Welcome to the round Table for Wednesday, May 13, 2009. There are 232 days remaining until the end of the year. 
You know you want it ... Events on this date * 1497 – Pope Alexander VI excommunicates Girolamo Savonarola.
* 1515 – Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Charles Brandon were officially married, at Greenwich.
* 1568 – Battle of Langside: the forces of Mary Queen of Scots are defeated by a confederacy of Scottish Protestants under James Stewart, Earl of Moray, her half-brother.
* 1619 – Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt is executed in The Hague after having been accused of treason.
* 1648 – Construction of the Red Fort at Delhi is completed.
* 1779 – War of Bavarian Succession: Russian and French mediators at the Congress of Teschen negotiate an end to the war. In the agreement Austria receives the part of its territory that was taken from them (the Innviertel).
* 1787 – Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth, England with eleven ships full of convicts (First Fleet) to establish a penal colony in Australia.
* 1804 – Forces sent by Yusuf Karamanli of Tripoli to retake Derne from the Americans attack the city.
* 1830 – Ecuador gains its independence from Gran Colombia.
* 1846 – Mexican-American War: The United States declares war on Mexico.
* 1848 – First performance of Finland's national anthem.
Our Land, Maamme (Finnish), or Vårt land (Swedish), is the title of Finland's national anthem. Finnish law doesn't state anything about a national anthem so the song has an unofficial status.
The music was composed by the German immigrant Fredrik Pacius, with (original Swedish) words by Johan Ludvig Runeberg, and was performed for the first time on 13 May 1848. The original poem, written in 1846 but not printed until 1848, had 11 stanzas and formed the prologue to the great verse cycle The Tales of Ensign Stål ("Fänrik Ståhls Sägner"), a masterpiece of Romantic nationalism. The current Finnish text is usually attributed to the 1889 translation of Ensign Stål by Paavo Cajander, but in fact originates from the 1867 translation by Julius Krohn.[1][2]
The Tales of Ensign Stål were much appreciated throughout all of Scandinavia. Up until the time of Finland's independence in 1917–18, when the song began to be recognized as specifically applying to Finland, Pacius's tune and Runeberg's text were often also sung in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Note that in the original Swedish text there is no reference to Finland (except for in verses 4 and 10, which are rarely sung), only to a country in the north, but the Finnish text explicitly refers to Finland. The poem's theme is, furthermore, remarkably similar to that of the national anthems of Sweden (Du gamla, Du fria) and Norway (Ja, vi elsker dette landet).
Some Finns have proposed that the Finnish national anthem be changed to Finlandia by Jean Sibelius, with lyrics by V.A. Koskenniemi (Finnish) and Joel Rundt (Swedish). It is also said that Pacius composed the tune in a mere fifteen minutes, with no idea that it would become so important to the people of Finland that they would eventually make it their national anthem. There are also those who simply prefer Finlandia as a musical piece, although critics call it difficult to sing.
The tune of Maamme has similarities with the German drinking song Papst und Sultan. Many believe that Fredrik Pacius intentionally or unintentionally copied parts of the tune. Another Finnish patriotic song, Sotilaspoika, composed by Pacius, also includes similarities with Papst und Sultan.
The melody of Maamme is also used for the national anthem of Estonia with a similarly themed text, Mu isamaa, mu õnn ja rõõm, My Fatherland, My Happiness and Joy (1869). It is also considered to be national anthem for Livonians with text Min izāmō, min sindimō, My Fatherland, my native land.
* 1861 – American Civil War: Queen Victoria of Britain issues a "proclamation of neutrality" which recognizes the breakaway states as having belligerent rights.
* 1861 – The Great Comet of 1861 is discovered by John Tebbutt of Windsor, New South Wales, Australia.
* 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Resaca – the battle begins with Union General Sherman fighting toward Atlanta, Georgia.
* 1865 – American Civil War: Battle of Palmito Ranch – in far south Texas, more than a month after Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender, the last land battle of the Civil War ends with a Confederate victory.
* 1880 – In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison performs the first test of his electric railway.
The modern electric railway may be said to have been born in the year 1835 in the small American village of Brandon, in Vermont, with the village blacksmith, one Thomas Davenport, as sponsor. The child was weak and puny, and was destined to languish long in obscurity and neglect, passing through many vicissitudes before it finally attained the strength of vigorous development.
At that time, and for many years afterwards, the primary battery was the only available source from which electric energy could be obtained for driving motors. The initial cost of the primary battery was very high, and the cost of the chemicals consumed in it was about sixteen times that of the coal required to produce the same amount of electrical energy through the medium of the steam engine and the modern dynamo. This great expense, combined with the difficulty in handling the liquids and more or less fragile materials used in the construction of the battery, constituted an insurmountable obstacle to the commercial use of the electric motor for traction purposes.
Notwithstanding this, however, many inventors worked at the problem during the period from 1835 to about 1873, when the power-driven dynamo commenced to take shape as to make it commercially available as a source of electrical energy for driving motors. During these years many of the details were worked out and methods employed which are still used in the best modern practice.
* 1888 – With the passage of the Lei Áurea ("Golden Law"), Brazil abolishes slavery.
* 1909 – The first Giro d'Italia takes place in Milan. Italian cyclist Luigi Ganna is the winner.
* 1912 – The Royal Flying Corps (now the Royal Air Force) is established in the United Kingdom.
* 1913 – Igor Sikorsky becomes the first man to pilot a four-engine aircraft.
* 1917 – Three shepherd children had reported the first apparition of the Virgin Mary in Fátima, Portugal.
* 1939 – The first commercial FM radio station in the United States is launched in Bloomfield, Connecticut. The station later becomes WDRC-FM.
* 1940 – World War II: Germany's conquest of France begins as the German army crosses the Meuse River. Winston Churchill makes his "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech to the House of Commons.
* 1940 – Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands flees the Nazi invasion in the Netherlands to Great Britain. Princess Juliana takes her children to Canada for their safety.
* 1941 – World War II: Yugoslav royal colonel Dragoljub Mihailović starts fighting with German occupation troops, beginning the Serbian resistance.
* 1943 – World War II: German Afrika Korps and Italian troops in North Africa surrender to Allied forces.
* 1948 – 1948 Arab-Israeli War: the Kfar Etzion massacre is committed by Arab irregulars, the day before the declaration of independence of the state of Israel on May 14.
* 1950 – The first round of the Formula 1 World Championship is held at Silverstone.
* 1952 – The Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India, holds its first sitting.
* 1954 – The anti-National Service Riots, by Chinese Middle School students in Singapore, take place.
* 1958 – During a visit to Caracas, Venezuela, Vice President Richard Nixon's car is attacked by anti-American demonstrators.
* 1958 – The trade mark Velcro is registered.
* 1958 – May 1958 crisis: a group of French military officers lead a coup in Algiers, demanding that a government of national unity be formed with Charles de Gaulle at its head in order to defend French control of Algeria.
* 1960 – Hundreds of UC Berkeley students congregate for the first day of protest against a visit by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Thirty-one students are arrested, and the Free Speech Movement is born.
Click the picture * 1967 – Dr. Zakir Hussain becomes the third President of India. He is the first Muslim President of Indian Union. He holds this position till August 24, 1969.
* 1969 – Race riots, later known as the May 13 Incident, take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
* 1972 – Faulty electrical wiring ignites a fire underneath the Playtown Cabaret in Osaka, Japan. Blocked exits and non-functional elevators cause 118 fatalities, with many victims leaping to their deaths.
* 1980 – An F3 tornado hits Kalamazoo County, Michigan. President Jimmy Carter declares it a federal disaster area.
* 1981 – Mehmet Ali Ağca attempts to assassinate Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square in Rome. The Pope is rushed to the Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic to undergo emergency surgery and survives.
* 1985 – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, police storm MOVE headquarters to end a stand-off, killing 11 MOVE members and destroying the homes of 250 city residents.
* 1989 – Large groups of students occupy Tiananmen Square and begin a hunger strike.
* 1992 – Li Hongzhi gave the first public lecture on Falun Gong in Changchun, People's Republic of China.
* 1994 – Johnny Carson makes last television appearance on The David Letterman Show.
* 1996 – Severe thunderstorms and a tornado in Bangladesh kill 600 people.
* 1998 – Race riots break out in Jakarta, Indonesia, where shops owned by Indonesian of Chinese descendants are looted and women raped.
* 1998 – India carries out two nuclear tests at Pokhran, in addition to the three conducted on May 11. The United States and Japan impose economic sanctions on India.
* 2000 – In Enschede, the Netherlands, a fireworks factory explodes, killing 22 people, wounding 950, and resulting in approximately €450 million in damage.
* 2001 – Silvio Berlusconi's House of Freedoms coalition wins the Italian general elections.
* 2005 – The Andijan Massacre occurs in Uzbekistan.
* 2006 – 2006 São Paulo violence: a major rebellion occurs in several prisons in Brazil.
* 2007 – Construction of the Calafat-Vidin Bridge between Romania and Bulgaria begins.
* 2007 – Republic Protests in Turkey.
Music for everyday from 1967 - one of my favorite years - click away
OK, enough for now, have a great here and now!
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