May 7 · This Day in America
The British liner Lusitania has crossed from New York carrying nearly 2,000 souls, among them 128 Americans. Germany had taken out newspaper ads in New York warning that ships in the war zone sailed at their own risk. Few believed a passenger ship would be a target. At 2:10 p.m. on May 7, 1915, eleven miles off the Irish coast, the U-boat U-20 fires one torpedo. The Lusitania lists hard and goes down in eighteen minutes. Nearly 1,200 die. The United States is officially neutral, and President Wilson does not declare war. But something turns that day in the American public, a slow tide of outrage that does not recede. It would take almost two more years and more sinkings — but the road that led the country into the First World War ran, unmistakably, past this water.
Source: www.loc.gov
Also on this day · 1789
A week after George Washington took the oath in New York, the city throws the first Presidential Inaugural Ball in his honor. The new republic had no precedent for any of this — how a president should be greeted, celebrated, addressed. So they danced. A custom was born that night that every administration since has, in some form, kept.
Source: wtop.com