ishida who she found was her sexual soulmate. They met at a "love hotel" for a two-hour session which lasted for four days! Their torrid love affair ended in the early hours of May 18th 1936 when an auto-erotic asphyxiation bondage game went wrong, and she strangled him with the cord of her kimono and he died. There was never anything to suggest that she intended to kill him as she was madly in love with him and it was nothing other than a tragic accident, but she couldn't explain why she then cut his gonads off and carried them around with her in her handbag other than to tell detectives "because I couldn't take his head or body with me. I wanted to take the part of him that brought back to me the most vivid memories."

Once the newspapers picked up the story it became a sensation. Namoya's career was ruined overnight. When the case came to court even the judge admitted to being sexually aroused when he read her interviews with the police, particularly the bit where she described how she used his dead dong as a dildo. Abe was convicted of second degree murder and although the prosecution demanded the death penalty she was sentenced to just six years in jail (and released after four as part of a general amnesty).

After the war Abe traded on her fame. A 1947 book based on her police interviews sold over 100,000 copies, and through the 1950s she made a living from film and media appearances and from a travelling theatre production.

At the end of the 1960s she disappeared from public view. A film producer claimed to have tracked her down in the mid 1970s living as a nun in a religious commune but that was never substantiated and nobody knows what became of her, although if she were to be still alive she would be 107 next Monday.

334 BC – The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus.

1176 – The Hashshashin (Assassins) attempt to murder Saladin near Aleppo.

1570 – The first atlas, with 70 maps, is published.

1819 – The SS Savannah leaves port at Savannah, Georgia, United States, on a voyage to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The ship arrived at Liverpool, England on June 20.

1840 - Britain ended the practice of sending convicts to the penal colony of Australia.

1897 – The Blackwall Tunnel under the River Thames is officially opened

1906 – The Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their "Flying-Machine".

1947 – Cold War: in an effort to fight the spread of Communism, U.S. President Harry S. Truman signs an act into law that will later be called the Truman Doctrine. The act grants $400 million in military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece, each battling an internal Communist movement.

1969 – Apollo 10's lunar module flies within 8.4 nautical miles (16 km) of the moon's surface.

1980 – Namco releases the highly influential arcade game Pac-Man.

1981 - Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, was sentenced to life imprisonment after the judge described him as 'an unusually dangerous man'. He was found guilty of killing 13 women and the attempted murder of 7 others.

1992 – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia join the United Nations.