May 17 in Pop Culture History

1536 – The annulment of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn’s marriage.

1792 – The New York Stock Exchange was formed.

1875 – Aristides won the first Kentucky Derby.

1890 – Comic Cuts, the first British weekly comic paper, was published in London by Alfred Northcliffe.

1900 – The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, was published with an initial 10,000 copies.

1952 # 1 Hit May 17, 1952 – June 20, 1952: Leroy Anderson – Blue Tango

1954 – The US Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruling that racial segregation in public educational facilities was unconstitutional.

1955 – Nathan Kline appeared before the U.S. Congress to explain his work with Reserpine, an early antihypertensive/ antipsychotic psychopharmacology drug.

1958 # 1 Hit May 17, 1958 – June 13, 1958: The Everly Brothers – All I Have To Do Is Dream

1965 – Written in 1955, the FBI Laboratory, after a formal investigation that began in 1964, declared the lyrics of Louie Louie to be officially ‘Unintelligible at any speed.’

1970 – Thor Heyerdahl and a multinational crew set out from Morocco across the Atlantic Ocean in Ra II in 57 days.

1986 # 1 Hit May 17, 1986 – June 6, 1986: Whitney Houston – Greatest Love of All

2000 – The final episode of Beverly Hills 90210 aired on FOX.

2004 – The first legal same-sex marriages in the US were performed in Massachusetts.

2014 # 1 Hit May 17, 2014 – June 6, 2014: John Legend – All of Me