Once Upon A Time – May 29 – 1942 – Bing Crosby Records Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas”, World’s Best-Selling Single (Estimated 100 Million Copies Sold)

1453 Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire falls to the Turks under Mehmed II; ends the Byzantine Empire

1592 Battle of Sacheon: Korean navy led by Admiral Yi Sun Shin repels a Japanese fleet – first use of Korean Turtle ship

1660 On his 30th birthday Charles II returns to London from exile in the Netherlands to claim the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth comes to an end

1851 Sojourner Truth addresses 1st Black Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio

1953 Edmund Hillary (NZ) and Tenzing Norgay (Nepal) are first to reach the summit of Mount Everest as part of a British Expedition

HISTORICAL EVENTS TODAY

TODAY IN FILM & TV

1942 Bing Crosby records Irving Berlin’s song “White Christmas”, world’s best-selling single (estimated 100 million copies sold)

1942 “Yankee Doodle Dandy”, based on life of George M. Cohan, directed by Michael Curtiz, starring James Cagney and Joan Lesley, premieres in NYC (Academy Awards Best Actor 1943)

TODAY IN SPORT

1922 US Supreme Court rules organized baseball is a sport and not a business and thus not subject to antitrust laws

MORE FACTS

1886 American chemist John Pemberton begins to advertise Coca-Cola

1912 15 young women are fired by Curtis Publishing in Philadelphia for dancing the “Turkey Trot” during their lunch break

FAMOUS WEDDINGS

1506 Earl Willem I van Nassau-Dillenburg weds countess Walburg van Egmont

1849 Bacteriologist Louis Pasteur (26) weds secretary Marie Laurent (23) in Strasbourg, France

1884 Irish writer Oscar Wilde marries Constance Lloyd at St. James Church, Paddington, London