On May 4th in history...

MARGARET THATCHER SWORN IN:
May 4, 1979


Margaret Thatcher, leader of the Conservative Party, is sworn in as Britain's first female prime minister. The Oxford-educated chemist and lawyer was sworn in the day after the Conservatives won a 44-seat majority in general parliamentary elections.

Margaret Hilda Roberts was born in Grantham, England, in 1925. She was the first woman president of the Oxford University Conservative Association and in 1950 ran for Parliament in Dartford. She was defeated but garnered an impressive number of votes in the generally liberal district. In 1959, after marrying businessman Denis Thatcher and giving birth to twins, she was elected to Parliament as a Conservative for Finchley, a north London district. During the 1960s, she rose rapidly in the ranks of the Conservative Party and in 1967 joined the shadow cabinet sitting in opposition to Harold Wilson's ruling Labour cabinet. With the victory of the Conservative Party under Edward Health in 1970, Thatcher became secretary of state for education and science.

In 1974, the Labour Party returned to power, and Thatcher served as joint shadow chancellor before replacing Edward Health as the leader of the Conservative Party in February 1975. She was the first woman to head the Conservatives. Under her leadership, the Conservative Party shifted further right in its politics, calling for privatization of national industries and utilities and promising a resolute defense of Britain's interests abroad. She also sharply criticized Prime Minister James Callaghan's ineffectual handling of the chaotic labor strikes of 1978 and 1979.

In March 1979, Callaghan was defeated by a vote of no confidence, and on May 3 a general election gave Thatcher's Conservatives a majority in Parliament. Sworn in the next day, Prime Minister Thatcher immediately set about dismantling socialism in Britain. She privatized numerous industries, cutback government expenditures, and gradually reduced the rights of trade unions. In 1983, despite the worst unemployment figures for half a decade, Thatcher was reelected to a second term, thanks largely to the decisive British victory in the 1982 Falklands War with Argentina.

In other foreign affairs, the "Iron Lady" presided over the orderly establishment of an independent Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) in 1980 and took a hard stance against Irish separatists in Northern Ireland. In October 1984, an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb exploded at the Conservative Party conference in Brighton. The prime minister narrowly escaped harm.

In 1987, an upswing in the economy led to her election to a third term, but Thatcher soon alienated some members of her own party because of her poll-tax policies and opposition to further British integration into the European Community. In November 1990, she failed to received a majority in the Conservative Party's annual vote for selection of a leader. She withdrew her nomination, and John Major, the chancellor of the Exchequer since 1989, was chosen as Conservative leader. On November 28, Thatcher resigned as prime minister and was succeeded by Major. Thatcher's three consecutive terms in office marked the longest continuous tenure of a British prime minister since 1827. In 1992, she was made a baroness and took a seat in the House of Lords.

May 4

1886 The Haymarket Square Riot


At Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, a bomb is thrown at a squad of policemen attempting to break up a labor rally, fatally injuring eight policemen and wounding more than 60 others. The police responded with wild gunfire, killing several people in the crowd and injuring dozens more.

The demonstration, which drew some 1,500 Chicago workers, was organized by German-born labor radicals in protest of the killing of a striker by the Chicago police the day before. Midway into the rally, which had thinned out because of rain, a force of nearly 200 policemen arrived to disperse the workers. As the police advanced toward the 300 remaining protesters, an individual who was never positively identified threw a bomb at them. After the explosion and subsequent police gunfire, more than a dozen people lay dead or dying, and close to 100 were injured.

The Haymarket Square Riot set off a national wave of xenophobia, as hundreds of foreign-born radicals and labor leaders were rounded up in Chicago and elsewhere. A grand jury eventually indicted 31 suspected labor radicals in connection with the bombing, and eight men were convicted in a sensational and controversial trial. Judge Joseph E. Gary imposed the death sentence on seven of the men, and the eighth was sentenced to 15 years in prison. On November 11, 1887, Samuel Fielden, Adolph Fischer, August Spies, and Albert Parson were executed.

Of the three others sentenced to death, one committed suicide on the eve of his execution and the other two had their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment by Illinois Governor Richard J. Oglesby. Governor Oglesby was reacting to widespread public questioning of their guilt, which later led his successor, Governor John P. Altgeld, to pardon fully the three activists still living in 1893.



1970 Natl. Guard kills four at Kent State


In Kent, Ohio, 28 National Guardsmen fire their weapons at a group of antiwar demonstrators on the Kent State University campus, killing four students, wounding eight, and permanently paralyzing another.

Two days earlier, the National Guard troops were called to Kent to suppress students rioting in protest of the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. The next day, scattered protests were dispersed by tear gas, and on May 4 class resumed at Kent State University. By noon that day, despite a ban on rallies, some 2,000 people had assembled on the campus. National Guard troops arrived and ordered the crowd to disperse, fired tear gas, and advanced against the students with bayonets fixed on their rifles. Some of the protesters, refusing to yield, responded by throwing rocks and verbally taunting the troops.

Minutes later, without firing a warning shot, the Guardsmen discharged more than 60 rounds toward a group of demonstrators in a nearby parking lot, killing four and wounding nine. The closest casualty was 20 yards away, and the farthest was almost 250 yards away. After a period of disbelief, shock, and attempts at first aid, angry students gathered on a nearby slope and were again ordered to move by the Guardsmen. Faculty members were able to convince the group to disperse, and further bloodshed was prevented.

In 1974, at the end of a criminal investigation into the Kent State incident, a federal court dropped all charges levied against eight Ohio National Guardsmen for their role in the students' deaths.


Famous Birthdays include on this date...

May 4
Audrey Hepburn 1929-1993; Actress; born in Brussels, Belgium

George Will (1941 - )

Randy Travis (1959 - )

Francis Joseph Spellman (1889 - 1967)

Pia Zadora (1956 - )


1959 First Grammys announced
The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announces the winners of the first Grammy Awards on this day in 1959. Henry Mancini won the Best Album award for The Music from Peter Gunn; Perry Como was voted Best Male Vocalist and Ella Fitzgerald Best Female Vocalist. "Volare," by Domenico Modugno, won Best Record.


1975 The Three Stooges' Moe dies
Moe Howard, one of the Three Stooges, dies on this day in 1975. Howard was born in Brooklyn in 1897. The brother of fellow Stooges Shemp and Curly, Howard played the Stooges' caustic ringleader. The Stooges appeared in 190 short subjects and more than 20 feature-length films.

May 4

1864 Army of the Potomac crosses the Rapidan


On this day, the Army of the Potomac embarks on the biggest campaign of the Civil War and crosses the Rapidan River, precipitating an epic showdown that eventually decides the war. In March 1864, Ulysses S. Grant became commander of all the Union forces and devised a plan to destroy the two major remaining Confederate armies: Joseph Johnston's Army of the Tennessee, which was guarding the approaches to Atlanta, and Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Grant sent William T. Sherman to take on Johnston, and then rode along with the Army of the Potomac, which was still under the command of George Meade, to confront Lee.

On May 4, the Army of the Potomac moved out of its winter encampments and crossed the Rapidan River to the tangled woods of the Wilderness. Grant had with him four corps and over 100,000 men. The plan was to move the Federal troops quickly around Lee's left flank and advance beyond the Wilderness before engaging the Confederates. But logistics slowed the move, and the long wagon train supplying the Union troops had to stop in the Wilderness.

Although there was no combat on this day, the stage was set for the epic duel between Grant and Lee. In the dense environs of the Wilderness, the superior numbers of the Union army was minimized. Lee attacked the following day—the first salvo in the biggest campaign of the war. The fighting lasted into June as the two armies waltzed to the east of Richmond, ending in Petersburg, where they settled into trenches and faced off for nearly nine months.


May 6

1972 South Vietnamese defenders hold on to An Loc


The remnants of South Vietnam's 5th Division at An Loc continue to receive daily artillery battering from the communist forces surrounding the city as reinforcements fight their way from the south up Highway 13.

The South Vietnamese had been under heavy attack since the North Vietnamese had launched their Nguyen Hue Offensive on March 30. The communists had mounted a massive invasion of South Vietnam with 14 infantry divisions and 26 separate regiments, more than 120,000 troops and approximately 1,200 tanks and other armored vehicles. The main North Vietnamese objectives, in addition to An Loc in the south, were Quang Tri in the north, and Kontum in the Central Highlands.

In Binh Long Province, the North Vietnamese forces had crossed into South Vietnam from Cambodia on April 5 to strike first at Loc Ninh. After taking Loc Ninh, the North Vietnamese forces then quickly encircled An Loc, the capital of Binh Long Province, which was only 65 miles from Saigon. The North Vietnamese held An Loc under siege for almost three months while they made repeated attempts to take the city, bombarding it around the clock. The defenders suffered heavy casualties, including 2,300 dead or missing, but with the aid of U.S. advisers and American airpower, they managed to hold out against vastly superior odds until the siege was lifted on June 18. Fighting continued all over South Vietnam into the summer months, but eventually the South Vietnamese forces prevailed against the invaders and they retook Quang Tri in September. With the communist invasion blunted, President Nixon declared that the South Vietnamese victory proved the viability of his Vietnamization program, which he had instituted in 1969 to increase the combat capability of the South Vietnamese armed forces.



1970 Students launch nationwide protest


Hundreds of colleges and universities across the nation shut down as thousands of students join a nationwide campus protest. Governor Ronald Reagan closed down the entire California university and college system until May 11, which affected more than 280,000 students on 28 campuses. Elsewhere, faculty and administrators joined students in active dissent and 536 campuses were shut down completely, 51 for the rest of the academic year. A National Student Association spokesman reported students from more than 300 campuses were boycotting classes. The protests were a reaction to the shooting of four students at Kent State University by National Guardsmen during a campus demonstration about President Nixon's decision to send U.S. and South Vietnamese troops into Cambodia. Four days later, a student rally at Jackson State College in Mississippi resulted in the death of two students and 12 wounded when police opened fire on a women's dormitory.


May 4

1847 Jack Slade joins the army


Jack Slade, who later became a victim of the Montana vigilantes, begins his involvement with the West by joining the military.

Born in 1829 in Illinois, Joseph Alfred Slade was the son of a prominent businessman and congressman. He joined the 1st Illinois Infantry when he was 18 and was introduced to a hard but adventurous life when his unit traveled to New Mexico. Slade left the army after only one year and returned to Illinois, but he headed westward again in 1850, reportedly fleeing charges that he had killed a man with a rock.

For several years, Slade wandered about the West--even visiting California during the height of the gold rush. By the late 1850s, he was finding steady work as a wagon boss supervising the shipment of freight across the Overland Trail. Slade earned a reputation both as a skilled frontiersman and as a hard-nosed boss given to vicious drunken rages. According to one source, Slade killed one of his own teamsters west of the Green River in Wyoming while he was drunk, though the murder was unverified and he was never prosecuted for any such crime.

Many employers considered a certain amount of violent ruthlessness to be a useful trait in a wagon boss, and Slade's tough reputation and experience eventually won him a new job. He became an agent in charge of operations on the Overland Mail Company's stage line from Julesberg, Colorado, to South Pass, Wyoming. It was one of the roughest sections of the line, plagued by attacks from hostile Indians and outlaws. Fearless, cool, and merciless, Slade worked with law enforcement officers to tame his segment of the trail by hanging any stage robbers or horse thieves he could catch and keeping his drivers armed.

Though he certainly presided over a number of vigilante-style executions, evidence that Slade personally killed people is sparse. Legend has it that Slade viciously killed a man by the name of Jules Reni (or possibly Beni) by having him lashed to a corral post and then slowly shooting him to death, but discrepancies and contradictions abound in accounts of the incident. Slade did carry a pair of human ears with him, which he claimed were Reni's.

In 1862, the Overland Mail Company fired Slade for a drunken spree. The following year he joined the gold rush to Virginia City, Montana. He established a freight business in the booming frontier-mining town and began ranching along the nearby Madison River with his wife Maria. When sober, Slade was by all accounts a peaceful and upstanding member of the Virginia City community. When drunk, he became boisterous and threatening. Several times, he shot up saloons and businesses, though he always paid for the damages after sobering up. More worrisome, he sometimes made wild threats to kill prominent Virginia City citizens.

In 1863, many of the people of Virginia City banded together and formed a committee to halt the depredations of the violent Plummer Gang, which had committed a string of robberies and murders. Within a year, the Montana vigilantes had tracked down and executed much of the gang, and they turned their attentions elsewhere. Swayed by unverified rumors that Slade was a ruthless murderer, many of the vigilantes believed it was just a matter of time before he made good on his threats to kill someone. On March 10, 1864, the vigilantes arrested Slade, gave him a few minutes to pen a last letter to his wife, and summarily hanged him. The questionable justice of hanging a man who had committed no crime in Virginia City more serious than shooting up saloons helped convince many Montanans that the vigilantes were no longer useful. After Slade's death, the organization became less active, and the vigilantes had faded into history by 1867.

1860 - Composer Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek was born.

1905 - Composer Matyas Seiber was born.

1920 - The Symphony Society of New York presented a concert at the Paris Opera House. It was the first American orchestra to make a European tour.

1956 - Gene Vincent and his group, The Blue Caps, recorded "Be-Bop-A Lula."

1957 - The "Alan Freed Show" premiered on ABC-TV. It was the first prime-time network rock show.

1959 - Dick Clark announced the first movie to be released from his production company. The film was "Harrison High."

1959 - The winners of the first annual Grammy Awards were announced.

1964 - The Moody Blues formed in Birmingham, England.

1969 - Richard Tapper (TIME (Trust in Men Everywhere)) was shot three times on his way to a jam session.

1976 - KISS performed their first concert in their hometown of New York City.

1987 - Paul Butterfield died of complications of a drug overdose at the age of 44.

1991 - Phil Collins and Al Jarreau received Honorary Doctor of Music Degrees from Berklee College of Music during cermonies in Boston.

1992 - Dudu Mntowaziwayo Ndlovu (Dudu Zulu), a band member of Johnny Clegg & Savuka, died of a gunshot wound in Zululand, South Africa, at the age of 33.

2000 - It was announced that KISS would auction off almost everything they own from its touring days. The auction was scheduled for June 24-25, 2000.