Paradise Driver

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Today is Tuesday, May 4th.

The 125th day of 2004.

There are 241 days left in the year.



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Today's Highlight in History:



One hundred years ago, on May 4, 1904, the United States began building the Panama Canal.



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On this date:



In 1493, Line of Demarcation drawn; non-Christian world divided between Spain and Portugal by the Pope



In 1626, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on present-day Manhattan Island.



In 1715, A French manufacturer debuts the first folding umbrella



In 1776, Rhode Island declared its freedom from England, two months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted.



In 1783, Herschel reports seeing a red glow near lunar crater Aristarchus



In 1839, The Cunard shipping line was founded by Samuel Cunard of Halifax, Nova Scotia.



In 1886, At Haymarket Square in Chicago, a labor demonstration for an eight-hour work day turned into a riot when a bomb exploded killing 5 police officers.



In 1906, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt warned the U.S. Congress that Standard Oil was in violation of antitrust laws.



In 1910, Canadian parliament accept creation of Royal Canadian Navy.



In 1922, KNX-AM in Los Angeles CA begins radio transmissions



In 1926, The first general strike in British history began. It was called by the Trades Union Congress and troops were called in to man essential services.



In 1927, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded.



In 1929, Elegant stage/movie actress Audrey Hepburn (Ruston-Ferrer-Dotti) was born in Brussels, Belgium. She died January 20, 1993 in Switzerland at the age of 63



In 1932, Mobster Al Capone, convicted of income-tax evasion, entered the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.



In 1942, The Battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval clash fought entirely with carrier aircraft, began during World War II.



In 1945, During World War II, German forces in the Netherlands, Denmark and northwest Germany agreed to surrender.



In 1946, A two-day riot at Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay ended, the violence having claimed the lives of five people.



In 1953, Pulitzer prize was awarded to Ernest Hemingway (Old Man & The Sea).



In 1959, 1st Grammy Awards: Perry Como & Ella Fitzgerald win



In 1960, The birth control pill is approved by the FDA as a birth control device.



In 1961, A group of Freedom Riders left Washington for New Orleans to challenge racial segregation in interstate buses and bus terminals.



In 1964, The Pulitzer Prize jury failed, for the first time, to award winners in the areas of fiction, drama and music.



In 1968, McDonald's Big Mac Hamburger debuts.



In 1970, Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on a crowd of anti Vietnam war protestors at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others. The incident inspiries Neil Young to compose "Ohio" which becomes a hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Memorial services are held annually for Allison Krause, Sandra Lee Scheuer, Jeffrey Glenn Miller and William K. Schroeder on the Kent, Ohio campus.



In 1980, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, president of Yugoslavia, died three days before his 88th birthday.



In 1982, An Argentine jet fighter sank the British destroyer H.M.S. Sheffield during the Falkland Islands war using a French Exocet anti-ship missle.



In 1990, Latvia's Supreme Soviet (Parliament) became the third and last of the Baltic republics to vote in favor of a declaration of independence from the USSR.



In 1997, FBI director Louis Freeh indicated that "catastrophic mechanical failure" was the most likely cause of the crash of TWA Flight 800 the previous July.



In 2000, The "ILOVEYOU" e-mail virus infected computer networks and hard drives across the globe, spawning various imitations.



Ten years ago (1994):



Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat signed a historic accord on Palestinian autonomy that granted self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.



Five years ago (1999):



Work crews struggled to restore electricity across Serbia after NATO strikes on major power grids left Belgrade and other cities in the dark.



Five New York City police officers went on trial for the torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. (One officer later pleaded guilty; a second was eventually convicted of perjury; the remaining three were acquitted of brutality charges. Two of those three were later convicted of conspiring to obstruct justice; those convictions were overturned.)



Tornadoes roared across the Plains for a second straight day.



One year ago (2003):



Tornadoes swept across the Midwest, causing death and destruction across a wide swath of eastern Kansas and nearby Missouri.



Police in Iraq's capital returned to work in force.



Pope John Paul II proclaimed five new saints before a crowd of 1 million people in Madrid.



Two American astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut ended up nearly 300 miles off course after returning from the international space station.



Idaho Gem was born. He was the first member of the horse family to be cloned.



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Today's Birthdays:



The president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, is 76.



Jazz musician Maynard Ferguson is 76.



Opera singer Roberta Peters is 74.



Jazz musician Ron Carter is 67.



Rock musician Dick Dale is 67.



Singer Tyrone Davis is 66.



Singer-songwriter Nick Ashford is 62.



Actor Paul Gleason is 60.



Pop singer Peggy Santiglia (The Angels) is 60.



Country singer Stella Parton is 55.



Actor-turned-clergyman Hilly Hicks is 54.



Singer Jackie Jackson (The Jacksons) is 53.



Country singer Randy Travis is 45.



Actress Mary McDonough is 43.



Comedian Ana Gasteyer is 37.



Rock musician Mike Dirnt (Green Day) is 32.



Rock musician Jose Castellanos is 27.



Singer Lance Bass ('N Sync) is 25.



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Thought for Today:

"Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope." -

- Reinhold Niebuhr, American theologian (1892-1971).

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