On Sunday, at 8:32 a.m. PDT, Mount St. Helens, a volcanic peak in southwestern Washington, suffered a massive eruption, killing 57
people and devastating some 210 square miles of wilderness.

USGS geologist Don Swanson (in red) and his colleague, Jim Moore, view a car filled with ash deposits from the May 18, 1980, eruption
of  Mount St. Helens. (USGS photo)

Harold R. "Harry" Truman (October 30, 1896 – May 18, 1980)
Truman was the owner and caretaker of Mount St. Helens
Lodge at Spirit Lake.

The mountain as it looks today.

The body of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh’s baby is found on May 12,
1932, more than two months after he was kidnapped from his family’s
Hopewell, New Jersey, mansion.

Lindbergh, who became the first worldwide celebrity five years earlier
when he flew The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic, and his wife
Anne discovered a ransom note in their 20-month-old child’s empty
room on March 1. The kidnapper had used a ladder to climb up to the
open second-floor window and had left muddy footprints in the room
and in barely legible English, the ransom note demanded $50,000.

The crime captured the attention of the entire nation. The Lindbergh
family was inundated by offers of assistance and false clues. Even
Al Capone offered his help from prison, though it of course was
conditioned on his release. For three days, investigators had
found nothing and there was no further word from the kidnappers.

Then, a new letter showed up, this time demanding $70,000.

Charles Augustus Lindbergh
(February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974)

On May 7, 1915, less than a year after World War I (1914-18) erupted across
Europe, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the RMS Lusitania, a British
ocean liner en-route from New York to Liverpool, England.

The earlier German attacks on merchant ships off the south coast of Ireland prompted the British Admiralty to warn the Lusitania to avoid the area or
take simple evasive action, such as zigzagging to confuse U-boats plotting
the vessel’s course. The captain of the Lusitania ignored these suggestions,
and at 2:12 p.m. on May 7, in the waters of the Celtic Sea, the 32,000-ton
ship was hit by an exploding torpedo on its starboard side. The torpedo
blast was followed by a larger explosion, probably of the ship’s boilers. It
sank within 20 minutes.

Sinking of the Lusitania by John Keay.   

SANDY KOZEL

You Asked for It is a human interest television request show created and
hosted by Art Baker. Initially titled The Art Baker Show, the program
originally  aired on DuMont /ABC networks  between 1950 and 1959. Later
versions of Later versions of the series were seen in 1972,  1981, and
2000. After ABC canceled the original show in 1959, various revivals
have aired in the decades since. One of the sponsors was Skippy
Peanut Butter along with Studebaker Automobiles.

–

Art Baker (Arthur Appleton Shank)
(January 7, 1898 – August 26, 1966)

Baker was a film, television and radio actor.