It was on this day in 1994 that Michael Fay got spanked with a cane. He was an 18 year old American living in Singapore who was convicted of vandalizing a bunch of automobiles. (He confessed to over 50 counts of vandalism, but later recanted.) His sentence was a few months in jail, a fine, and six strokes with a wooden cane across his bare buttocks. After President Clinton protested, calling the corporal punishment “extreme and mistaken”, the number of strokes was reduced to four. The incident was later parodied via song.
The earliest thing that Wiki mentions for this date is “553 – The Second Council of Constantinople begins” and the most recent is “2010 – Mass protests in Greece erupt in response to austerity measures imposed by the government as a result of the Greek debt crisis.”
A few others events that happened on this day are:
1886 – Over 14,000 people protest in Milwaukee WI for an 8-hour work day. State militia troops fire into the crowd and kill seven, including a 13 year old boy.
1925 – John Scopes is arrested for teaching evolution.
1961 – Alan Shepard goes into outer space for 15 minutes, becoming the first American to leave Earth’s atmosphere.
Happy birthday to Bill Ward & Kurt Loder.
Alan Shepard’s MR-3 flight cost US tax-payers $400 million. That was roughly $2.25 apiece for the 180 million Americans in 1961.