GREETINGS FROM TORNADO TAVERN GALLERY and finally HAPPY SPRING!

Here in Door County we are mowing grass, eggs are being laid again and we are dealing with farm equipment on the county roads. We are also appreciative for the longer days, the warming temperatures and getting outside without a snowmobile suit.

All this also means that summer activities are ramping up. The Door County Historical Society (DCHS) will be opening their two historical sites. The DCHS present the Heritage Village outside of Sturgeon Bay and easily accessible from Hwy. 57/42. The village is made up of local historical buildings, moved to the site over the years. The village also presents a working blacksmith shop and monthly Saturday events throughout the season. The Historic Society also presents the Eagle Bluff Lighthouse in Peninsula State Park. The lighthouse is open on most days and offers guided tours of the grounds. There are also special events throughout the season and is a great place for relaxing in the upper Door Peninsula.

The Tornado Tavern Gallery will be at the Fort Koshkonong Rendezvous, in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, this weekend (5/25 through 5/27). The rendezvous s named after nearby Lake Koshkonong. The site is near one of the forts built by General Henry Atkinson in 1832 during the Blackhawk War to control the Rock River. Later the town was built in 1836 and was named for General Atkinson. Bring the family out and visit us.

Historical highlights for the next week or so:

DATE	NAME	HISTORY
5/28/1875	Bill Robinson born	Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was an American tap dancer and actor, the best known and most highly paid African-American entertainer in the first half of the twentieth century. His long career mirrored changes in American entertainment tastes and technology. He started in the age of minstrel shows and moved to vaudeville, Broadway, the recording industry, Hollywood, radio, and television. According to dance critic Marshall Stearns, "Robinson's contribution to tap dance is exact and specific. He brought it up on its toes, dancing upright and swinging", giving tap a "…hitherto-unknown lightness and presence." His signature routine was the stair dance, in which Robinson would tap up and down a set of stairs in a rhythmically complex sequence of steps, a routine that he unsuccessfully attempted to patent. Robinson is also credited with having introduced a new word, copacetic, into popular culture, via his repeated use of it in vaudeville and radio appearances.
5/23/1868	Kit Carson died	Christopher Houston Carson, better known as Kit Carson, was an American frontiersman. He was a mountain man (fur trapper), wilderness guide, Indian agent, and U.S. Army officer. Carson became a frontier legend in his own lifetime via biographies and news articles. Often exaggerated, versions of his exploits were the subject of dime novels. Carson left home in rural present-day Missouri at age 16 to become a mountain man and trapper in the West. In the 1830s, he accompanied Ewing Young on an expedition to Mexican California and joined fur trapping expeditions into the Rocky Mountains. He lived among and married into the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribes. In the 1840s, he was hired as a guide by John C. Fremont. Fremont's expedition covered much of California, Oregon, and the Great Basin area. Fremont mapped and wrote reports and commentaries on the Oregon Trail to assist and encourage westward-bound American pioneers. Carson achieved national fame through Fremont's accounts of his expeditions. Under Fremont's command, Carson participated in the conquest of Mexican California at the beginning of the Mexican–American War. Later in the war, Carson was a scout and courier, celebrated for his rescue mission after the Battle of San Pasqual and for his coast-to-coast journey from California to Washington, DC to deliver news of the conflict in California to the U.S. government. In the 1850s, he was appointed as the Indian agent to the Ute Indians and the Jicarilla Apaches. During the American Civil War, Carson led a regiment of mostly Hispanic volunteers from New Mexico on the side of the Union at the Battle of Valverde in 1862. When the Confederate threat to New Mexico was eliminated, Carson led forces to suppress the Navajo, Mescalero Apache, and the Kiowa and Comanche peoples by destroying their food sources. Carson was breveted a Brigadier General and took command of Fort Garland, Colorado. He was there only briefly: poor health forced him to retire from military life. Carson was married three times and had ten children. The Carson home was in Taos, New Mexico. Carson died at Fort Lyon, Colorado, of an aortic aneurysm on May 23, 1868. He is buried in Taos, New Mexico, next to his third wife Josefa Jaramillo.
5/24/543	Nicolaus Copernicus	Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus dies in what is now Frombork, Poland. The father of modern astronomy, he was the first modern European scientist to propose that Earth and other planets revolve around the sun. Prior to the publication of his major astronomical work, “Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs,” in 1543, European astronomers argued that Earth lay at the center of the universe, the view also held by most ancient philosophers and biblical writers. In addition to correctly postulating the order of the known planets, including Earth, from the sun, and estimating their orbital periods relatively accurately, Copernicus argued that Earth turned daily on its axis and that gradual shifts of this axis accounted for the changing seasons. He died the year his major work was published, saving him from the outrage of some religious leaders who later condemned his heliocentric view of the universe as heresy. By the late 18th century, the Copernican view of the solar system was almost universally accepted.
5/26/1647	first recorded instance of execution for witchcraft	Achsah Young  of Windsor, Connecticut — sometimes Alse Young or Alice Young — was the first recorded instance of execution for witchcraft in the thirteen American colonies. The execution of a witch reportedly took place in Massachusetts when Achsah Young was hanged. Very little is recorded of Achsah Young; her existence is only known through her reputation as a witch. She is believed to have been the wife of John Young, who bought a small parcel of land in Windsor in 1641, sold it in 1649, and then disappeared from the town records. She had a daughter, Alice Young Beamon, who would be accused of witchcraft in nearby Springfield, Massachusetts, some 30 years later. Even though Achsah Young was a woman without a son when the witchcraft accusation was lodged, her husband was still alive during her accusation. This makes it unlikely that she was accused simply for the possibility of inheriting her husband's estate in the future. Other reasons are more probable. There is no further record of Young's trial or the specifics of the charge, only that Achsah Young was a woman. Early historical records indicate that an influenza epidemic took hold of New England including the town of Windsor, Connecticut Colony in early 1647. The mortality rate that year increased dramatically and included many children. It is possible that she was blamed for these deaths.
5/27/1831	Jedidiah Smith died	Jedidiah Smith, one of the nation’s most important trapper-explorers, is killed by Comanche Indians on the Santa Fe Trail. Smith’s role in opening up the Far West was not fully appreciated until modern scholars examined the records of his far-ranging journeys. As with all of the mountain men, Smith ventured west as a practical businessman working for eastern fur companies. His goal was to find new territories to trap beaver and otter and make trading contacts with Native Americans. Nonetheless, beginning in 1822 when he made his first expedition with the fur trader William Ashley, Smith’s travels provided information on western geography and potential trails that were invaluable to later pioneers. Smith’s most important accomplishment was his rediscovery in 1824 of the South Pass, an easy route across the Rocky Mountains in modern-day western Wyoming.
5/21/1901	Connecticut enacts first speed-limit law	On this day in 1901, Connecticut becomes the first state to pass a law regulating motor vehicles, limiting their speed to 12 mph in cities and 15 mph on country roads.
5/21/1932	Earhart completes transatlantic flight	Five years to the day that American aviator Charles Lindbergh became the first pilot to accomplish a solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, female aviator Amelia Earhart becomes the first pilot to repeat the feat, landing her plane in Ireland after flying across the North Atlantic. Earhart traveled over 2,000 miles from Newfoundland in just under 15 hours.
5/25/1935	Jesse Owens track & field	Owens's achieved track and field immortality in a span of 45 minutes on May 25, 1935, during the Big Ten meet at Ferry Field in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he set three world records and tied a fourth. He equaled the world record for the 100-yard dash (9.4 seconds) (not to be confused with the 100-meter dash); and set world records in the long jump (26 ft. 8 1⁄4 in or 8.13 m, a world record that would last for 25 years); 220-yard (201.2 m) sprint (20.3 seconds); and 220-yard (201.2m) low hurdles (22.6 seconds, becoming the first to break 23 seconds). In 2005, University of Central Florida professor of sports history Richard C. Crepeau chose these wins on one day as the most impressive athletic achievement since 1850. A year later Owens won 4 gold medals in the 1336 Olympics in Berlin. The first gold was in the 100 meters, where Owens edged out teammate Ralph Metcalfe in a time of 10.3 seconds. Gold number two came in the long jump, where he fouled on his first two attempts. One was just a practice run where he continued down the runway into the pit, but German officials didn't buy it and counted it as a jump. Top German long jumper Luz Long suggested Owens play it safe and jump a few inches before the usual take-off spot. He took his advice and qualified for the finals, where he won the gold with a leap of 26—5½. And Long was there to congratulate him. "It took a lot of courage for him to befriend me in front of Hitler," Owens would later say. "You can melt down all the medals and cups I have and they wouldn't be a plating on the 24-karat friendship I felt for Luz Long at that moment." The third gold was in the 200-meter dash, where he defeated, among others, Jackie Robinson's older brother Mack and broke the Olympic record with a time of 20.7 seconds. Gold number four was a controversial one—not with the Germans, but with his fellow Americans. American Jews Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller were supposed to run for the United States on the 4x100 relay team. At the last minute, they were replaced by Owens and Metcalfe and it was reported that Hitler asked U.S. officials not to embarrass him any further by having two Jews win gold in Berlin. Whether that's true or not, the Owens-led U.S. team rolled to victory in a world record time of 39.8 seconds and Owens' magical Olympics came to a close. While German officials denounced Owens, an overwhelming majority of the German fans treated him like a hero. In 1984, a street in Berlin was named in his honor.
5/26/1940	Operation Dynamo begins	The Dunkirk evacuation, code-named Operation Dynamo, and also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers during World War II from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, in the north of France, between 26 May and 4 June 1940. The operation commenced after large numbers of Belgian, British, and French troops were cut off and surrounded by German troops during the six-week long Battle of France. In a speech to the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called this "a colossal military disaster", saying "the whole root and core and brain of the British Army" had been stranded at Dunkirk and seemed about to perish or be captured. In his "we shall fight on the beaches" speech on 4 June, he hailed their rescue as a "miracle of deliverance".
5/21/1955	Chuck Berry records “Maybellene”	John Lennon once famously said that “if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry.'” That’s how foundational Berry’s contributions were to the music that changed America and the world beginning in the mid-1950s. Even more than Elvis Presley, who was an incomparable performer, but of other people’s songs, Chuck Berry created the do-it-yourself template that most rock-and-rollers still seek to follow. If there can be said to be a single day on which his profound influence on the sound and style of rock and roll began, it was this day in 1955, when an unknown Chuck Berry paid his first visit to a recording studio and cut the record that would make him famous: “Maybellene.”
5/26/1959	Haddix pitches 12 perfect innings, but loses	On this day in 1959, Harvey Haddix of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitches 12 perfect innings against the Milwaukee Braves, only to lose the game on a two-run double by Braves’ first baseman Joe Adcock in the 13th inning. It was the first time a pitcher threw more than nine perfect innings in major league history.
5/25/1977	The first Star Wars film is released	Star Wars is an American epic space opera media franchise, centered on a film series created by George Lucas. It depicts the adventures of characters "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away". The epic space opera encompassing seven films is one of the most popular works in movie history.
5/20/2018	Spirit of St. Louis departs	At 7:52 a.m., American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, on the world’s first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean and the first ever nonstop flight between New York to Paris. Lindbergh, a daring young airmail pilot, was a dark horse when he entered a competition with a $25,000 payoff to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. He ordered a small monoplane, configured it to his own design, and christened it the Spirit of St. Louis in tribute to his sponsor–the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce. 33 1/2 hours later Lindbergh lands at Le Bourget Field in Paris, successfully completing the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight and the first ever nonstop flight between New York to Paris.
5/27/2018	EINHERJAR DAY	Einherjar Day, May 26, in remembrance of the fallen heroes in Valhalla. This falls on memorial day in the USA which commemorates U.S. men and women who have died in military service to their country. The UK celebrates on Remembrance day 11th November.
5/20/1498	Vasco da Gama reaches India	Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama becomes the first European to reach India via the Atlantic Ocean when he arrives at Calicut on the Malabar Coast. Da Gama sailed from Lisbon, Portugal, in July 1497, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and anchored at Malindi on the east coast of Africa. With the aid of an Indian merchant he met there, he then set off across the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese explorer was not greeted warmly by the Muslim merchants of Calicut, and in 1499 he had to fight his way out of the harbor on his return trip home. In 1502, he led a squadron of ships to Calicut to avenge the massacre of Portuguese explorers there and succeeded in subduing the inhabitants. In 1524, he was sent as viceroy to India, but he fell ill and died in Cochin.
5/20/1873	Patented denim blue jeans	On May 20, 1873, an icon American fashion was born, or at least patented, when the United States Patent and Trademark Office issued U.S. Patent No. 139,121, titled Fastening Pocket-Openings. The ‘121 patent, which was granted to Jacob W. Davis and jointly assigned to himself and to Levi Strauss & Company, ushered in the era of denim blue jeans. The ‘121 patent specifically related to copper rivet fasteners for denim trousers, which proved to be extremely desirable and durable.
5/21/1819	1st bicycles in US introduced in NYC	Denis Johnson created an improved version of the German Karl Drais's Draisine, the archetypal bicycle. Johnson's ‘pedestrian curricle’ was patented in London in December 1818, becoming Britain's first bicycle. It featured an elegantly curved wooden frame, allowing the use of larger wooden wheels. Several parts were made of metal, which allowed the vehicle to be lighter than the continental version. Although Johnson referred to his machine as a ‘pedestrian curricle’, it was formally referred to as a ‘velocipede’, and popularly as a ‘Hobby-horse’, ‘Dandy-horse’, ‘Pedestrian's accelerator’, ‘Swift walker’ and by a variety of other names. Johnson made at least 320 velocipedes in the early part of 1819. He also opened riding schools in the Strand and Soho. In May 1819 he introduced a dropped-frame version for ladies to accommodate their long skirts. For about six months the machine had a high profile in London and elsewhere, its principal riders being the Regency dandies. About eighty prints were produced in London, depicting the 'hobby-horse' and its users, not always in a flattering light. Johnson's son undertook a tour of England in the spring of 1819 to exhibit and publicize the item. Nevertheless, by the summer of the same year the craze was dying out, and a health warning against the continued use of the velocipede was issued by the London Surgeons. In Johnson's machine, like that of von Drais, propulsion was simply by ‘swift walking’, with the rider striking his (or her) feet on the ground alternately. However, it led directly (albeit after a long delay) to the invention of the bicycle in the 1860s, when rotary cranks and pedals were attached to the front-wheel hub of a machine based on Johnson's.
5/21/455	The War of the Roses	In the opening battle of England’s War of the Roses, the Yorkists defeat King Henry VI’s Lancastrian forces at St. Albans, 20 miles northwest of London. Many Lancastrian nobles perished, including Edmund Beaufort, the duke of Somerset, and the king was forced to submit to the rule of his cousin, Richard of York. The dynastic struggle between the House of York, whose badge was a white rose, and the House of Lancaster, later associated with a red rose, would stretch on for 30 years.
5/23/1830	Mary had a little lamb is published	Sarah Josepha Hale's poem is one of the best-known English language nursery rhymes. Her collection Poems for Our Children, which includes "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (originally titled "Mary's Lamb"), was published in 1830. The poem was written for children, an audience for which many women poets of this period were writing. In 1823, with the financial support of her late husband's Freemason lodge, Sarah Hale published a collection of her poems titled The Genius of Oblivion. Four years later, in 1827, her first novel was published in the U.S. under the title Northwood: Life North and South and in London under the title A New England Tale. The novel made Hale one of the first novelists to write a book about slavery, as well as one of the first American woman novelists. The book also espoused New England virtues as the model to follow for national prosperity, and was an immediate success. The novel supported relocating the nation's African slaves to freedom in Liberia. In her introduction to the second edition (1852), Hale wrote; "The great error of those who would sever the Union rather than see a slave within its borders, is, that they forget the master is their brother, as well as the servant; and that the spirit which seeks to do good to all and evil to none is the only true Christian philanthropy." The book described how while slavery hurts and dehumanizes slaves absolutely, it also dehumanizes the masters and retards their world's psychological, moral and technological progress. Hale, as a successful and popular editor was respected as an arbiter of taste for middle-class women in matters of fashion, cooking, literature, and morality. In her work, however, she reinforced stereotypical gender roles, specifically domestic roles for women, while casually trying to expand them. For example, Hale believed that women shaped the morals of society, and pushed for women to write morally uplifting novels. She wrote that "while the ocean of political life is heaving and raging with the storm of partisan passions among the men of America... [women as] the true conservators of peace and good-will, should be careful to cultivate every gentle feeling". Hale did not support women's suffrage and instead believed in the "secret, silent influence of women" to sway male voters.
5/23/1844	Bábism is founded	Siyyid `Alí Muḥammad Shírází, the “Báb” (meaning "Gate" or "Door"), as he called himself, created Babism. The religion which was a forerunner of the Bahá'í Faith. His teachings were seen as a threat by the Islamic clergy, and his followers were brutally persecuted by the Persian government.
5/23/1873	North West Mounted Police force was formed	Royal Canadian Mounted Police, constabulary organized (1873) as the Northwest Mounted Police to bring law and order to the Canadian west. In 1920 the name was changed to the present title. The corps, which gained a romantic reputation for daring exploits and persistence in trailing criminals, originally numbered 300 men they came to be known as Red Coats, Riders of the Plains, and, most popularly, Mounties. The force later absorbed the provincial police forces of all the territories and provinces except Ontario and Quebec and enforces all federal and provincial laws except in those provinces. It also takes part in selected international peacekeeping activities. The force numbers about 16,000.
5/24/1607	Jamestown	Captain Christopher Newport and 105 followers found the colony of Jamestown at the mouth of the James River on the coast of Virginia. Jamestown was a false start in the New World: a colony founded on greed that ultimately failed due to poor location, infighting and highborn colonists resistant to hard work. The colony’s very physical legacy, its original fort, was believed to have long ago washed away into the James River. Enter Dr. William Kelso, chief archaeologist for the Jamestown Rediscovery Project sponsored by the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. Using computer technology, centuries-old accounts written by the colonists themselves and the eye of a historical detective, Kelso has rediscovered James Fort and with it a trove of priceless artifacts that illuminate the lives, struggles and surprising accomplishments of those first English Americans. The pioneering settlement Kelso describes in his book Jamestown: The Buried Truth is an astonishing place. Still, you may find it strangely familiar. This is the real story of the birth of a nation — America before the Pilgrims.
5/24/1844	What hath God wrought?	In a demonstration witnessed by members of Congress, American inventor Samuel F.B. Morse dispatches a telegraph message from the U.S. Capitol to Alfred Vail at a railroad station in Baltimore, Maryland. The message–“What Hath God Wrought?”–was telegraphed back to the Capitol a moment later by Vail. The question, taken from the Bible (Numbers 23:23), had been suggested to Morse by Annie Ellworth, the daughter of the commissioner of patents.
5/26/1868	President Johnson acquitted	At the end of a historic two-month trial, the U.S. Senate narrowly fails to convict President Andrew Johnson of the impeachment charges levied against him by the House of Representatives three months earlier. The senators voted 35 guilty and 19 not guilty on the second article of impeachment, a charge related to his violation of the Tenure of Office Act in the previous year. The Tenure of Office Act was a United States federal law (in force from 1867 to 1887) that was intended to restrict the power of the President of the United States to remove certain office-holders without the approval of the Senate. The law was enacted on March 3, 1867, over the veto of President Andrew Johnson. Ten days earlier, the Senate had likewise failed to convict Johnson on another article of impeachment, the 11th, voting an identical 35 for conviction and 19 for acquittal. Because both votes fell short–by one vote–of the two-thirds majority needed to convict Johnson, he was judged not guilty and remained in office.
5/27/0685	Battle of Nechtansmere/Dun Nechtain	The Battle of Dun Nechtain or Battle of Nechtansmere was fought between the Picts, led by King Bridei Mac Bili, and the Northumbrians, led by King Ecgfrith. The Northumbrian hegemony over Northern Britain, won by Ecgfrith's predecessors, had begun to disintegrate. Several of Northumbria's subject nations had rebelled in recent years, leading to a number of large-scale battles against the Picts, Mercians, and Irish, with varied success. After sieges of neighboring territories carried out by the Picts, Ecgfrith led his forces against them, despite advice to the contrary, in an effort to reassert his suzerainty over the Pictish nations. A feigned retreat by the Picts drew the Northumbrians into an ambush at Dun Nechtain near the lake of Linn Garan. The battle site has long been thought to have been near the present-day village of Dunnichen in Angus. Recent research, however, has suggested a more northerly location near Dunachton, on the shores of Loch Insh in Badenoch and Strathspey. The battle ended with a decisive Pictish victory which severely weakened Northumbria's power in northern Britain. Ecgfrith was killed in battle, along with the greater part of his army. The Pictish victory marked their independence from Northumbria, who never regained their dominance in the north.
5/27/1293	King Sancho IV of Castile creates the Study of General Schools of Alcalá	On May 20 of 1293, the king Sancho IV of Castile granted license to archbishop of Toledo Gonzalo García Gudiel to create a Studium Generale (as the university studies were then called through Europe) in Alcalá de Henares, "with the same frankness for teachers and students, which were granted to General Study of Valladolid". These studies, although quite modest, survived through time to link with the Cisneros refoundation. On July 17, 1459 Pope Pius II granted a bull, requested by the archbishop Alfonso Carrillo de Acuña, "for the erection of three Cathedras of Arts and Grammar in this study of Alcalá". These last chatedras, subsisting of that General Study of the 13th century, were integrated by Cisneros into the "new" university.
5/29/848	Wisconsin enters the Union	Following approval of statehood by the territory’s citizens, Wisconsin enters the Union as the 30th state. In 1634, French explorer Jean Nicolet landed at Green Bay, becoming the first European to visit the lake-heavy northern region that would later become Wisconsin. In 1763, at the conclusion of the French and Indian Wars, the region, a major center of the American fur trade, passed into British control. Two decades later, at the end of the American Revolution, the region came under U.S. rule and was governed as part of the Northwest Territory. However, British fur traders continued to dominate Wisconsin from across the Canadian border, and it was not until the end of the War of 1812 that the region fell firmly under American control. In the first decades of the 19th century, settlers began arriving via the Erie Canal and the Great Lakes to exploit Wisconsin’s agricultural potential, and in 1832 the Black Hawk War ended Native American resistance to white settlement. In 1836, after several decades of governance as part of other territories, Wisconsin was made a separate entity, with Madison, located midway between Milwaukee and the western centers of population, marked as the territorial capital. By 1840, population in Wisconsin had risen above 130,000, but the people voted against statehood four times, fearing the higher taxes that would come with a stronger central government. Finally, in 1848, Wisconsin citizens, envious of the prosperity that federal programs brought to neighboring Midwestern states, voted to approve statehood. Wisconsin entered the Union the next May.