May 11 is National Twilight Zone Day in the USA.
National Technology Day (India)
Eat What You Want Day
May 11, 1647 Peter Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam to replace Willem Kieft as Director-General of New Netherland, the Dutch colonial settlement in present-day New York City.
May 11, 1812 – Spencer Perceval became the only Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to be assassinated. The assassin, John Bellingham, was a merchant who believed he had been unjustly imprisoned in Russia and was entitled to compensation from the Government, but all his petitions had been rejected.
President James K. Polk asked for and received a Declaration of War against Mexico, starting the Mexican–American War on May 11, 1846.
Birthday of Ottmar Mergenthaler (May 11, 1854), American inventor who developed the first Linotype Machine in 1884. Before Mergenthaler’s invention, no daily newspaper in the world had more than eight pages
Minnesota Admission Day, 1858 as the thirty-second state
- Capital: St. Paul
- Nickname: North Star State/Gopher State/Bread and Butter State
- Bird: Common Loon
- Flower: Pink & White Lady’s slipper
- Tree: Norway Pine
- Motto: The star of the north
See our page for more interesting facts and trivia about Minnesota.
Birthday of Irving Berlin [Isadore Balin]( May 11, 1888), composer and lyricist. Some of his most popular songs are:
- Alexander’s Ragtime Band (called “the first real American musical work”
- A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody (in 1919),
- Blue Skies
- Cheek to Cheek,
- Easter Parade,
- The Girl That I Marry,
- God Bless America,
- I’ve Got My Love to Keep me Warm,
- There’s No Business Like Show Business, and
- White Christmas.
Pullman Strike of 1894: Four thousand Pullman Palace Car Company workers went on a wildcat strike in Illinois.
1904 Birthday of Salvador Dali (May 11, 1904), painter, surrealist artist. His works can be viewed at Wikiart
An act of the U.S. Congress establishes Glacier National Park in Montana on May 11, 1910.