1505: Oba Esigie, the king of Benin (Nigeria) nears the end of the first year of his reign, and as required by tradition he commissions a brass commemorative head of his father, the former king, Oba Ozolua. The bust is to be placed on an altar for veneration.
1859: Big Ben rings out over London for the first time. The famous tower clock known as Big Ben, located at the top of the 320-foot-high Elizabeth Tower, rings out over the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, for the first time on May 31, 1859.
1879: Werner von Siemens presents the world’s first electric locomotive.
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Von Siemens’ landmark invention was soon used in trams. 1881 saw the introduction of the world’s first electric tram in Berlin, Germany.
1889: A painting of a small dog listening to a phonograph was shown to the general manager of ‘The Gramophone Company’ in London by the painter, Francis Barraud. It was of his dog, Nipper. The phonograph was painted out and a gramophone was substituted. It soon became the famous trademark for the company ‘His Master’s Voice’.
1958: The “Potato Boycott” is launched in South Africa to protest the harsh treatment of black farm labourers.
1916: Battle of Jutland: Largest naval battle of World War I between the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet which killed 8,645 in an inconclusive battle but strategic British victory. German fleet never puts to sea again in WWI.
1921: Tulsa Race Massacre begins. Beginning on the night of May 31, 1921, thousands of white citizens in Tulsa, Oklahoma descended on the city’s predominantly Black Greenwood District, burning homes and businesses to the ground and killing hundreds of people. Long mischaracterized as a race riot, rather than mass murder, the Tulsa Race Massacre stands as one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the nation’s history.
1962: Architect of the Holocaust hanged in Israel. Near Tel Aviv, Israel, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler’s “final solution of the Jewish question,” was executed for his crimes against humanity.
1977: The BBC bans the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen” Thirty years after its release, John Lydon—better known as Johnny Rotten—offered this assessment of the song that made the Sex Pistols the most reviled and revered figures in England in the spring of 1977: “There are not many songs written over baked beans at the breakfast table that went on to divide a nation and force a change in popular culture.
1989: Anti-SAP demonstrations reached Lagos as youths destroyed public property and government-owned vehicles.
2005: Deep Throat reveals himself: Former FBI agent Mark Felt admitted that he was the most important informant in the 1970’s Watergate scandal which uncovered the dirty tricks of the Nixon administration, ultimately leading to Nixon’s resignation.
BIRTHS ON THIS DAY: May 31
Clint Eastwood, 94 years
Clint Eastwood was born in San Francisco, California, United States on 31 May 1930. Best known to his many fans for one of his most memorable screen incarnations—San Francisco Police Inspector “Dirty” Harry Callahan. After achieving success in the Western TV series Rawhide, Eastwood rose to international fame with his role as the “Man with No Name” in Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy of spaghetti Westerns during the mid-1960s
E.T. Mensah (31 May 1919-19 July 1996)
Ghanaian musician and band leader, in Accra, Gold Coast. “The King of Highlife Music” spread Ghana’s musical style, which fused African rhythm and indigenous jazz with Western popular music, throughout West Africa in the 1940s and 1950s with his band The Tempos. With his older brother Yebuah he formed the Accra Rhythmic Orchestra, and dominated the Highlife music scene into the 1960s. He died at the age of 77.
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