1527 The Sack of Rome was carried out by the mutinous troops of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor during the War of the League of Cognac May 6, 1527. Largely Protestant German and Swiss troops, mutinying over unpaid wages, entered the city of Rome and sacked it in a manner reminiscent of the barbarian pillages committed 1,100 years earlier. Many scholars consider this the end of the Renaissance.
1682 King Louis XIV of France conceived the plan for a magnificent new palace at Versailles just outside of Paris in 1664. Over 30,000 laborers and 6000 horses were employed at one time during the construction of Versailles. It cost Louis XIV upwards of $2 billion (£1.5 billion) to construct.
On May 6, 1682 he abandoned his old home, the Louvre and moved his court to Versailles to establish his independence from the Paris nobility but the work continued for most of his reign.
1782 Construction began on the Grand Palace in Bangkok, the official residence of the king of Thailand on May 6, 1782. It was ordered by King Phutthayotfa Chulalok, when he moved the capital city from Thonburi to Bangkok. After the final completion of the ceremonial halls of the palace, the king held a full traditional coronation ceremony in 1785.
On May 6, 1682 he abandoned his old home, the Louvre and moved his court to Versailles to establish his independence from the Paris nobility but the work continued for most of his reign.
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| Versailles |
1782 Construction began on the Grand Palace in Bangkok, the official residence of the king of Thailand on May 6, 1782. It was ordered by King Phutthayotfa Chulalok, when he moved the capital city from Thonburi to Bangkok. After the final completion of the ceremonial halls of the palace, the king held a full traditional coronation ceremony in 1785.
1851 Dr. John Gorrie of Appalachicola, Florida invented mechanical refrigeration, patenting his ice making device on May 6, 1851. Gorrie sought to raise money to manufacture his cooling machine, but the venture failed when his partner died. There is a statue which honors this "Father of Modern Day Air Conditioning" in the Statuary Hall of the capitol building in Washington, DC.
1856 Sigmund Freud was born to Jewish Galician parents on May 6, 1856 in the Moravian town of Příbor, now part of the Czech Republic. He was the eldest of three brothers and five sisters. His father, Jakob Freud was a wool merchant. Freud's mother, Amalia, an assertive and good looking woman, was 20 years her husband's junior. His parents were struggling financially and living in a crowded rented room, in a locksmith's house at Schlossergasse 117 when Sigmund was born.
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| Freud's birthplace, a rented room in a locksmith's house |
1876 In 1876 James Gordon Bennett, a wealthy American publisher and sportsman, imported polo balls and mallets from England, where he had first seen polo played. He also had ponies brought to New York from Texas and sold them at $20 each to friends whom he had interested in the game.
Bennett then staged the first polo match played on North American soil at Dickel's Riding Academy, on Fifth Avenue, New York on May 6, 1876.
1895 Rudolph Valentino, the archetypical romantic lead of the silent movie era was born Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi in Castellaneta, Italy on May 6, 1895. He featured in several films in a minor role until 1921. Valentino got his major break when he appeared in the role of Julio in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and he went on to play leading roles in fourteen films as a romantic figure.
1908 An Irish suffragette named Mary Maloney followed Winston Churchill around for a week ringing a very large bell every time he tried to speak. Her most famous “interruption” was on May 6, 1908 while Churchill was campaigning in Dundee, Scotland.
1910 King Edward VII of the United Kingdom died at Buckingham Palace on May 6, 1910 after suffering several heart attacks. He had gone down with severe bronchitis over the weekend. His reign as king lasted from 1901 until his death in 1910.
1910 George V became king of the UK upon the death of his father, Edward VII. George had never expected to be king but became heir to the throne when his elder brother, Prince Albert Victor, died from pneumonia. He reigned as the King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, as well as the Emperor of India, until his own death in 1936.
1937 The largest aircraft (in terms of length and volume) to take to the skies were the Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin II airships. Built in Germany between 1932 and 1938, each was 245m (803ft) long. The Hindenburg exploded in flames, killing 36 people, when attempting to land in New Jersey on May 6, 1937.
1940 John Steinbeck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his The Grapes of Wrath novel on May 6, 1940. In the first 75 years after it was published, The Grapes of Wrath sold 14 million copies. A celebrated Hollywood movie version, starring Henry Fonda and directed by John Ford, was made in 1940. In 1996, a book about hangovers was published under the title The Wrath Of Grapes.
1941 Bob Hope performed his first USO show on May 6, 1941 at California's March Field and continued to travel and entertain troops for the rest of World War II, later during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the third phase of the Lebanon Civil War, the latter years of the Iran–Iraq War, and the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War.
1942 The Battle of Corregidor in 1942 was the culmination of the Japanese campaign for the conquest of the Philippines. The American and Filipino soldiers on the island of Corregidor and the neighboring islets held out against the Japanese to deny the use of Manila Bay, but the Japanese proceeded to blockade Corregidor. 1.8 million pounds of shells pounded the island over a five hour attack on May 6, 1942 forcing the surrender of the remaining American and Filipino forces.
1949 The Electronic delay storage automatic calculator (EDSAC). the world's second electronic digital stored-program computer to go into regular service, was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England. It ran its first programs on May 6, 1949, when it calculated a table of square numbers and a list of prime numbers.
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| EDSAC |
1953 UK prime minister Tony Blair was born in Edinburgh, Scotland to Leo and Hazel Blair on May 6, 1953. Blair boarded at Fettes Colleges, a prestigious independent school in Edinburgh. His teachers were unimpressed with him, his biographer John Rentoul, reported that "All the teachers I spoke to when researching the book said he was a complete pain in the backside and they were very glad to see the back of him."
1954 Roger Bannister became the first athlete to run a mile in under four minutes. He achieved this athletic feat at Oxford, England, on May 6, 1954, in a time of 3 min 59.4 seconds. His world record lasted just 46 days before Australian John Landy, shaved 1.4 seconds off it.
1961 George Clooney was born on May 6, 1961, in Lexington, Kentucky. His mother, Nina Bruce (née Warren) was a beauty queen. His father, Nick Clooney is a former anchorman and television host. While he was a struggling actor in Los Angeles, George Clooney's friend let him stay in his apartment – but owing to a lack of spare room, he had to sleep in a closet.
1970 On May 6, 1970, Japanese mountaineer Yuichiro Miura became the first person to ski on Mount Everest. He descended nearly 4,200 vertical feet from the South Col (elevation over 8,000 m (26,000 ft)). 43 years later, Miura became the oldest person to reach the summit of Mount Everest at the age of 80.
1992 The actress Marlene Dietrich died of renal failure on May 6, 1992 at the age of 90. The inscription on Dietrich's gravestone in Berlin reads "Hier steh ich an den Marken meiner Tage" (literally: "Here I stand at the marks of my days"), a line from the sonnet "Abschied vom Leben" ("Farewell to Life") by Theodor Körner.
1994 Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and French President François Mitterrand opened the Channel Tunnel on May 6, 1994 in a ceremony held first in Calais and then in Folkestone. Tunneling under the English Channel, it is the only fixed link between the island of Great Britain and the European mainland. At 37.9 kilometres (23.5 mi), the tunnel has the longest underwater section of any tunnel in the world.
2004 When the final episode of Friends was aired on NBC on May 6, 2004, it attracted 52.46 million viewers, making it the fourth most watched television series finale in US history. When Friends ended its 10-season run, the cast and crew were all given a chunk of the sidewalk from outside of Central Perk.
2014 Five years after Roger Federer's wife Mirka gave birth to identical twin girls, she had another set of twins on May 6, 2014. This time they were boys whom they named Leo and Lennart, called Lenny.
2492 The Solar System can never come into perfect alignment. The last time the eight major planets appeared even in the same part of the sky was over 1,000 years ago, in the year AD 949, and they won’t manage it again until May 6, 2492.
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