Origin of a Maxim
Martin Luther King, Jr., did not say it first, but he may have said it best in his 1963 "Letter From Birmingham Jail" when he wrote that "...justice too long delayed is justice denied." The growing crisis in the budget of the California Court System is denying most of the state's residents any hope of justice in a courtroom.
The problems with our state's legal system are like the problems that exist with most state agencies. Obsolete or at best, antiquated telephone systems. While the Franchise Tax Board now has technology that allows you to avoid long waits on-hold by its capacity to call you back when it is your turn, the phone systems of the Employment Development Department and the Court system cannot do this. Courts are being forced to close due to ever-shrinking budgets.
Since not all matters can be filed electronically, closing courts means those seeking redress through the legal system face longer drives to courts where they must stand in longer lines. Lines where fights break out. Lines where people don't get served after standing there waiting for hours.
If you live in Needles and you need to seek relief in the court, plan on a three hour drive. Need a change in a custody order in any court and you may wait in lines for four months to get a hearing. A trial in a traffic case can take more than a year. Suppose you get cited for speeding. You'll spend a year waiting for your trial, having already paid the standard fine and penalty assessments for the infraction as "bail" in order to get to trial. Then if you win, you'll wait weeks and weeks to have your money returned to you.
Standard fine? Penalty assessment? What are those? Look at it this way. The fines for traffic violations like speeding, running a red light and so on are really just taxes. Revenue generators. Oh they exist under the pretext of protecting the public and promoting public safety, but they are there to boost revenues so government can spend more. The penalty assessment is a clever way of enhancing that revenue by adding a surtax on the tax, as a way to pay for the court system. Here is how it reads in the California Code, Section 70373: "(a) (1) To ensure and maintain adequate funding for court facilities, an assessment shall be imposed on every conviction for a criminal offense, including a traffic offense, except parking offenses as defined in subdivision (i) of Section 1463 of the Penal Code, involving a violation of a section of the Vehicle Code or any local ordinance adopted pursuant to the Vehicle Code."
Penalty assessments have grown to the point that an infraction for which the base fine is only $100 requires paying $360 in total. The fine plus 260% in penalty assessments. So if those assessments are being made to fund the court system, why is the budget for the court system busted? The same reason that the lottery money isn't providing surpluses in educational funding. What was to be "extra" money became the primary money in the wake of spending cuts whose origins can be traced back to Prop 13.
Now you know why my friends who ride with me when I'm driving are subjected to my extreme compliance with traffic regulations. Not just because I have military law enforcement experience, or because I'm obsessed with being a safe driver (though both are factors). It is because I'm not going to allow myself to be subjected to such a huge tax in order to drive.
Obviously, Governor Moonbeam doesn't have a solution to this problem either.
* * *
Karl Rove needs to go to the tape a little more often to keep track of his dishonest mud slinging. Back in 2012, when the Benghazi flap was center-stage, he and other Republican strategists suggested that Hillary's illness, fall and concussion were faked. Staged, to help her avoid testifying about her role in the alleged cover-up.
Now, he's come full circle, implying she suffered a traumatic brain injury at that time that calls into question her fitness to run for the presidency in 2016. He specifically lied in saying she spent 30 days in the hospital. I know, it isn't a news flash that Karl Rove told a lie. Were he to be afflicted with the dreaded Pinocchio Syndrome, where one's nose grows permanently each time they tell a lie, his snout would announce he was entering a room 20 to 30 minutes prior to the rest of his body passing through the doorway. What I cannot understand is why someone who so pervasively pushes falsehoods manages to retain any semblance of credibility or relevance.
The answer isn't more and better mud-slinging, Mr. Rove. The answer is to find real solutions to the real issues that voters face, in order to earn their support. Suppressing the votes of those whose votes your proposed policies cannot obtain through legitimate discourse may seem a great short-term strategy, but in the long run it will lead to political ruin.
Here's a simple idea which someone of Mr. Rove's alleged political prowess should be able to run with. Find candidates with proposals we can support and we might just give them a chance to implement them. I know it isn't deceitful, dishonest, or downright dirty, but it has real potential to lead to better times.
* * *
I'm relieved to know that the United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs, retired general Eric Shinseki can make a movie reference.
Very good, Mr. Secretary. A necessary first step. Now that you're mad as hell, how about doing something? How about finding out who is behind the secret appointment lists, the failure to get treatment to the men and women who needed it so badly that they died while waiting. Your anger is good, but useless without being channeled in a proper direction.
Do something. As military leadership aphorisms go, there's a pretty good one that reads "Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way." Do just that, Mr. Secretary. Lead, follow, or resign and get the hell out of the way.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Funny how the real nature of a relationship comes to be so clearly visible when that relationship is being stressed.
The hotel that was host to the Jay-Z vs Solange Knowles elevator bout has fired the employee who leaked the footage to TMZ. TMZ paid that employee a reported $250,000 for the footage. How long will that carry this person without work in NYC is yet to be determined.
Will Pharrell make "Horny" his next big hit song?
Katey Sagal is perfectly cast for Pitch Perfect 2. She can sing and act. Can't wait!
A parent having a problem with kids at a talent show doing a performance of "YMCA" because it's racist to portray a Native American in that way; well, that parent is too tightly wrapped.
So a minister abuses his position and takes over $1.2 million from his church and his only penalty is having to repay the money with interest, and being barred from being a nonprofit or religious fiduciary again in New York? That's just not enough.
Justin Bieber is unhappy because he gets "judged." Dude, don't piss in open mop buckets in front of people and you might get judged a little less.
I know people get nervous about banks, but couches aren't great places to stash big piles of cash.
I heard a new commercial about how algorithms can't replace nurses, and it made me realize how some came to improperly claim that Al Gore took credit for inventing the internet. They heard algorithm and thought it was Al Gore rhythm.
People are arguing over whether the word "N**ga" is more or less acceptable than the word "N**g*r", and that context has a lot to do with it. Seems kind of a tempest in a teapot.
* * *
May 15th in History:
495 BC – A newly constructed temple in honour of the god Mercury was dedicated in ancient Rome on the Circus Maximus, between the Aventine and Palatine hills. To spite the senate and the consuls, the people awarded the dedication to a senior military officer, Marcus Laetorius
392 – Emperor Valentinian II is assassinated while advancing into Gaul against the Frankish usurper Arbogast. He is found hanging in his residence at Vienne.
589 – King Authari marries Theodelinda, daughter of the Bavarian duke Garibald I. A Catholic, she has great influence among the Lombard nobility.
1252 – Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad extirpanda, which authorizes, but also limits, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition.
1525 – Insurgent peasants led by Anabaptist pastor Thomas Müntzer were defeated at the Battle of Frankenhausen, ending the German Peasants' War in the Holy Roman Empire.
1536 – Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, stands trial in London on charges of treason, adultery and incest. She is condemned to death by a specially-selected jury.
1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots marries James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, her third husband.
1602 – Bartholomew Gosnold becomes the first recorded European to see Cape Cod.
1618 – Johannes Kepler confirms his previously rejected discovery of the third law of planetary motion (he first discovered it on March 8 but soon rejected the idea after some initial calculations were made).
1648 – The Treaty of Westphalia is signed.
1701 – The War of the Spanish Succession begins.
1718 – James Puckle, a London lawyer, patents the world's first machine gun.
1755 – Laredo, Texas is established by the Spaniards.
1776 – American Revolution: the Virginia Convention instructs its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain, paving the way for the United States Declaration of Independence.
1791 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre proposes the Self-denying Ordinance.
1792 – War of the First Coalition: France declares war on Kingdom of Sardinia.
1793 – Diego Marín Aguilera flies a glider for "about 360 meters", at a height of 5–6 meters, during one of the first attempted manned flights.
1796 – First Coalition: Napoleon enters Milan in triumph.
1800 – King George III of the United Kingdom survives an assassination attempt by James Hadfield, who is later acquitted by reason of insanity.
1811 – Paraguay declares independence from Spain.
1817 – Opening of the first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1836 – Francis Baily observes "Baily's beads" during an annular eclipse.
1849 – Troops of the Two Sicilies take Palermo and crush the republican government of Sicily
1850 – The Bloody Island Massacre takes place in Lake County, California, in which a large number of Pomo Indians in Lake County are slaughtered by a regiment of the United States Cavalry, led by Nathaniel Lyon.
1858 – Opening of the present Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London.
1862 – President Abraham Lincoln signs a bill into law creating the United States Bureau of Agriculture. It is later renamed the United States Department of Agriculture.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Resaca, Georgia ends.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of New Market, Virginia: Students from the Virginia Military Institute fight alongside the Confederate Army to force Union General Franz Sigel out of the Shenandoah Valley.
1869 – Women's suffrage: in New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.
1891 – Pope Leo XIII defends workers' rights and property rights in the encyclical Rerum Novarum, the beginning of modern Catholic social teaching.
1904 – Russo-Japanese War: The Russian minelayer Amur lays a minefield about 15 miles off Port Arthur and sinks Japan's battleships Hatsuse, 15,000 tons, with 496 crew and Yashima.
1905 – Las Vegas, is founded when 110 acres (0.45 km2), in what later would become downtown, are auctioned off.
1911 – In Standard Oil Company of New Jersey v. United States, the United States Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an "unreasonable" monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up.
1919 – The Winnipeg General Strike begins. By 11:00, almost the whole working population of Winnipeg, Manitoba had walked off the job.
1919 – Greek invasion of Smyrna. During the invasion, the Greek army kills or wounds 350 Turks. Those responsible are punished by the Greek Commander Aristides Stergiades.
1928 – Walt Disney character Mickey Mouse premieres in his first cartoon, Plane Crazy
1929 – A fire at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio kills 123.
1932 – In an attempted coup d'état, the Prime Minister of Japan Inukai Tsuyoshi is murdered.
1934 – Kārlis Ulmanis establishes an authoritarian government in Latvia.
1935 – The Moscow Metro is opened to the public.
1940 – USS Sailfish is recommissioned. It was originally the USS Squalus.
1940 – World War II: After fierce fighting, the poorly trained and equipped Dutch troops surrender to Germany, marking the beginning of five years of occupation.
1940 – McDonald's opens its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California.
1941 – First flight of the Gloster E.28/39 the first British and Allied jet aircraft.
1942 – World War II: in the United States, a bill creating the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) is signed into law.
1943 – Joseph Stalin dissolves the Comintern (or Third International).
1945 – World War II: The Battle of Poljana, the final skirmish in Europe is fought near Prevalje, Slovenia.
1948 – Following the demise of Mandatory Palestine, the Kingdom of Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia invade Israel thus starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
1951 – The Polish cultural attaché in Paris, Czesław Miłosz, asks the French government for political asylum.
1953 – Cubmaster Don Murphy organized the first pinewood derby, in Manhattan Beach, California, by Pack 280c.
1957 – At Malden Island in the Pacific Ocean, Britain tests its first hydrogen bomb in Operation Grapple.
1958 – The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 3.
1960 – The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 4.
1963 – Project Mercury: The launch of the final Mercury mission, Mercury-Atlas 9 with astronaut L. Gordon Cooper on board. He becomes the first American to spend more than a day in space.
1966 – After a policy dispute, Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ of South Vietnam's ruling junta launches a military attack on the forces of General Tôn Thất Đính, forcing him to abandon his command.
1969 – People's Park: California Governor Ronald Reagan has an impromptu student park owned by University of California at Berkeley fenced off from student anti-war protestors, sparking a riot called Bloody Thursday.
1970 – President Richard Nixon appoints Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington the first female United States Army Generals.
1970 – Philip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green are killed at Jackson State University by police during student protests.
1972 – Okinawa, under U.S. military governance since its conquest in 1945, reverts to Japanese control.
1972 – In Laurel, Maryland, Arthur Bremer shoots and paralyzes Alabama Governor George Wallace while he is campaigning to become President.
1974 – Ma'alot massacre: Members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine attack and take hostages at an Israeli school; a total of 31 people are killed, including 22 schoolchildren.
1986 – Elio de Angelis, was killed while testing the Brabham BT55 at the Paul Ricard circuit at Le Castellet.
1987 – The Soviet Union launches the Polyus prototype orbital weapons platform. It fails to reach orbit.
1988 – Soviet war in Afghanistan: After more than eight years of fighting, the Soviet Army begins its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
1991 – Édith Cresson becomes France's first female premier.
1997 – The United States government acknowledges the existence of the "Secret War" in Laos and dedicates the Laos Memorial in honor of Hmong and other "Secret War" veterans.
2006 – Cloud Gate was formally dedicated in Chicago's Millennium Park.
2008 – California becomes the second U.S. state after Massachusetts in 2004 to legalize same-sex marriage after the state's own Supreme Court rules a previous ban unconstitutional.
2010 – Jessica Watson becomes the youngest person to sail, non-stop and unassisted around the world solo.
2013 – An upsurge in violence in Iraq leaves more than 389 people dead over three days.
Famous Folk Born on May 15th:
Sejong the Great
Levi Lincoln, Sr.
L. Frank Baum
Pierre Curie
Clarence Dutton
Prescott Bush (father and grandfather of U. S. Presidents, and important in the early history of Planned Parenthood)
Richard J. Daley
Joseph Cotton
Abraham Zapruder
James Mason
Eddy Arnold
Wavy Gravy
Madeleine Albright
Trini Lopez
Roger Ailes
Lainie Kazan
K. T. Oslin
Brian Eno
Kathleen Sebilius
Phil Seymour
George Brett
Suzanne Basso
Lee Horsley
Dan Patrick
Ryan Leaf
Jamie Lynn-Sigler
Andy Murray
Precious Doe
The problems with our state's legal system are like the problems that exist with most state agencies. Obsolete or at best, antiquated telephone systems. While the Franchise Tax Board now has technology that allows you to avoid long waits on-hold by its capacity to call you back when it is your turn, the phone systems of the Employment Development Department and the Court system cannot do this. Courts are being forced to close due to ever-shrinking budgets.
Since not all matters can be filed electronically, closing courts means those seeking redress through the legal system face longer drives to courts where they must stand in longer lines. Lines where fights break out. Lines where people don't get served after standing there waiting for hours.
If you live in Needles and you need to seek relief in the court, plan on a three hour drive. Need a change in a custody order in any court and you may wait in lines for four months to get a hearing. A trial in a traffic case can take more than a year. Suppose you get cited for speeding. You'll spend a year waiting for your trial, having already paid the standard fine and penalty assessments for the infraction as "bail" in order to get to trial. Then if you win, you'll wait weeks and weeks to have your money returned to you.
Standard fine? Penalty assessment? What are those? Look at it this way. The fines for traffic violations like speeding, running a red light and so on are really just taxes. Revenue generators. Oh they exist under the pretext of protecting the public and promoting public safety, but they are there to boost revenues so government can spend more. The penalty assessment is a clever way of enhancing that revenue by adding a surtax on the tax, as a way to pay for the court system. Here is how it reads in the California Code, Section 70373: "(a) (1) To ensure and maintain adequate funding for court facilities, an assessment shall be imposed on every conviction for a criminal offense, including a traffic offense, except parking offenses as defined in subdivision (i) of Section 1463 of the Penal Code, involving a violation of a section of the Vehicle Code or any local ordinance adopted pursuant to the Vehicle Code."
Penalty assessments have grown to the point that an infraction for which the base fine is only $100 requires paying $360 in total. The fine plus 260% in penalty assessments. So if those assessments are being made to fund the court system, why is the budget for the court system busted? The same reason that the lottery money isn't providing surpluses in educational funding. What was to be "extra" money became the primary money in the wake of spending cuts whose origins can be traced back to Prop 13.
Now you know why my friends who ride with me when I'm driving are subjected to my extreme compliance with traffic regulations. Not just because I have military law enforcement experience, or because I'm obsessed with being a safe driver (though both are factors). It is because I'm not going to allow myself to be subjected to such a huge tax in order to drive.
Obviously, Governor Moonbeam doesn't have a solution to this problem either.
* * *
Karl Rove needs to go to the tape a little more often to keep track of his dishonest mud slinging. Back in 2012, when the Benghazi flap was center-stage, he and other Republican strategists suggested that Hillary's illness, fall and concussion were faked. Staged, to help her avoid testifying about her role in the alleged cover-up.
Now, he's come full circle, implying she suffered a traumatic brain injury at that time that calls into question her fitness to run for the presidency in 2016. He specifically lied in saying she spent 30 days in the hospital. I know, it isn't a news flash that Karl Rove told a lie. Were he to be afflicted with the dreaded Pinocchio Syndrome, where one's nose grows permanently each time they tell a lie, his snout would announce he was entering a room 20 to 30 minutes prior to the rest of his body passing through the doorway. What I cannot understand is why someone who so pervasively pushes falsehoods manages to retain any semblance of credibility or relevance.
The answer isn't more and better mud-slinging, Mr. Rove. The answer is to find real solutions to the real issues that voters face, in order to earn their support. Suppressing the votes of those whose votes your proposed policies cannot obtain through legitimate discourse may seem a great short-term strategy, but in the long run it will lead to political ruin.
Here's a simple idea which someone of Mr. Rove's alleged political prowess should be able to run with. Find candidates with proposals we can support and we might just give them a chance to implement them. I know it isn't deceitful, dishonest, or downright dirty, but it has real potential to lead to better times.
* * *
I'm relieved to know that the United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs, retired general Eric Shinseki can make a movie reference.
Very good, Mr. Secretary. A necessary first step. Now that you're mad as hell, how about doing something? How about finding out who is behind the secret appointment lists, the failure to get treatment to the men and women who needed it so badly that they died while waiting. Your anger is good, but useless without being channeled in a proper direction.
Do something. As military leadership aphorisms go, there's a pretty good one that reads "Lead, follow or get the hell out of the way." Do just that, Mr. Secretary. Lead, follow, or resign and get the hell out of the way.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
Funny how the real nature of a relationship comes to be so clearly visible when that relationship is being stressed.
The hotel that was host to the Jay-Z vs Solange Knowles elevator bout has fired the employee who leaked the footage to TMZ. TMZ paid that employee a reported $250,000 for the footage. How long will that carry this person without work in NYC is yet to be determined.
Will Pharrell make "Horny" his next big hit song?
Katey Sagal is perfectly cast for Pitch Perfect 2. She can sing and act. Can't wait!
A parent having a problem with kids at a talent show doing a performance of "YMCA" because it's racist to portray a Native American in that way; well, that parent is too tightly wrapped.
So a minister abuses his position and takes over $1.2 million from his church and his only penalty is having to repay the money with interest, and being barred from being a nonprofit or religious fiduciary again in New York? That's just not enough.
Justin Bieber is unhappy because he gets "judged." Dude, don't piss in open mop buckets in front of people and you might get judged a little less.
I know people get nervous about banks, but couches aren't great places to stash big piles of cash.
I heard a new commercial about how algorithms can't replace nurses, and it made me realize how some came to improperly claim that Al Gore took credit for inventing the internet. They heard algorithm and thought it was Al Gore rhythm.
People are arguing over whether the word "N**ga" is more or less acceptable than the word "N**g*r", and that context has a lot to do with it. Seems kind of a tempest in a teapot.
* * *
May 15th in History:
495 BC – A newly constructed temple in honour of the god Mercury was dedicated in ancient Rome on the Circus Maximus, between the Aventine and Palatine hills. To spite the senate and the consuls, the people awarded the dedication to a senior military officer, Marcus Laetorius
392 – Emperor Valentinian II is assassinated while advancing into Gaul against the Frankish usurper Arbogast. He is found hanging in his residence at Vienne.
589 – King Authari marries Theodelinda, daughter of the Bavarian duke Garibald I. A Catholic, she has great influence among the Lombard nobility.
1252 – Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad extirpanda, which authorizes, but also limits, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition.
1525 – Insurgent peasants led by Anabaptist pastor Thomas Müntzer were defeated at the Battle of Frankenhausen, ending the German Peasants' War in the Holy Roman Empire.
1536 – Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, stands trial in London on charges of treason, adultery and incest. She is condemned to death by a specially-selected jury.
1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots marries James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, her third husband.
1602 – Bartholomew Gosnold becomes the first recorded European to see Cape Cod.
1618 – Johannes Kepler confirms his previously rejected discovery of the third law of planetary motion (he first discovered it on March 8 but soon rejected the idea after some initial calculations were made).
1648 – The Treaty of Westphalia is signed.
1701 – The War of the Spanish Succession begins.
1718 – James Puckle, a London lawyer, patents the world's first machine gun.
1755 – Laredo, Texas is established by the Spaniards.
1776 – American Revolution: the Virginia Convention instructs its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain, paving the way for the United States Declaration of Independence.
1791 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre proposes the Self-denying Ordinance.
1792 – War of the First Coalition: France declares war on Kingdom of Sardinia.
1793 – Diego Marín Aguilera flies a glider for "about 360 meters", at a height of 5–6 meters, during one of the first attempted manned flights.
1796 – First Coalition: Napoleon enters Milan in triumph.
1800 – King George III of the United Kingdom survives an assassination attempt by James Hadfield, who is later acquitted by reason of insanity.
1811 – Paraguay declares independence from Spain.
1817 – Opening of the first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1836 – Francis Baily observes "Baily's beads" during an annular eclipse.
1849 – Troops of the Two Sicilies take Palermo and crush the republican government of Sicily
1850 – The Bloody Island Massacre takes place in Lake County, California, in which a large number of Pomo Indians in Lake County are slaughtered by a regiment of the United States Cavalry, led by Nathaniel Lyon.
1858 – Opening of the present Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London.
1862 – President Abraham Lincoln signs a bill into law creating the United States Bureau of Agriculture. It is later renamed the United States Department of Agriculture.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Resaca, Georgia ends.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of New Market, Virginia: Students from the Virginia Military Institute fight alongside the Confederate Army to force Union General Franz Sigel out of the Shenandoah Valley.
1869 – Women's suffrage: in New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.
1891 – Pope Leo XIII defends workers' rights and property rights in the encyclical Rerum Novarum, the beginning of modern Catholic social teaching.
1904 – Russo-Japanese War: The Russian minelayer Amur lays a minefield about 15 miles off Port Arthur and sinks Japan's battleships Hatsuse, 15,000 tons, with 496 crew and Yashima.
1905 – Las Vegas, is founded when 110 acres (0.45 km2), in what later would become downtown, are auctioned off.
1911 – In Standard Oil Company of New Jersey v. United States, the United States Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an "unreasonable" monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up.
1919 – The Winnipeg General Strike begins. By 11:00, almost the whole working population of Winnipeg, Manitoba had walked off the job.
1919 – Greek invasion of Smyrna. During the invasion, the Greek army kills or wounds 350 Turks. Those responsible are punished by the Greek Commander Aristides Stergiades.
1928 – Walt Disney character Mickey Mouse premieres in his first cartoon, Plane Crazy
1929 – A fire at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio kills 123.
1932 – In an attempted coup d'état, the Prime Minister of Japan Inukai Tsuyoshi is murdered.
1934 – Kārlis Ulmanis establishes an authoritarian government in Latvia.
1935 – The Moscow Metro is opened to the public.
1940 – USS Sailfish is recommissioned. It was originally the USS Squalus.
1940 – World War II: After fierce fighting, the poorly trained and equipped Dutch troops surrender to Germany, marking the beginning of five years of occupation.
1940 – McDonald's opens its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California.
1941 – First flight of the Gloster E.28/39 the first British and Allied jet aircraft.
1942 – World War II: in the United States, a bill creating the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) is signed into law.
1943 – Joseph Stalin dissolves the Comintern (or Third International).
1945 – World War II: The Battle of Poljana, the final skirmish in Europe is fought near Prevalje, Slovenia.
1948 – Following the demise of Mandatory Palestine, the Kingdom of Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia invade Israel thus starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
1951 – The Polish cultural attaché in Paris, Czesław Miłosz, asks the French government for political asylum.
1953 – Cubmaster Don Murphy organized the first pinewood derby, in Manhattan Beach, California, by Pack 280c.
1957 – At Malden Island in the Pacific Ocean, Britain tests its first hydrogen bomb in Operation Grapple.
1958 – The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 3.
1960 – The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 4.
1963 – Project Mercury: The launch of the final Mercury mission, Mercury-Atlas 9 with astronaut L. Gordon Cooper on board. He becomes the first American to spend more than a day in space.
1966 – After a policy dispute, Prime Minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ of South Vietnam's ruling junta launches a military attack on the forces of General Tôn Thất Đính, forcing him to abandon his command.
1969 – People's Park: California Governor Ronald Reagan has an impromptu student park owned by University of California at Berkeley fenced off from student anti-war protestors, sparking a riot called Bloody Thursday.
1970 – President Richard Nixon appoints Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington the first female United States Army Generals.
1970 – Philip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green are killed at Jackson State University by police during student protests.
1972 – Okinawa, under U.S. military governance since its conquest in 1945, reverts to Japanese control.
1972 – In Laurel, Maryland, Arthur Bremer shoots and paralyzes Alabama Governor George Wallace while he is campaigning to become President.
1974 – Ma'alot massacre: Members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine attack and take hostages at an Israeli school; a total of 31 people are killed, including 22 schoolchildren.
1986 – Elio de Angelis, was killed while testing the Brabham BT55 at the Paul Ricard circuit at Le Castellet.
1987 – The Soviet Union launches the Polyus prototype orbital weapons platform. It fails to reach orbit.
1988 – Soviet war in Afghanistan: After more than eight years of fighting, the Soviet Army begins its withdrawal from Afghanistan.
1991 – Édith Cresson becomes France's first female premier.
1997 – The United States government acknowledges the existence of the "Secret War" in Laos and dedicates the Laos Memorial in honor of Hmong and other "Secret War" veterans.
2006 – Cloud Gate was formally dedicated in Chicago's Millennium Park.
2008 – California becomes the second U.S. state after Massachusetts in 2004 to legalize same-sex marriage after the state's own Supreme Court rules a previous ban unconstitutional.
2010 – Jessica Watson becomes the youngest person to sail, non-stop and unassisted around the world solo.
2013 – An upsurge in violence in Iraq leaves more than 389 people dead over three days.
Famous Folk Born on May 15th:
Sejong the Great
Levi Lincoln, Sr.
L. Frank Baum
Pierre Curie
Clarence Dutton
Prescott Bush (father and grandfather of U. S. Presidents, and important in the early history of Planned Parenthood)
Richard J. Daley
Joseph Cotton
Abraham Zapruder
James Mason
Eddy Arnold
Wavy Gravy
Madeleine Albright
Trini Lopez
Roger Ailes
Lainie Kazan
K. T. Oslin
Brian Eno
Kathleen Sebilius
Phil Seymour
George Brett
Suzanne Basso
Lee Horsley
Dan Patrick
Ryan Leaf
Jamie Lynn-Sigler
Andy Murray
Precious Doe
posted by me at 5:12 PM
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