Historical Events on May 12

1780 American General Benjamin Lincoln surrenders Charleston to the British (Revolutionary War)

1789 William Wilberforce makes his first major speech on abolition in the UK House of Commons, reasoning the slave trade morally reprehensible and an issue of natural justice

1797 First Coalition: Napoleon I of France conquers Venice

1835 Charles Darwin visits the Panuncillo Copper Mine in North Chile

1885 Battle of Batoche: Louis Riel and the Metis defeated by Frederick Middleton, leds to collapse of Provincial Government of Saskatchewan and surrender of Riel

1908 George Bernard Shaw's "Getting Married" premieres in London

1910 Second NAACP conference (NYC)

1926 Airship Norge is the first vessel to fly over North Pole, lead by Roald Amundsen and piloted by Umberto Nobile

1926 Dmitri Shostakovich's 1st Symphony premieres in Leningrad

1926 General Józef Piłsudski returns to power in Poland after coup d'état against the Witos regime

1928 Benito Mussolini ends women's rights in Italy

1932 Body of kidnapped son of Charles Lindbergh is found in Hopewell, New Jersey

1934 "Cocktails For Two" by Duke Ellington hits #1

1937 Coronation of King George VI of Great Britain (and his other realms and territories beyond the sea) at Westminster Abbey, London

1941 Martin Bormann succeeds Rudolf Hess as Adolf Hitler's deputy

1942 David Ben-Gurion leaves Jewish state in Palestine

1943 British premier Winston Churchill arrives in USA

1949 1st foreign woman ambassador received in USA (Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of India)

1959 "Nervous Set" opens at Henry Miller's Theater NYC for 23 performances

1960 Elvis Presley appears on a Frank Sinatra special

1963 Bob Dylan walks out of the "Ed Sullivan Show"

1967 1st quadraphonic concert by Pink Floyd at the Games for May concert in London

1967 "Are You Experienced" album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience first released - one of the most influential debut albums ever

1970 Ernie Banks hits his 500th home run

1972 Paul McCartney & Wings release "Mary Had a Little Lamb"

1979 Chris Evert's 125-match winning streak on clay comes to an end

1982 In Fatima Portugal, a Spanish Traditionalist priest who opposed Vatican II reforms and saw Pope John Paul II as a perpetrator of them, is stopped prior to his attempt to attack the Pope with a bayonet

1984 South African prisoner Nelson Mandela sees his wife for 1st time in 22 years

1986 President Reagan appoints Dr James C Fletcher NASA Administrator

1990 Nora Dunn and Sinead O'Connor boycott "Saturday Night Live" to protest Andrew Dice Clay's hosting which was perceived as sexist; the show uses a time delay for the third time in its history

1994 "Pulp Fiction", directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring John Travolta, Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson premieres at the Cannes Film Festival (Palme d'Or 1994)

1995 Martin Brodeur ties NHL record getting his 3rd playoff shutout in 4

1996 LPGA Championship Women's Golf, DuPont CC: England's Laura Davies wins by 1 stroke ahead of runner-up Julie Piers

1997 "It's Your Love" single released by Time McGraw and Faith Hill