May 15 in Pop Culture History

1793 – Diego Marín Aguilera flew a glider for approximately 1,000 feet during one of Spain’s first attempted manned flights.

1800 – President John Adams ordered the new US federal government to leave Philadelphia and move to the nation’s new capital in Washington, DC.

1858 – Royal Opera House opened in Covent Garden, London, with a Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots performance.

1862 – President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill into law creating the United States Bureau of Agriculture. It was later renamed the United States Department of Agriculture.

1895 – A guesstimated F5 tornado hit Sherman, Texas, killing 73 people.

1891 – Pope Leo XIII defends workers’ rights and property rights in the encyclical Rerum Novarum.

1928 – Walt Disney’s character Mickey Mouse premiered in his first (silent) cartoon, Plane Crazy. A few months later, on November

1928’s Steamboat Willie had sound. Plane Crazy was re-released with sound in 1929.

1932 – Japanese insurgents plotted to kill Charlie Chaplin and their own Prime Minister to provoke war with the US and incite “restoration” in the name of the Emperor.

1935 – Albert Einstein was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal for his outstanding fundamental contributions to theoretical physics, especially his relativity theory, at the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA.

1940 – Nylon stockings were sold for the first time in the United States.

1940 – Richard and Maurice McDonald opened their hamburger restaurant in San Bernardino, California.

1942 – Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAACs) was formed, granting women official US military status.

1953 – Stanley L. Miller’s paper on synthesizing amino acids under conditions that simulated primitive Earth’s atmosphere was published in Science. Miller had applied an electric discharge to a mixture of CH4, NH3, H2O, and H2 (believed at the time to be the atmospheric composition of early Earth.), creating a mixture of amino acids, hydroxy acids, and urea.

1976 # 1 Hit May 15, 1976 – May 21, 1976: The Sylvers – Boogie Fever

1982 # 1 Hit May 15, 1982 – July 2, 1982: Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder – Ebony and Ivory

1993 # 1 Hit May 15, 1993 – July 9, 1993: Janet Jackson – That’s The Way Love Goes

2001 – The final Friends episode aired on NBC, titled ‘The One with Monica and Chandler’s Wedding.’

2010 # 1 Hit May 15, 2010 – May 21, 2010: Usher featuring will.i.am – OMG