May 31st
Today in America's Present Past
1634 | The Massachusetts Bay colony annexes Maine.
1689 | Leisler’s Rebellion begins.
1759 | Pennsylvania bans all theater productions.
1819 | Poet Walter Whitman is born.
1837 | Astor Hotel opened in NYC; it later became the Waldorf-Astoria.
1854 | POTUS: Democratic President Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
1860 | SCOTUS: Justice Peter Daniels died.
1885 | Dr John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan, applies for a patent for "flaked cereal, and process of making same.”
1889 | Johnstown Flood; 2,209 die in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
1898 | Cleric Norman Vincent Peale was born.
1910 | Doctor Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman doctor, died.
1919 | “Red Summer race riots” in Monticello, Mississippi.
1919 | Writer Robie Macauley was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
1921 | The Tulsa, Oklahoma, race riots start.
1930 | Actor Clint Eastwood was born.
1938| Entertainer Peter Yarrow was born.
1963 | Classicist Edith Hamilton died.
1965 | Actress Brooke Shields was born.
1968 | Actor James Stewart retires from the US Air Force after 27 years of service.
1983 | Boxer Jack Dempsey died.
1989 Congress: Speaker of the House Jim Wright resigns,
1996 | Psychologist Timothy Leary died.