May 4 in Pop Culture History

May 4 Fun Facts, Trivia and History

May 4 History Highlights

  • 1776 – Rhode Island was the first American colony to renounce allegiance to King George III.
  • 1904 – The United States began the construction of the Panama Canal.
  • May 4 is Star Wars Day. “May the Fourth be with you.”
  • May 4 Birthday (fictional) Alice, In Wonderland
  • If you were born on May 4th,
    You were likely conceived the week of… August 11th (prior year)

Kent State Shootings

The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre and the Kent State massacre, were the killings of four students, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Allison B. Krause, William Knox Schroeder, and Sandra Lee Scheue, and the wounding of nine other unarmed Kent State University students by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970, in Kent, Ohio, 40 miles south of Cleveland. The tragedy is responsible for bringing to national prominence both longtime protests against US involvement in Vietnam as well as student activism overall.

May 4 is…

Candied Orange Peel Day
Orange Juice Day
Respect For Chickens Day
Star Wars Day
Weather Observers Day

May 4 Birthday Quotes

“As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.”
– Audrey Hepburn

“You don’t have to get beat up as many times as I did to come to your senses. Certainly, I wish I’d come to mine earlier than I did.”
– Randy Travis

“It’s not what you take when you leave this world behind you. It’s what you leave behind you when you go.”
– Randy Travis

“Beauty is being the best possible version of yourself, inside and out.”
– Audrey Hepburn

May 4 Birthdays

1852 – Alice Liddell, English model (died in 1934)
1855 – Greyfriars Bobby, faithful dog (died in 1872)
1913 – John Broome, American comic book author (died in 1999)
1914 – Maria Flex, Mexican actress (died in 2002)
1929 – Audrey Hepburn, Belgian-British actress and humanitarian (died in 1993)
1959 – Randy Travis, American singer-songwriter
1967 – Ana Gasteyer, American comedic actress
1970 – Will Arnett, Canadian comedic actor
1978 – Erin Andrews, American sportscaster and journalist

May 4 History

1494 – Christopher Columbus discovered Jamaica.

1626 – Dutch explorer Peter Minuit (~1594-1638), director-general of New Netherlands, bought Manhattan Island for 60 guilders (about $$1,143 in 2020 dollars) worth of cloth and buttons.

1814 – Emperor Napoleon arrived at Portoferraio on the island of Elba to begin his exile.

1886 – A labor protest in Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois resulted in 100 wounded and 8 police officers killed.

1904 – The United States began the construction of the Panama Canal.

1933 – The discovery of radio waves from the center of the Milky Way galaxy was announced by Karl Jansky.

1927 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was incorporated.

1948 – Norman Mailer’s first novel The Naked and the Dead was published.

1953 – Ernest Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea.

1959 – The 1st Annual Grammy Awards were held.

1970 – Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Allison B. Krause, William Knox Schroeder, and Sandra Lee Scheuer were killed by National Guard troops at Ohio’s Kent State campus.

1972 – The Don’t Make A Wave Committee, an environmental organization founded in Canada in 1971, officially changes its name to the Greenpeace Foundation.

1974 #1 Hit May 4, 1974 – May 17, 1974: Grand FunkThe Loco-Motion

1989 – The space probe Magellan was carried in the cargo bay Space Shuttle Atlantis and released to travel around the planet, Venus.

1990 – Jesse Tafero was executed in Florida after his electric chair malfunctioned three times, causing his hair & head to catch fire.

1996 #1 Hit May 4, 1996 – May 17, 1996: Mariah CareyAlways Be My Baby

Today’s Random Trivia and Shower Thoughts

The stormtrooper who hit his head on the door in the original Star Wars was also the stormtrooper who got mind tricked with “these are not the droids you’re looking for” by Obi-wan. His name is Wanten.

“Warp Factor” in Star Trek refers to a cubic function of the speed of light, so while Warp 1 is the speed of light, Warp 2 is 8 times the speed of light, Warp 3 is 27, and Warp 10 is 1000 times the speed of light.

A group of Nouns is called a Collective.

“The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle is equal to the square root of the remaining side. Oh, joy! Rapture! I got a brain! How can I ever thank you enough?” – Scarecrow

An “initialism” is a type of acronym that cannot be pronounced as a word but must be read letter-by-letter, like FBI or UCLA.

Before the English-speaking world was exposed to the fruit, the color orange was referred to as “geoluhrea” which is the old English term for red-yellow.

The Capital of Switzerland is Bern

Clearly stated instructions will consistently produce multiple interpretations.

The names of the two stone lions in front of the New York Public Library are Patience and Fortitude. They were named by then-mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.

Vermont was an independent nation between the years 1777 and 1791.

The post office in Bedrock, Colorado has gotten so much fan mail addressed to characters from ‘The Flintstones’ that they created a special stamp for rejecting the mail: ‘Return to Sender – Fictitious Cartoon Character’.

“We sow the seed. Nature grows the seed, then we eat the seed” – Neil #TVQuotes

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