Author: Redactor

On June 1, 1792, Kentucky was admitted as the 15th state of the United States. Four years later, Tennessee became the 16th state.

On May 31, 455 A.D., Emperor Petronius Maximus was stoned to death by an angry mob while fleeing Rome. On that date in 1578, King Henry III laid the first stone of the Pont Neuf (New Bridge), the oldest bridge of Paris, France. In other rock history, May 31, 2013, marked the closest approach to Earth that the asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon will get until two centuries hence.

In 1927 on the last day of May, the last Ford Model T rolled off the assembly line after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles. In 2005, Vanity Fair revealed that Mark Felt was Watergate informer “Deep Throat.”

On May 30, 1989, student demonstrators unveiled a 33-foot high “Goddess of Democracy and Freedom” statue in Tiananmen Square.

On May 29, 1790, Rhode Island became the last of the original United States’ colonies to ratify the Constitution and is admitted as the 13th U.S. state. On the same date in 1848, Wisconsin was admitted as the 30th U.S. state.

Hong Kong’s General Chamber of Commerce was founded on this date in 1861. In other commerce news — or, history — the pharmacist John Pemberton places his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in The Atlanta Journal on May 29, 1886.

Parisian ballet-goers rioted at the premiere of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring on the spring day of May 29 in 1913. In 1990, the Russian parliament elected Boris Yeltsin as president of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. The caricature, above, was drawn at the time to portray the event, which is a cultural landmark of the 20th century.

May 29th birthdays include

* 1736 – Patrick Henry, American lawyer and politician, first Governor of Virginia (d. 1799)
* 1874 – G. K. Chesterton, English essayist, poet, and playwright (d. 1936)
* 1906 – T. H. White, Indian-English writer, author of The Once and Future King (d. 1964)
* 1917 – John F. Kennedy, American lieutenant and politician, 35th President of the United States (d. 1963)
* 1929 – Harry Frankfurt, American philosopher and academic, author of On Bulshit (2005)

On May 28, 1952, the women of Greece gained the right to vote.