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Today in History: May 5

1494 Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Jamaica, which he names Santa Gloria.

1821 Napoleon Bonaparte dies in exile on the island of St. Helena.

1912 Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda begins publishing.

1916 U.S. Marines invade the Dominican Republic.

1965 173rd Airborne Brigade arrives in Bien Hoa-Vung, Vietnam, the first regular U.S. Army unit deployed to that country.

2000 The Sun, Earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn align - Earth's moon is also almost in this alignment - leading to Doomsday predictions of massive natural disasters, although such a 'grand confluence' occurs about once in every century.

Born on May 5

1818 Karl Marx, German philosopher (The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital).

1830 John B. Stetson, American hat maker.


1970 Darth_Vader Alabama native poster one death under his belt.

JOTD
Little girl lands position as construction boss.

A young family moved into a house next to a vacant lot. One day, a construction crew turned up to start building a house on the empty lot.
The young family’s 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in all the activity going on next door and spent much of each day observing the workers. Eventually the construction crew, all of them “gems-in-the-rough” more or less, had adopted her as a kind of project mascot.
They chatted with her, let her sit with them while they had coffee and lunch breaks, and gave her little jobs to do here and there to make her feel important. At the end of the first week, they even presented her with a pay envelope containing ten dollars.
The little girl took this home to her mother who suggested that she take her ten dollars “pay” she’d received to the bank the next day to start a savings account. When the girl and her mom got to the bank, the teller was equally impressed and asked the little girl how she had come by her very own paycheck at such a young age.
The little girl proudly replied: “I worked last week with a real construction crew building the new house next door to us.”
“Oh my goodness gracious,” said the teller, “and will you be working on the house again this week, too?”
The little girl replied, “I will if those lazy assholes from Lowe’s ever deliver the fricking sheetrock.”