News today on CNN tells that:
-Sen. Ted Kennedy has a malignant brain tumor found during tests to find the cause of a seizure he had over weekend. Now, I don't wish that on anyone but Ted has always been a curiosity to me. I liked John, but was too young to know what was really going on with his presidency. At that time I was more interested in when everyone in the neighborhood would show up for a baseball game or beating the 'boys' to the neighborhood treehouse! Hey, I was only a kid! Now Bobby Kennedy was a different story. I followed his campaign and vividly remember him being shot in the hotel in California. It was 2 days before I stopped watching TV coverage on that. Had I been old enough, I would have voted for that man. But Ted always had some controversy going on and to this day I still think he left Kopechne to die in a channel on Chappaquiddick Island.
-A 60-year old woman was pulled from the earthquake in China rubble after 195 hours. She escaped with facial bruises and a minor fracture! Amazing!
Today in History
May 20, 1778
Battle of Barren Hill, Pennsylvania
On this day in 1778, British forces from Philadelphia attempt to trap 2,200 Continentals defending Valley Forge led by Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette, through skillful maneuvering, avoids the entrapment and the destruction of his forces. The encounter takes place at Barren Hill, now known as Lafayette Hill, just northwest of Philadelphia.Washington had dispatched Lafayette and his men two days before to spy on the British in Philadelphia. The British learned of Lafayette’s mission and intended to surprise, surround and capture the encampment with a force of 7,000 to 8,000 men. Lafayette, in turn, learned of the British plan late on May 19.
Lafayette assigned 500 men and approximately 50 Oneida Indians armed with cannon to face the British onslaught and stand their ground by the local church, while the rest of Lafayette’s forces fled west over the Schuylkill River to safety. Before the Oneida warriors followed the Continental Army across the Schuylkill, they are believed to have bravely given chase to the British as they marched back to Philadelphia.
Lafayette, a Frenchman, had personally recruited the Oneida to join the Patriot cause by using the Indians’ preference for the French over the English; the Oneida arrived at Valley Forge on May 13. Lafayette promised the Oneida that they would serve under French instead of colonial Patriot commanders and that they would be given assistance in building a fort at their Mohawk Valley, New York, settlement.
These fresh Indian recruits were paired with Lafayette’s best Patriot fighters, fresh from training under European officers at Valley Forge. The Indians’ actions during the successful retreat at Barren Hill prevented disaster and allowed the Continental Army to emerge from Valley Forge as a disciplined military in June.
May 20, 1862
Lincoln signs Homestead Act
On this day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act, which opens government-owned land to small family farmers (“homesteaders”). The act gave “any person” who was the head of a family 160 acres to try his hand at farming for five years. The individual had to be at least 21 years old and was required to build a house on the property. Farmers were also offered an alternative to the five-year homesteading plan. They could opt to buy the 160 acres after only 6 months at the reasonable rate of $1.25 an acre. Many homesteaders could not handle the hardships of frontier life and gave up before completing five years of farming. If a homesteader quit or failed to make a go of farming, his or her land reverted back to the government and was offered to the public again. Ultimately, these lands often ended up as government property or in the hands of land speculators. If, after five years, the farmer could prove his (or her) homestead successful, then he paid an $18 filing fee for a “proved” certificate and received a deed to the land.Before the Civil War, similar acts had been proposed in 1852, 1854 and 1859, but were defeated by a powerful southern lobby that feared new territories populated by homesteaders would be allowed into the Union as “free states,” thereby giving more power to the abolitionist movement. In addition, many in the northern manufacturing industries feared the Homestead Act would draw large numbers of their labor force away and into farming. In 1860, President James Buchanan vetoed an earlier homestead bill, succumbing to pressure from southern slave-holding interests. With the Civil War raging and southern slave-owning states out of the legislative picture in Washington D.C., Lincoln and pro-western expansion Republicans saw an opportunity to pass a law that opened the West to settlement.
By the end of the Civil War in 1864, 15,000 people had homestead claims in territories that now make up the states of Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana and Colorado. Though some of these people were genuinely looking to begin a new life as a western farmer, others abused the program. Much of the land offered by the government was purchased by individuals acting as a “front” for land speculators who sought access to the vast untapped mining, timber and water resources of the West. The speculator would offer to pay individuals cash or a share of profits in return for submitting a Homestead Act claim. By 1900, settlers, legitimate or otherwise, had gobbled up 80 million acres of land through the Homestead Act. To make way for the homesteaders, the federal government forced Native American tribes off of their ancestral lands and onto reservations.
The first Homestead Act claim was filed by a civil war veteran and doctor named Daniel Freeman on January 1, 1863. Although the act was officially repealed by Congress in 1976, one last title for 80 acres in Alaska was given to Kenneth Deardorff in 1979.
May 20, 1922
Valentino arrested for bigamy
Heartthrob Rudolph Valentino is arrested on this day in 1922 for bigamy. A Los Angeles judge ruled that Valentino had married his second wife, Natasha Rambora, before his first marriage was legally dissolved. The charges were dropped a few weeks later.
Valentino was born in 1895 in Italy, the son of a veterinarian. He attended military school, but after he was rejected from a naval academy, he left Italy for Paris, then headed to New York in 1913. In New York, Valentino worked as a landscape gardener, dishwasher, and waiter, and often found himself in trouble with the police. Among other offenses, he was charged with petty theft and blackmail.
He began dancing in nightclubs and was soon partnered with the popular Bonnie Glass. His fortunes were improving, but his troubles with the law continued, and he left New York with the cast of a touring musical bound for Utah. He continued west to San Francisco, where he kept dancing. In 1917, he moved to Hollywood and began appearing in small roles in silent films. He got his big break in 1921, when screenwriter June Mathis chose him to star in The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse (1921). That same year, he starred in The Sheik, the movie that launched the cult of Valentino. Women began swooning in the aisles and continued to do so when Blood and Sand was released in 1922.
After his marriage to Rambora, an actress and film designer, he turned his career over to his wife to manage. He appeared in increasingly effeminate roles, and Rambora irritated studio executives so much that she was banned from the sets of her husband's movies. Despite these problems, his 1925 movie The Eagle was a hit, as was Son of the Sheik the following year.
Valentino died suddenly in August 1926, provoking a hysterical outpouring of grief among women nationwide. Crowds gathered to file past his body at his funeral. A sense of drama and mystery continued to surround Valentino's memory for years. Valentino fan clubs escalated their adoration to cult-like proportions, and a mysterious woman in black appeared at his grave for decades on the anniversary of his death.
May 20, 1927
Spirit of St. Louis departs
At 7:52 a.m., American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, on the world's first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean and the first ever nonstop flight between New York to Paris.
Lindbergh, a daring young airmail pilot, was a dark horse when he entered a competition with a $25,000 payoff to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. He ordered a small monoplane, configured it to his own design, and christened it the Spirit of St. Louis in tribute to his sponsor--the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce.
On May 20, 1927, a rainy morning, he took off from Roosevelt Field, but his monoplane was so loaded down with fuel that it barely cleared the telephone wires at the end of the runway. He flew northeast up the East Coast and as night fell left Newfoundland and headed across the North Atlantic. His greatest challenge was staying awake; he had to hold his eyelids open with his fingers and hallucinated ghosts passing through the cockpit. The next afternoon, after flying 3,610 miles in 33 1/2 hours, Lindbergh landed at Le Bourget field in Paris, becoming the first pilot to accomplish the solo, nonstop transatlantic crossing. Lindbergh's achievement made him an international celebrity and won widespread public acceptance of the airplane and commercial aviation.
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