The oversight of education, large and small
My friend ran for and won a seat on the local School District Board of Education. I voted for him. Not because he's a long-time friend, but because he was the best candidate. Culver City Unified School District oversees an annual budget of less than $60 million with an elected board of five members who serve four year terms. The school district is responsible for some 6,500 students.
The much larger Los Angeles Unified School District has a budget of $6.78 billion to educate nearly 670,000 students. It has a seven member board elected on a geographic basis within the city and these people chosen to oversee our children's education serve four year terms.
Looking at the resumes of these board members, we find that on the CCUSD board, three of the five have actual classroom teaching experience. Among the members of the LAUSD board, five of the seven have taught in the classroom and one of the remaining two worked as a guidance counselor.
Then we have the University of California's Board of Regents. Fifteen individuals appointed by our government to terms of 12 years. Captains of industry, well-heeled individuals with impressive resumes and no experience in what it takes to run a school from the perspective of a classroom. That's not to say teaching in a classroom necessarily makes one more qualified to sit and oversee the spending of funds for education. It is not. Expertise in oversight of education doesn't necessarily require experience in the classroom. And considering they oversee a budget of $22.7 billion, they shouldn't all be former educators.
But to have a Board of Regents where the important folks are all appointed by the Governor, where no one has experience working in education, seems somewhat obtuse. Even though the main requirements for a gubernatorial appointment appears to be experience in the legal field, the ability to make campaign donations, or a high public profile, there must be some people out there with backgrounds in education who could serve on the Board of Regents. And I would love it if someone could explain to me why there is a system in place where people are appointed to these positions for terms of three times the length of those who are responsible to the voters.
The trends among public universities, not limited to the UC system are troubling. Administrative salaries rising to new all-time highs. A report in the Chronicle of Higher Education showed that nine presidents of public universities had compensation worth more than $1 million.
A study published by the Institute for Policy Studies shows even more alarming trends. With the student loan crisis expanding rapidly, average student debt at public universities grew faster at the 25 state universities where the presidents are paid the most. 13% faster. Worse yet, the percentage of part-time and temporary faculty is on the rise at these schools.
Being a college professor is a tough gig. Doing it at two, three or even four institutions in order to make a living wage makes it infinitely more difficult. Office hours and time for students are things that professors working at more than one school can't offer as easily to their students. Access to the professor and continuity of instruction are critical elements in providing the best possible education, at any level. But because it is cheaper to hire the part-time and temporary faculty members, and it has become necessary to spend more for overpaid administrators, this is the trend.
Perhaps if the people sitting in that room where the Board of Regents meet were responsible to the people directly, rather than to a governor with many other interests; and if some of them were actually educators, things might be handled differently.
* * *
I almost never eat cheese. I don't like cheese on burgers, eggs, or just about anything else. The one exception is pizza. I confess, I love pizza. But now that I've made this connection with how much harder my body has to work when I put too much sodium in it, I may have eaten my last pizza from Dominos.
I was debating over what to have for dinner last night and decided one way to narrow down my choices was to check their nutritional information. I was sure that the amount in a pizza would be unhealthy, but I had no idea just how high that amount would be. The medium, three topping pizza that would make a meal and two snacks has nearly 4,000 milligrams of sodium in it. That's more than two days of the recommended daily allowance.
V-8 juice, tomato juice, pickles and the rest are chock full of sodium. Bland scrambled eggs cry out for a sprinkle of salt. I've spent a lifetime using the salt shaker, first without care, and then feigning ignorance of what this substance does to my body.
It would be easy to ignore the risks of using this stuff if it weren't for the fluid leaking out of my left shin, and the fact that after a week of very limited sodium intake, I am breathing much more easily. So while my regular pizza delivery guy's smile will be missed, I won't be seeing him soon. I may put a tiny sprinkle of salt on the last morsel of eggs at breakfast, but until I find a substitute for salt that doesn't involve high amounts of sodium, I've put down the salt shaker again. Sadly, it calls to me.
* * *
Mark Cohen owns Powderhorn Outfitters, in Massachusetts. It's a sporting goods store that is focused on selling firearms, archery equipment, and law enforcement equipment. It has been in business for decades and TD Bank had been its banker for 36 years.
Things changed when the U. S. Department of Justice launched something called "Operation Choke Point," ostensibly a credit-card fraud probe of businesses that the DOJ has arbitrarily labeled as "high-risk." This is a list from an FDIC document issued in 2011:
The document (available here: http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/examinations/supervisory/insights/sisum11/managing.html) talks about risks financial institutions incur by doing business with these supposed high-risk entities.
In the case of Mr. Cohen, with solid financials, a 20 year relationship with the same bank manager at TD Bank, and a need for credit to expand his business, he went and applied for a line of credit. He was turned down, told by the bank that because he "...sells guns," he would not get the loan he was seeking. Why was TD Bank reluctant to make this loan? The allegations are that the bank would come under much closer scrutiny for choosing to continue to work with a high-risk business. That the increased scrutiny is pressuring these banks to stop working with customers who are engaged in legal transactions. My friend who sell lottery tickets in their donut shop are not a higher risk business just because they have that available to their customers. The notion is ridiculous.
We have plenty of regulations and laws designed to combat money laundering. We have plenty of laws to protect consumers from get rich quick schemes and other shady businesses. There's also the basic concept of caveat emptor. Operation Choke Point is nothing more than a blatant attempt by the Obama Administration to do through a back door what it can't do out in the open. Get rid of businesses it doesn't want to exist.
They claim payday lenders are predatory and their elimination would be good for consumers. They are right about the predatory nature of these businesses, and might be right about consumers being better off without them. Let the free markets eliminate them. Someone could probably profit quite nicely by offering this type of financing in an era of growing inequality of income. Without being quite so predatory.
Put simply, Operation Choke Point is nothing more than the Obama Administration telling banks "if you do business with these industries, we will put you under a microscope. So don't do business with them." That's simply wrong.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
In looking at best ways to fix the VA health system, President Obama should consider appointing Lt. General Patricia Horoho, U. S. Army Surgeon General to role in the process. The first Nursing Corps officer to become Army Surgeon General she has the right mix of experience and know-how to aid that effort.
One of the best definitions of being stupid is boasting via social media that you've flouted a law. The law pays attention to social media. Someone once said you should think that of something you're about to post on-line being broadcast on the nightly network news. Would you want that item to be on the screen in every living room across the land?
Donald Sterling is just another fame whore. Maybe he should have hooked up with Kim Kardashian instead of V. Stiviano.
There's a story about a college graduate who paid off $74,000 in student loans within 2 years of graduation. It's impressive, but bear in mind he got a job paying $80,000 a year right out of school.
A frequent dine and dasher in Baltimore is going to jail for five years. More for having created a false call for an ambulance than the theft of food, but he had 80 previous arrests and 40 prior convictions. What took so long to get him behind bars (where, ironically he'll get free meals)?
The Cincinnati archdiocese's increased "morality" clause in teacher contracts for next year is nothing more than a way to try to protect themselves from lawsuits and allow them to discriminate "legally." It's reprehensible.
Medicare shouldn't be automatically denying coverage for sex-change surgery for people covered by the plan.
Read an item about a woman who had her wedding saved by her representative in Congress. His office staff resolved a hang-up in customs that had kept the dress from reaching her before the wedding date. Well played, Congressman Garamendi and staff.
I may have been a bit too harsh on Charlize Theron for her likening media scrutiny to rape. But only a bit. I don't think she intended her message to come across the way it did, nor do I think she was intentionally trying to make the suffering of rape victims seem unimportant.
* * *
June 1st in History:
193 – The Roman Emperor Didius Julianus is assassinated.
1215 – Zhongdu (now Beijing), then under the control of the Jurchen ruler Emperor Xuanzong of Jin, is captured by the Mongols under Genghis Khan, ending the Battle of Zhongdu.
1252 – Alfonso X is elected King of Castile and León.
1298 – Residents of Riga and Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeated the Livonian Order in the Battle of Turaida.
1495 – Friar John Cor records the first known batch of Scotch whisky.
1533 – Anne Boleyn is crowned Queen of England.
1535 – Combined forces loyal to Charles V attack and expel the Ottomans from Tunis during the Conquest of Tunis.
1648 – The Roundheads defeat the Cavaliers at the Battle of Maidstone in the Second English Civil War.
1649 – Start of the Sumuroy Revolt: Filipinos in Northern Samar led by Agustin Sumuroy revolt against Spanish colonial authorities.
1660 – Mary Dyer is hanged for defying a law banning Quakers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1670 – In Dover, England, Charles II of Great Britain and Louis XIV of France sign the secret treaty of Dover, which will force England into the Third Anglo-Dutch War.
1679 – The Scottish Covenanters defeat John Graham of Claverhouse at the Battle of Drumclog.
1779 – Benedict Arnold, a general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, is court-martialed for malfeasance.
1792 – Kentucky is admitted as the 15th state of the United States.
1794 – The battle of the Glorious First of June is fought, the first naval engagement between Britain and France during the French Revolutionary Wars.
1796 – Tennessee is admitted as the 16th state of the United States.
1812 – War of 1812: The U.S. President James Madison asks the Congress to declare war on the United Kingdom.
1813 – James Lawrence, the mortally-wounded commander of the USS Chesapeake, gives his final order: "Don't give up the ship!"
1815 – Napoleon promulgates a revised Constitution after it passes a plebiscite.
1831 – James Clark Ross discovers the Magnetic North Pole.
1855 – The American adventurer William Walker conquers Nicaragua.
1857 – Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal is published.
1861 – American Civil War, Battle of Fairfax Court House (June 1861): the first land battle of the American Civil War after the Battle of Fort Sumter, producing the first Confederate combat casualty.
1862 – American Civil War, Peninsula Campaign: the Battle of Seven Pines (or the Battle of Fair Oaks) ends inconclusively, with both sides claiming victory.
1868 – The Treaty of Bosque Redondo is signed, allowing the Navajos to return to their lands in Arizona and New Mexico.
1879 – Napoleon Eugene, the last dynastic Bonaparte, is killed in the Anglo-Zulu War.
1890 – The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine to count census returns.
1910 – Robert Falcon Scott's second South Pole expedition leaves Cardiff.
1913 – The Greek–Serbian Treaty of Alliance is signed, paving the way for the Second Balkan War.
1916 – Louis Brandeis becomes the first Jew appointed to the United States Supreme Court.
1918 – World War I, Western Front: Battle for Belleau Wood – Allied Forces under John J. Pershing and James Harbord engage Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince.
1921 – Tulsa Race Riot: civil unrest in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
1922 – The Royal Ulster Constabulary is founded.
1929 – The 1st Conference of the Communist Parties of Latin America is held in Buenos Aires.
1939 – First flight of the German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter-bomber airplane.
1941 – World War II: the Battle of Crete ends as Crete capitulates to Germany.
1941 – The Farhud, a pogrom of Iraqi Jews, takes place in Baghdad.
1943 – British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777 is shot down over the Bay of Biscay by German Junkers Ju 88s, killing the actor Leslie Howard and leading to speculation that its shooting down was an attempt to kill the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
1946 – Ion Antonescu, "Conducator" (leader) of Romania during World War II, is executed.
1958 – Charles de Gaulle comes out of retirement to lead France by decree for six months.
1960 – New Zealand's first official television broadcast commences at 7.30 pm from Auckland.
1962 – The Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting concludes, among other things, that the British public did not want commercial radio broadcasting.
1963 – Kenya gains internal self-rule (Madaraka Day).
1967 – Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles is released.
1974 – Flixborough disaster: an explosion at a chemical plant kills 28 people.
1974 – The Heimlich maneuver for rescuing choking victims is published in the journal Emergency Medicine.
1978 – The first international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty are filed.
1979 – The first black-led government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 90 years takes power.
1980 – Cable News Network (CNN) begins broadcasting.
1990 – George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev sign a treaty to end chemical weapon production.
1993 – Dobrinja mortar attack: 13 are killed and 133 wounded when Serb mortar shells are fired at a soccer game in Dobrinja, west of Sarajevo.
1999 – American Airlines Flight 1420 slides and crashes while landing at Little Rock National Airport, killing 11 people on a flight from Dallas to Little Rock.
2001 – Nepalese royal massacre: Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal shoots and kills several members of his family including his father and mother, King Birendra of Nepal and Queen Aiswarya.
2001 – Dolphinarium massacre: A Hamas suicide bomber kills 21 at a disco in Tel Aviv.
2003 – The People's Republic of China begins filling the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam.
2009 – Air France Flight 447 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. All 228 passengers and crew are killed.
2009 – General Motors files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It is the fourth largest United States bankruptcy in history.
2011 – A rare tornado outbreak occurs in New England; a strong EF3 tornado strikes Springfield, Massachusetts, during the event, killing four people.
2012 – The Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental jumbo jet aircraft is introduced with Lufthansa.
Famous Folk Born on June 1st:
Brigham Young
John Hunt Morgan
John Bell Hood
Nelson Riddle
Andy Griffith
Marilyn Monroe
Edward Woodward
Pat Boone
Reverend Ike
Morgan Freeman
Cleavon Little
Rene Auberjenois
Dean Chance
Linda Scott
Kerry Vincent
Brian Cox
Jonathan Pryce
Ronnie Wood
Powers Boothe
Wayne Nelson
Ronnie Dunn
Tony Snow
Lisa Hartman Black
Robin Mattson
Martin Brundle
Alan Wilder
Simon Gallup
Nigel Short
Mathias Rust
Teri Polo
Heidi Klum
Alanis Morrissette
Melissa Sagemiller
Kate Magowan
Danielle Harris
Smush Parker
Brooklyn Lee
The much larger Los Angeles Unified School District has a budget of $6.78 billion to educate nearly 670,000 students. It has a seven member board elected on a geographic basis within the city and these people chosen to oversee our children's education serve four year terms.
Looking at the resumes of these board members, we find that on the CCUSD board, three of the five have actual classroom teaching experience. Among the members of the LAUSD board, five of the seven have taught in the classroom and one of the remaining two worked as a guidance counselor.
Then we have the University of California's Board of Regents. Fifteen individuals appointed by our government to terms of 12 years. Captains of industry, well-heeled individuals with impressive resumes and no experience in what it takes to run a school from the perspective of a classroom. That's not to say teaching in a classroom necessarily makes one more qualified to sit and oversee the spending of funds for education. It is not. Expertise in oversight of education doesn't necessarily require experience in the classroom. And considering they oversee a budget of $22.7 billion, they shouldn't all be former educators.
But to have a Board of Regents where the important folks are all appointed by the Governor, where no one has experience working in education, seems somewhat obtuse. Even though the main requirements for a gubernatorial appointment appears to be experience in the legal field, the ability to make campaign donations, or a high public profile, there must be some people out there with backgrounds in education who could serve on the Board of Regents. And I would love it if someone could explain to me why there is a system in place where people are appointed to these positions for terms of three times the length of those who are responsible to the voters.
The trends among public universities, not limited to the UC system are troubling. Administrative salaries rising to new all-time highs. A report in the Chronicle of Higher Education showed that nine presidents of public universities had compensation worth more than $1 million.
A study published by the Institute for Policy Studies shows even more alarming trends. With the student loan crisis expanding rapidly, average student debt at public universities grew faster at the 25 state universities where the presidents are paid the most. 13% faster. Worse yet, the percentage of part-time and temporary faculty is on the rise at these schools.
Being a college professor is a tough gig. Doing it at two, three or even four institutions in order to make a living wage makes it infinitely more difficult. Office hours and time for students are things that professors working at more than one school can't offer as easily to their students. Access to the professor and continuity of instruction are critical elements in providing the best possible education, at any level. But because it is cheaper to hire the part-time and temporary faculty members, and it has become necessary to spend more for overpaid administrators, this is the trend.
Perhaps if the people sitting in that room where the Board of Regents meet were responsible to the people directly, rather than to a governor with many other interests; and if some of them were actually educators, things might be handled differently.
* * *
I almost never eat cheese. I don't like cheese on burgers, eggs, or just about anything else. The one exception is pizza. I confess, I love pizza. But now that I've made this connection with how much harder my body has to work when I put too much sodium in it, I may have eaten my last pizza from Dominos.
I was debating over what to have for dinner last night and decided one way to narrow down my choices was to check their nutritional information. I was sure that the amount in a pizza would be unhealthy, but I had no idea just how high that amount would be. The medium, three topping pizza that would make a meal and two snacks has nearly 4,000 milligrams of sodium in it. That's more than two days of the recommended daily allowance.
V-8 juice, tomato juice, pickles and the rest are chock full of sodium. Bland scrambled eggs cry out for a sprinkle of salt. I've spent a lifetime using the salt shaker, first without care, and then feigning ignorance of what this substance does to my body.
It would be easy to ignore the risks of using this stuff if it weren't for the fluid leaking out of my left shin, and the fact that after a week of very limited sodium intake, I am breathing much more easily. So while my regular pizza delivery guy's smile will be missed, I won't be seeing him soon. I may put a tiny sprinkle of salt on the last morsel of eggs at breakfast, but until I find a substitute for salt that doesn't involve high amounts of sodium, I've put down the salt shaker again. Sadly, it calls to me.
* * *
Mark Cohen owns Powderhorn Outfitters, in Massachusetts. It's a sporting goods store that is focused on selling firearms, archery equipment, and law enforcement equipment. It has been in business for decades and TD Bank had been its banker for 36 years.
Things changed when the U. S. Department of Justice launched something called "Operation Choke Point," ostensibly a credit-card fraud probe of businesses that the DOJ has arbitrarily labeled as "high-risk." This is a list from an FDIC document issued in 2011:
|
|
The document (available here: http://www.fdic.gov/regulations/examinations/supervisory/insights/sisum11/managing.html) talks about risks financial institutions incur by doing business with these supposed high-risk entities.
In the case of Mr. Cohen, with solid financials, a 20 year relationship with the same bank manager at TD Bank, and a need for credit to expand his business, he went and applied for a line of credit. He was turned down, told by the bank that because he "...sells guns," he would not get the loan he was seeking. Why was TD Bank reluctant to make this loan? The allegations are that the bank would come under much closer scrutiny for choosing to continue to work with a high-risk business. That the increased scrutiny is pressuring these banks to stop working with customers who are engaged in legal transactions. My friend who sell lottery tickets in their donut shop are not a higher risk business just because they have that available to their customers. The notion is ridiculous.
We have plenty of regulations and laws designed to combat money laundering. We have plenty of laws to protect consumers from get rich quick schemes and other shady businesses. There's also the basic concept of caveat emptor. Operation Choke Point is nothing more than a blatant attempt by the Obama Administration to do through a back door what it can't do out in the open. Get rid of businesses it doesn't want to exist.
They claim payday lenders are predatory and their elimination would be good for consumers. They are right about the predatory nature of these businesses, and might be right about consumers being better off without them. Let the free markets eliminate them. Someone could probably profit quite nicely by offering this type of financing in an era of growing inequality of income. Without being quite so predatory.
Put simply, Operation Choke Point is nothing more than the Obama Administration telling banks "if you do business with these industries, we will put you under a microscope. So don't do business with them." That's simply wrong.
* * *
Random Ponderings:
In looking at best ways to fix the VA health system, President Obama should consider appointing Lt. General Patricia Horoho, U. S. Army Surgeon General to role in the process. The first Nursing Corps officer to become Army Surgeon General she has the right mix of experience and know-how to aid that effort.
One of the best definitions of being stupid is boasting via social media that you've flouted a law. The law pays attention to social media. Someone once said you should think that of something you're about to post on-line being broadcast on the nightly network news. Would you want that item to be on the screen in every living room across the land?
Donald Sterling is just another fame whore. Maybe he should have hooked up with Kim Kardashian instead of V. Stiviano.
There's a story about a college graduate who paid off $74,000 in student loans within 2 years of graduation. It's impressive, but bear in mind he got a job paying $80,000 a year right out of school.
A frequent dine and dasher in Baltimore is going to jail for five years. More for having created a false call for an ambulance than the theft of food, but he had 80 previous arrests and 40 prior convictions. What took so long to get him behind bars (where, ironically he'll get free meals)?
The Cincinnati archdiocese's increased "morality" clause in teacher contracts for next year is nothing more than a way to try to protect themselves from lawsuits and allow them to discriminate "legally." It's reprehensible.
Medicare shouldn't be automatically denying coverage for sex-change surgery for people covered by the plan.
Read an item about a woman who had her wedding saved by her representative in Congress. His office staff resolved a hang-up in customs that had kept the dress from reaching her before the wedding date. Well played, Congressman Garamendi and staff.
I may have been a bit too harsh on Charlize Theron for her likening media scrutiny to rape. But only a bit. I don't think she intended her message to come across the way it did, nor do I think she was intentionally trying to make the suffering of rape victims seem unimportant.
* * *
June 1st in History:
193 – The Roman Emperor Didius Julianus is assassinated.
1215 – Zhongdu (now Beijing), then under the control of the Jurchen ruler Emperor Xuanzong of Jin, is captured by the Mongols under Genghis Khan, ending the Battle of Zhongdu.
1252 – Alfonso X is elected King of Castile and León.
1298 – Residents of Riga and Grand Duchy of Lithuania defeated the Livonian Order in the Battle of Turaida.
1495 – Friar John Cor records the first known batch of Scotch whisky.
1533 – Anne Boleyn is crowned Queen of England.
1535 – Combined forces loyal to Charles V attack and expel the Ottomans from Tunis during the Conquest of Tunis.
1648 – The Roundheads defeat the Cavaliers at the Battle of Maidstone in the Second English Civil War.
1649 – Start of the Sumuroy Revolt: Filipinos in Northern Samar led by Agustin Sumuroy revolt against Spanish colonial authorities.
1660 – Mary Dyer is hanged for defying a law banning Quakers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1670 – In Dover, England, Charles II of Great Britain and Louis XIV of France sign the secret treaty of Dover, which will force England into the Third Anglo-Dutch War.
1679 – The Scottish Covenanters defeat John Graham of Claverhouse at the Battle of Drumclog.
1779 – Benedict Arnold, a general in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, is court-martialed for malfeasance.
1792 – Kentucky is admitted as the 15th state of the United States.
1794 – The battle of the Glorious First of June is fought, the first naval engagement between Britain and France during the French Revolutionary Wars.
1796 – Tennessee is admitted as the 16th state of the United States.
1812 – War of 1812: The U.S. President James Madison asks the Congress to declare war on the United Kingdom.
1813 – James Lawrence, the mortally-wounded commander of the USS Chesapeake, gives his final order: "Don't give up the ship!"
1815 – Napoleon promulgates a revised Constitution after it passes a plebiscite.
1831 – James Clark Ross discovers the Magnetic North Pole.
1855 – The American adventurer William Walker conquers Nicaragua.
1857 – Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal is published.
1861 – American Civil War, Battle of Fairfax Court House (June 1861): the first land battle of the American Civil War after the Battle of Fort Sumter, producing the first Confederate combat casualty.
1862 – American Civil War, Peninsula Campaign: the Battle of Seven Pines (or the Battle of Fair Oaks) ends inconclusively, with both sides claiming victory.
1868 – The Treaty of Bosque Redondo is signed, allowing the Navajos to return to their lands in Arizona and New Mexico.
1879 – Napoleon Eugene, the last dynastic Bonaparte, is killed in the Anglo-Zulu War.
1890 – The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine to count census returns.
1910 – Robert Falcon Scott's second South Pole expedition leaves Cardiff.
1913 – The Greek–Serbian Treaty of Alliance is signed, paving the way for the Second Balkan War.
1916 – Louis Brandeis becomes the first Jew appointed to the United States Supreme Court.
1918 – World War I, Western Front: Battle for Belleau Wood – Allied Forces under John J. Pershing and James Harbord engage Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince.
1921 – Tulsa Race Riot: civil unrest in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
1922 – The Royal Ulster Constabulary is founded.
1929 – The 1st Conference of the Communist Parties of Latin America is held in Buenos Aires.
1939 – First flight of the German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter-bomber airplane.
1941 – World War II: the Battle of Crete ends as Crete capitulates to Germany.
1941 – The Farhud, a pogrom of Iraqi Jews, takes place in Baghdad.
1943 – British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777 is shot down over the Bay of Biscay by German Junkers Ju 88s, killing the actor Leslie Howard and leading to speculation that its shooting down was an attempt to kill the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
1946 – Ion Antonescu, "Conducator" (leader) of Romania during World War II, is executed.
1958 – Charles de Gaulle comes out of retirement to lead France by decree for six months.
1960 – New Zealand's first official television broadcast commences at 7.30 pm from Auckland.
1962 – The Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting concludes, among other things, that the British public did not want commercial radio broadcasting.
1963 – Kenya gains internal self-rule (Madaraka Day).
1967 – Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles is released.
1974 – Flixborough disaster: an explosion at a chemical plant kills 28 people.
1974 – The Heimlich maneuver for rescuing choking victims is published in the journal Emergency Medicine.
1978 – The first international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty are filed.
1979 – The first black-led government of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 90 years takes power.
1980 – Cable News Network (CNN) begins broadcasting.
1990 – George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev sign a treaty to end chemical weapon production.
1993 – Dobrinja mortar attack: 13 are killed and 133 wounded when Serb mortar shells are fired at a soccer game in Dobrinja, west of Sarajevo.
1999 – American Airlines Flight 1420 slides and crashes while landing at Little Rock National Airport, killing 11 people on a flight from Dallas to Little Rock.
2001 – Nepalese royal massacre: Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal shoots and kills several members of his family including his father and mother, King Birendra of Nepal and Queen Aiswarya.
2001 – Dolphinarium massacre: A Hamas suicide bomber kills 21 at a disco in Tel Aviv.
2003 – The People's Republic of China begins filling the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam.
2009 – Air France Flight 447 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. All 228 passengers and crew are killed.
2009 – General Motors files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It is the fourth largest United States bankruptcy in history.
2011 – A rare tornado outbreak occurs in New England; a strong EF3 tornado strikes Springfield, Massachusetts, during the event, killing four people.
2012 – The Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental jumbo jet aircraft is introduced with Lufthansa.
Famous Folk Born on June 1st:
Brigham Young
John Hunt Morgan
John Bell Hood
Nelson Riddle
Andy Griffith
Marilyn Monroe
Edward Woodward
Pat Boone
Reverend Ike
Morgan Freeman
Cleavon Little
Rene Auberjenois
Dean Chance
Linda Scott
Kerry Vincent
Brian Cox
Jonathan Pryce
Ronnie Wood
Powers Boothe
Wayne Nelson
Ronnie Dunn
Tony Snow
Lisa Hartman Black
Robin Mattson
Martin Brundle
Alan Wilder
Simon Gallup
Nigel Short
Mathias Rust
Teri Polo
Heidi Klum
Alanis Morrissette
Melissa Sagemiller
Kate Magowan
Danielle Harris
Smush Parker
Brooklyn Lee
posted by me at 10:15 AM
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