MILESFORTIS

May 5

553 – Concerned with the rise of Nestorianism in the Church, the Second Council of Constantinople, called by Emperor Justinian I, convenes.

1215 – Rebel barons renounce their allegiance to King John of England  beginning a chain of events leading to the signing of Magna Carta.

1260 – Kublai Khan becomes the 5th Khagan emperor of Mongolia, and then decrees a stately pleasure dome be built in Xanadu.

1494 – On his 2nd voyage to New World, Christopher Columbus sights Jamaica, landing at Discovery Bay

1809 – Mary Kies becomes the first woman awarded a U.S. patent, for a technique of weaving straw with silk and thread.

1821 – Napoleon dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.

1862 – Mexican troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza halt a French invasion in the Battle of Puebla.

1865 – The government of The Confederate States of America is declared dissolved at Washington, Georgia.

1866 – Memorial Day is first celebrated at Waterloo, New York.

1877 – Sitting Bull leads his band of Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux into North- Western Territory  -now Saskatchewan- Canada to evade surrender to U.S. forces.

1893 – The financial Panic of 1893 causes a large crash on the New York Stock Exchange

1891 – The Music Hall in New York City (later Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance with Pyotr Tchaikovsky as guest conductor.

1904 – Pitching against the Philadelphia Athletics at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston, Cy Young of the Boston Americans throws the first perfect game – basically 9 innings with no batter from the opposing team reaching any base-  in the modern era of baseball.

1908 – Arthur Pickens riding aboard Stone Street wins the Kentucky Derby in 2 minutes, 15 1/5 seconds, setting a new, and to date unbeaten, record for the slowest winning time

1945 – A Fu-Go balloon bomb launched by the Japanese Army during World War II kills 6 people near Bly, Oregon.
Admiral Karl Dönitz, leader of Germany after Hitler’s death, orders all U-boats to cease offensive operations and return to their bases.

1946 – The International Military Tribunal for the Far East begins in Tokyo with 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

1955 – Under terms of The General Treaty, France, Britain and the United States return and recognize the sovereignty of West Germany.

1961 – Aboard Mercury Freedom 7, on a sub-orbital flight, Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into outer space.

1973 – Ron Turcotte aboard Secretariat wins the Kentucky Derby in 1 minute, 59 2/5th seconds, setting a new, and to date unbeaten, record for the fastest winning time

1987 – The Congressional  hearings on the Iran–Contra affair begin being televised.

1994 – American teenager Michael P. Fay is caned in Singapore for theft and vandalism.

2013– 5 members of a bridal party are killed after their limousine catches fire on the San Mateo-Hayward bridge in Hayward, California

2018 – The first death from a vaping product occurs when an electric cigarette explodes, penetrating his head and killing Tallmadge D’Elia, age 38, in his apartment in St. Petersburg, Florida,

May 4

1415 – Religious reformers John Wycliffe and Jan Hus are condemned as heretics at the Council of Constance in present day Germany.

1493 – Pope Alexander VI divides the New World between Spain and Portugal along the Line of Demarcation,  a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa, that will be later defined in the Treaty of Tordesillas

1626 – Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrives in New Netherland, present day Manhattan Island, aboard the See Meeuw.

1776 – Rhode Island becomes the first American colony to renounce allegiance to King George III.

1871 – The National Association, the first professional baseball league, opens its first season in Fort Wayne, Indiana with the Fort Wayne Kekiongas winning over the Cleveland Forest Citys, 2-0.

1886 – A bomb is thrown at policemen trying to break up a labor rally at Haymarket Square in Chicago, killing 12 people, 7 of which are police officers, and wounding 60 more.

1904 – The United States begins construction of the Panama Canal.

1927 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is incorporated in Beverly Hills, California.

1932 – At United States Penitentiary, Atlanta, mobster Alphonse Capone begins serving an 11 year prison sentence for tax evasion.

1942 – During World War II, the Battle of the Coral Sea begins with an attack by aircraft from the carrier USS Yorktown on Japanese naval forces which had occupied Tulagi in the Solomon Islands the previous day.

1945 – During World War II, at Lüneburg Heath in northern Germany, Commander in Chief of the German navy Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg and Colonel Fritz Poleck representing the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, sign surrender documents for all Wehrmacht units in the Netherlands, Denmark and northwest Germany.

1946 – At Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary, San Francisco Bay, U.S. Marines stop a 2 day riot with 5 people killed.

1953 – Ernest Hemingway wins the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea.

1961 – U.S. Navy Commander Malcolm Ross and Lt. Commander Victor Prather attain a new altitude record for manned balloon flight, ascending in the Strato-Lab V open gondola to 113,740 feet over the Gulf of Mexico, while also testing a prototype pressure suit later used by Project Mercury astronauts. Commander Prather unfortunately drowns during helicopter recovery operations.

1970 – At Kent State University, Ohio, National Guard troops open fire on demonstrators protesting the Vietnam War, killing 4 students and wounding 9 others.

1972 – The “Don’t Make A Wave Committee”, an environmental organization founded in Canada in 1971, officially changes its name to the  “Greenpeace Foundation”.

1973 – The 108 story Sears Tower in Chicago is topped out at 1,451 feet becoming the world’s tallest building at the time.

1982 – During the Falklands War, 20 Royal Navy sailors are killed when the British destroyer HMS Sheffield is hit by an Exocet missile fired from an Argentinian Super Étendard fighter aircraft.

1988 – Near Henderson, Nevada, several tons of Space Shuttle solid fuel detonate during a fire at the PEPCON chemical plant, killing 2 people, injuring over 370 more and causing over $100 million in damages.

1989 – As part of the Iran–Contra affair, former White House aide Lt. Colonel Oliver North USMC is convicted on 3 charges and acquitted of 9 others with the convictions later overturned on appeal.

1998 – A federal judge in Sacramento, California, sentences “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski to 4 life sentences plus 30 years after Kaczynski accepts a plea agreement sparing him from the death penalty.

2003 – A supercell thunderstorm beginning in Oklahoma, spawning 86 tornados, enters southwest Missouri, with 1 tornado plastering the center of the town of Pierce City, traveling north of the town of Aurora and ending after going through and nearly destroying the center of the town of Battlefield along with several residential subdivisions, killing 5 people and another tornado hitting the town of Carl Junction before dissipating, killing 2 more people.

2007 – An EF5 tornado hits Greensburg, Kansas, destroying most of the town and killing 11 people.

May 3

1802 – Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city after Congress abolishes the Board of Commissioners, the District’s founding government. The “City of Washington” is given a mayor-council form of government.

1855 – American adventurer William Walker mounts a private military expedition,  departing from San Francisco with 60 men to conquer Nicaragua.

1901 – The ‘Great Fire of 1901’ in Jacksonville, Florida begins when sparks from the chimney of a nearby building start a fire at the Cleaveland Fibre Factory, eventually burning down 146 city blocks and killing 7 people.

1921 – West Virginia becomes the first state to legislate a sales tax.

1942 – During World War II, Japanese naval troops invade Tulagi in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo. 

1948 – In  the case of Shelley v. Kraemer, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable.

1951 – The Senate Committee on Armed Services and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations begin closed door hearings into the relief of General of The Army Douglas MacArthur by President Truman.

1952 – USAF Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict make the first landing of a U.S. plane at the North Pole..

1957 – Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.

1968 – Braniff International Airways Flight 352, a Lockheed L-188 Electra, breaks up in midair after flying through a thunderstorm and crashes near Dawson, Texas, killing all 85 passengers and crew aboard.

1978 – The first unsolicited bulk commercial email , now known as “spam” is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.

1979 – Margaret Thatcher wins the United Kingdom general election becoming the first female British Prime Minister.

1999 – A tornado of the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak, measured at the highest wind speed ever recorded of 301 mph, hits the southwestern portion of Oklahoma City, killing 45 people, injuring 665 more, and causing $1 billion in damage.

2000 – The sport of geocaching begins, with the first cache placed and the  GPS coordinates posted on Usenet.

2015 – Both gunmen who launch an attack on the “First Annual Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest” at the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas,  barely make it out of their vehicle before being ignominiously gunned down in the street by an off duty Garland police officer, hired as a security guard.