Those born on this date are under the sign of Taurus. They include Edward Lear, an English painter and writer of limericks and nonsense poems, in 1812; nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale in 1820; French composer Jules Emile Massenet in 1842; lawmaker and author Henry Cabot Lodge in 1850; novelist Philip Wylie in 1902; actor Katharine Hepburn in 1907; orchestra leader Gordon Jenkins and jazz trombonist Jack Jenney, both in 1910; newscaster Howard K. Smith in 1914; businesswoman Mary Kay Ash in 1918; convicted spy Julius Rosenberg in 1918 (executed with his wife on June 19, 1953); baseball Hall of Fame member Yogi Berra in 1925 (age 89); composer Burt Bacharach in 1928 (age 86); TV personality Tom Snyder and artist Frank Stella (age 78), both in 1936; comedian George Carlin in 1937; musician Steve Winwood in 1948 (age 66); political commentator Paul Begala in 1961 (age 53); skateboarder Tony Hawk in 1968 (age 46); and actors Gabriel Byrne and Bruce Boxleitner in 1950 (age 64), Ving Rhames in 1959 (age 55), Emilio Estevez in 1962 (age 52), Stephen Baldwin in 1966 (age 48), Kim Fields in 1969 (age 45) and Jason Biggs in 1978 (age 36).
On this date in history:
In 1922, the magazine "Radio Broadcast" commented, "The rate of increase in the number who spend at least part of an evening listening to radio is almost incomprehensible."
In 1937, George VI was crowned king of England, succeeding his brother Edward, who abdicated to marry U.S. divorcee Wallis Simpson.
In 1949, Soviet authorities announced the end of a land blockade of Berlin. The blockade lasted 328 days but was neutralized by the Allies' Berlin airlift.
In 1975, a Cambodian gunboat fired on the U.S. cargo ship Mayaguez and forced it into a Cambodian port, setting off an international incident. (Although authorities were to release the ship's crew members unharmed, a mission to rescue them led to many deaths among U.S. troops and others.)
In 2002, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter began a visit to Cuba. He was the first president, in or out of office, to visit the island since communists took over in 1959.
In 2004, a Massachusetts Roman Catholic order was sued by nine former students of one of its schools, the Boston School for the Deaf, for alleged abuse as far back as 60 years.
In 2007, about 100,000 people attended a "Family Day" rally in Rome to protest a move that would grant more rights to same-sex and unmarried couples in Italy.
In 2008, a magnitude-8 earthquake, China's deadliest in three decades, killed more than 69,000 people, with nearly 18,000 missing and millions homeless.
In 2010, a man armed with a meat cleaver entered a central China kindergarten classroom and slaughtered seven children, a teacher and her mother before taking his own life. (Seventeen people died and about 100 were wounded in five attacks in Chinese schools in a two-month period.)
In 2011, a German court sentenced John Demjanjuk, 91, to five years in prison for his role in killing 28,060 Jews as a World War II Nazi concentration camp guard in Poland. (Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian who worked for decades in a U.S. auto plant, died the following year.)
In 2013, nineteen people were wounded in what police said were gang-related shootings at a Mother's Day parade in New Orleans.
A thought for the day: Jimmy Carter said, "To be true to ourselves, we must be true to others."
