Today in history—May 2
1670: King Charles II grants a royal charter to the Hudson’s Bay Company, whose object is to control the fur trade in North America. To day it’s Canada’s oldest corporation.
1772: Friedrich Leopold, Freiherr von Hardenberg, the German lawyer and magistrate best known for his poems and novels under the name “Novalis,” is born at Oberwiederstedt in Prussian Saxony.
1860: Theodore Herzl, the Zionist leader who will give up law practice for journalism, is born at Budapest in what is then the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
1881: Future Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky (St. Petersburg Law 1904) is born at Simbirsk, the son of one of Vladimir Lenin’s teachers at Kazan University.
1885: Clark Bryan of Holyoke, Massachusetts, publishes the first issue of Good Housekeeping magazine. Its “Seal of Approval” dates from 1909.
1885: King Leopold I creates the Congo Free State, which will be the largest privately owned country in the world until its annexation by Belgium in 1908.
1918: General Motors Corp. acquires the six-year-old Chevrolet Motor Co.
1932: Canada Dry Ginger Ale introduces The Jack Benny Program on the NBC Blue Network. It will run for 23 years; subsequent sponsors include Chevolet, General Tire, Jell-O, Grape Nuts, and Lucky Strike cigarettes.
1933: The Inverness Courier reports the story of a local couple who saw “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface” of Loch Ness. The Courier labels it “the Monster.”
1941: Producer Stephen J. Cannell (Rockford Files, 21 Jump Street, Hunter, Silk Stalkings, Wiseguy, The Commish) is born at Pasadena, California.
1972: Shooting begins on the film Jaws. It will not only be the first film to gross $100 million, it will pioneer the modern practice of mass release backed by heavy publicity.
1982: The Weather Channel debuts on cable television. People now talk about weather 24 hours a day, but they still don’t do anything about it.
1996: Barrister Tony Blair becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1998: The European Central Bank opens for business in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.