Video: 'The Miracle Worker' trailer
(Wednesday, May 23, 1962) — The Miracle Worker, a biographical film about the determined teacher who helped Helen Keller overcome deafness and blindness to learn to communicate, opened today at the Astor and the Trans-Lux Fifty-second Street theaters in New York.
Directed by Arthur Penn, the film stars Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft, both of whom would win acting Oscars for reprising their Broadway roles as Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan.
(Saturday, May 23, 1992, 12:00 a.m. EDT) — Ex-Beatle Ringo Starr appeared on tonight’s ABC In Concert on ABC-TV, rehearsing for an upcoming tour with his All-Starr band at S.I.R. Studios in Los Angeles.
(Wednesday, May 22, 2002) — A jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicted former Ku Klux Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry of murder today in a 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls: Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Denise McNair.
Video: 'Weight Of The World'
(Friday, May 22, 1992) — Time Takes Time, the tenth studio album by ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, was released today, his first studio album since 1983. Continue reading Starr released ‘Time Takes Time’ album 20 years ago today (1992)
Video: Martha Washington (at 1:03)
(Saturday, May 22, 1802) — Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, the first First Lady of the United States from 1789 to 1797 as the wife of President George Washington, died today in Mount Vernon, Virginia. She died 11 days before her 71st birthday.
(Thursday, May 21, 1992, 11:35 p.m.-12:35 a.m. EDT) — Johnny Carson hosted the final regular edition (with guests in front of a studio audience) of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” featuring Robin Williams and Bette Midler, who slowly sang the pop standard “One for My Baby (and One More for the Road).” Continue reading Midler serenades Carson on final ‘Tonight Show’ 20 years ago this hour (1992)
Video: 'Beginning of the Dream: Homestead Act Made Law'
(Tuesday, May 20, 1862, during the American Civil War) — U.S. President Abraham Lincoln today signed the Homestead Act, which was intended to encourage settlements west of the Mississippi River by making federal land available for farming.
Video: May 20, 1862 (at 1:00:30)
(Tuesday, May 20, 1862, part of the Peninsula Campaign of the American Civil War) — Federal Gen. George McClellan’s troops are now only nine miles from Richmond, the Confederate capital, but McClellan refused to attack and instead demanded 40,000 additional men even though he already outnumbered the rebels that he faced.
Video: Dan Quayle 'Murphy Brown' comment
(Tuesday, May 19, 1992) — U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle sparked controversy by criticizing the CBS-TV sitcom Murphy Brown today for having its title character decide to bear a child out of wedlock, saying during a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco that it mocked the importance of fathers.
Video: Mary Jo Buttafuoco interview (2008)
(Tuesday, May 19, 1992) — Mary Jo Buttafuoco was shot in the face and seriously wounded today at her home in Massapequa, New York, by her husband Joey’s teenage lover, Amy Fisher, soon to be known as “the Long Island Lolita” by the media in a case that drew much notoriety.
