What do you do when there are too few hands to harvest the crops and there are miles and miles of flat, stoneless prairie on which to grow crops? You build a mechanical reaper. And that’s exactly what Cyrus Hall McCormick did. 

McCormick, who was born on this day in 1809 on a farm in Walnut Grove, Virginia, had watched his father’s unsuccessful attempts at building a reaper. Cyrus was bound and determined to succeed where his father had failed. So he went about the task of building a mechanical reaper which he tested in a Virginia wheat field. By his 25th birthday, he had improved the reaper enough to get a patent for it. Then, at the age of 38, with sixty dollars in his pocket, Cyrus went to Chicago where he set up a reaper factory. 

The time and place were right for reaping ... the rich prairie wheatlands of the United States were being developed. Little did Cyrus McCormick know that he was creating the machine that would be second only to the railroad in the development of the United States, a symbol of the mechanical revolution in agriculture. 

McCormick survived two decades of court battles to gain patent rights for reaper parts. He purchased other patents and made his company a leader in reapers. His invention had achieved worldwide notoriety and he became a millionaire before his fortieth birthday as head of The McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. 

Cyrus Hall McCormick died on May 13, 1884. 18 years later, his company merged into what we now know as International Harvester Company. And the world has been reaping the benefits of his wonderful machine ever since. 

 1929 - James Schlesinger
U.S. Secretary of Defense [1973-1976]; Secretary of Energy [1977], geboren

1933 - Der Schriftsteller Heinrich Mann legt auf Druck der NSDAP die Präsidentschaft über die Dichtkunstsektion der Preußischen Akademie der Künste nieder

 1948 - Ron (Ronald Charles) Cey
The Penguin: baseball: LA Dodgers [World Series: 1974, 1977, 1978, 1981/all-star: 1974-1979], Chicago Cubs, Oakland Athletics, geboren

 1951 - Jane Seymour (Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg)

 1952: In Windsor (England) wird der verstorbene König George VI. zu Grabe getragen.
 

1964, the Dave Clark Five appeared on the UK TV show 'Thank Your Lucky Stars.'

1965 - This was a sad day in music, as singer Nat ‘King’ Cole died in Santa Monica, CA. The music legend was 45. Cole was born in Alabama and raised in Chicago. He first recorded in 1936, then formed the King Cole Trio in 1939 (he was the group’s pianist). He began his phenomenal solo career in 1950. Cole had feature roles in the films St. Louis Blues and Cat Ballou, and made many appearances in Hollywood and on TV. His own network show was abruptly canceled in the mid-1950s when sponsors refused to advertise on a program hosted by a black entertainer. His daughter, Natalie, became a pop music star with many hits in the 1990s -- including an album of standards made popular by her father: Mona Lisa, For Sentimental Reasons, Nature Boy, Too Young, Unforgettable, etc. With modern recording technology, she was able to record a duet with her father’s voice. Nat Cole was posthumously awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1990. 
1965 - In Köln wird unter musikalischer Leitung von Michael Gielen die Oper «Die Soldaten» von Bernd Alois Zimmermann uraufgeführt

1969, Sly & The Family Stone started a four week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'Everyday People', their first No.1. 
1969, singer Vickie Jones was arrested on fraud charges for impersonating Aretha Franklin in concert at Fort Myers, Florida, no-one in the audience asked for their money back.

1986, Sade started a two week run at No.1 on the US album chart with 'Promise'.
1986 Living Bibles International moved to its present headquarters in Naperville, IL. Founded in 1968 by Ken Taylor, editor of the Living Bible, LBI is an interdenominational Bible distributing agency, working in 45 countries.
 

1986, Whitney Houston started a two week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'How Will I Know', it made No.5 in the UK.

Die Stalin-Tochter Swetlana lebt nach Angaben des britischen Massenblattes «Daily Mail» unerkannt in einem Altersheim im Westen Englands
1996 - Vor der Nordwestküste von Wales läuft der in Liberia registrierte Supertanker «Sea Empress» auf Grund und verliert in den nächsten Tagen rund 72 000 Tonnen Öl
1996, it was reported that Take That were the UK's biggest single selling artists with sales over 3.9.million.
Hochzeit von Jacky Cheung, Filmschaffende/R, und 'May Law Mei-Mei'  , Filmschaffende/R, 

1997, U2 went to No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Discoteque', the bands third UK number 1.

2000, Sting pulled-out of a concert in Vienna in protest at the inclusion of Jorg Haider's far right freedom party in Austria's new government. Lou Reed had also cancelled shows in the country.