May 31 in Pop Culture History
1279 BC – Ramesses II became pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. He may have been the pharaoh involved with Moses. He was the subject of Percy Bysshe Shelly’s Ozymandias. “King of Kings am I, Osymandias. If anyone would know how great I am and where I lie, let him surpass one of my works.”
1578 – The Catacombs of Rome were discovered.
1790 – The United States enacted the Copyright Act of 1790.
1859 – Big Ben, located at the top London’s 320-foot-high St. Stephen’s Tower, began operating.
1889 – Johnston, Pennsylvania Flood killed over 2,200 people.
1927 – The last Ford Model T rolls off the assembly line after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles. Henry took the last one home, to be with the first one and the prototype.
1935 (Earthquake) British India (Pakistan)
1970 (Earthquake) Yungay, Peru
1977 – The Sex Pistol’s God Save The Queen was banned from performing on the BBC.
1977 – Beatlemania (Broadway Musical) Opened on May 31, 1977 and Closed: October 17, 1979
1997 – Singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley drowned while swimming in his pool. He was not 27.
2000 – Survivor premiered on CBS
2005 – W. Mark Felt’s family announced that assistant FBI director Felt, was in fact, ‘Deep Throat’ – the insider who told reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein the details about President Nixon’s Watergate scandal.
