Tulsa Race Riot

1921

Tulsa Race Massacre begins

Born on This Day

Walt Whitman Portrait

Walt Whitman

1819 - 1892

American poet whose 1855 collection "Leaves of Grass" celebrated democracy and individualism in distinctive free verse.

New York Jets Quarterback Joe Namath

Joe Namath

1943 -

Football legend dubbed "Broadway Joe." Quarterbacked the New York Jets to an upset win in the 1969 Super Bowl.

"Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields" New York Premiere

Brooke Shields

1965 -

Star who played provocative roles as a child actor in "Pretty Baby" and "The Blue Lagoon" and modeled for Calvin Klein in the 1980s.

2009

MAY

31

Millvina Dean, the last Titanic survivor, dies at age 97. At 9 weeks old, she survived the sinking with her mother and brother, but lost her dad. The family, traveling in steerage to relocate to Kansas City, returned to London.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on May 31st

1819

Poet Walt Whitman, author of “Leaves of Grass,” is born

May 31, 1819 is the birthday of American poet Walt Whitman, born in West Hills, Long Island, and raised in Brooklyn. Although Whitman loved music and books, he left school at the age of 14 to become a journeyman printer. Later, he worked as a teacher, journalist, editor, carpenter, and held various other jobs to […]

1859

Big Ben starts ticking over London for the first time

The famous tower clock known as Big Ben, located at the top of the 320-foot-high Elizabeth Tower, rings out over the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, for the first time.

1889

More than 2,000 die in the Johnstown Flood

On May 31, 1889, Pennsylvania’s South Fork Dam collapses, causing the catastrophic Johnstown Flood. More than 2,200 people die in the disaster. Located 60 miles east of Pittsburgh in a valley near the Allegheny, Little Conemaugh and Stony Creek Rivers, Johnstown sits on a floodplain subject to frequent disasters. In 1840, officials constructed a dam […]

1902

The Boer War ends in South Africa

In Pretoria, representatives of Great Britain and the Boer states sign the Treaty of Vereeniging, officially ending the three-and-a-half-year South African Boer War. The Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers of southern Africa. Britain took possession of the Dutch Cape colony in 1806 during the Napoleonic wars, sparking […]

1916

Battle of Jutland, greatest naval battle of WWI, begins

Just before four o’clock on the afternoon of May 31, 1916, a British naval force commanded by Vice Admiral David Beatty confronts a squadron of German ships, led by Admiral Franz von Hipper, some 75 miles off the Danish coast. The two squadrons opened fire on each other simultaneously, beginning the opening phase of the […]

1921

Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti go on trial for murder

A paymaster and a security guard are killed during a mid-afternoon armed robbery of a shoe company in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Out of this rather unremarkable crime comes one of the most famous trials in American history: that of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, which began on May 31, 1921. Both Fred Parmenter and Alessandro […]

1929

Ford Motor Company signs agreement with Soviet Union

After two years of exploratory visits and friendly negotiations, Ford Motor Company signs a landmark agreement to produce cars in the Soviet Union on May 30, 1929. The Soviet Union, which in 1928 had only 20,000 cars and a single truck factory, was eager to join the ranks of automotive production, and Ford, with its […]

1930

Actor and director Clint Eastwood is born

Best known to his many fans for one of his most memorable screen incarnations—San Francisco Police Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan—the actor and Oscar-winning filmmaker Clint Eastwood is born on May 31, 1930, in San Francisco, California. With his father, Eastwood wandered the West Coast as a boy during the Depression. Then, after four years in […]

1962

Architect of the Holocaust hanged in Israel

Near Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler’s “final solution of the Jewish question,” was executed for his crimes against humanity. Eichmann was born in Solingen, Germany, in 1906. In November 1932, he joined the Nazi’s elite SS (Schutzstaffel) organization, whose members came to have broad responsibilities in Nazi […]

1964

Serial killer known as the “Pied Piper of Tucson” murders his first victim

Fifteen-year-old Alleen Rowe is killed by Charles Schmid in the desert outside Tucson, Arizona. Earlier in the night, Schmid allegedly had said to his friends, “I want to kill a girl! I want to do it tonight. I think I can get away with it!” Schmid went on to kill two other teenage girls before […]

1974

“Benji” opens in theaters

On May 31, 1974, Benji, a film about a stray dog who helps rescue several kidnapped children, opens in U.S. theaters; it will go on to become a family classic. Written and directed by Joe Camp, Benji starred a mutt named Higgins, who had been rescued as a puppy from a California animal shelter and […]

1977

The BBC bans the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen”

On May 31, 1977, the song “God Save The Queen” earned a total ban on radio airplay from the BBC. Such a ban might signal the kiss of death for a normal pop single, but it proved a powerful endorsement for an anti-establishment rant by the British punk group known as the Sex Pistols. Thirty […]

1996

Benjamin Netanyahu elected prime minister of Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres is narrowly defeated in national elections by Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Peres, leader of the Labor Party, became prime minister in 1995 after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing Jewish extremist. Netanyahu, who promised to be tough on terrorism and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, was at 47 the […]

2005

Identity of “Deep Throat,” source who helped unravel the Watergate scandal, is revealed

On May 31, 2005, W. Mark Felt’s family ends 30 years of speculation, identifying Felt, the former FBI assistant director, as “Deep Throat,” the secret source who helped unravel the Watergate scandal. Felt’s admission, made in an article in Vanity Fair magazine, took legendary reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who had promised to keep […]

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