1931 MAY

May Canadian steelworker George MacEachern and his wife have a
child. Work runs out and he’s forced to apply for relief. He gets $3
a week, for groceries only. He will later become chairman of Canada's
Unemployed Workers Association.
Vienna’s Creditanstadt bank fails.

May 1 The Empire State Building opens.
Jazz trumpet and saxophone player Ira Sullivan is born in
Washington, D.C.
May 5 Gangster Francis "Two-Gun" Crowley kills a New York City police
officer.
May 6 Baseball player Willie Mays is born in Westfield, Alabama.
May 7 Crowley is tracked to a West 90th Street building, which is soon
surrounded by 300 policemen. Over 900 shots are exchanged before
a wounded Crowley is captured. He is later executed.
May 9 The journal Nature publishes the Big Bang theory of the creating of
the universe.
May 12 Belgian violinist Eugene Ysaye dies in Brussels at the age of 72.
May 14 Broadway theatrical producer David Belasco dies in New York City
at the age of 77.
May 20 Author Anais Ninn joins the Paris bookstore Shakespeare and
Company.
May 23 Black athlete Jesse Owens competes in his first state scholastic meet
at Columbus, Ohio, sets the scholastic broad jump record of 22 feet
3 7.9 inches.
May 28 Canadian archaeologist H. A. Thompson begins a dig in Greece at
the suspected site of the Athens agora.
May 31 Opera singer Shirley Verrett is born in New Orleans, Louisiana.

© 2010 David Minor / Eagles Byte