1970 – The Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on students during an anti-Vietnam war protest at Kent State University. Four students were killed and nine others were wounded. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/national-guard-kills-four-at-kent-state
1415 – Religious reformers John Wycliffe and Jan Hus are condemned as heretics at the Council of Constance
1471 – War of the Roses- Battle of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, final battle between the Houses of Lancaster and York: Prince of Wales, Edward of Westminster killed and King Edward IV returns to his throne, restoring political stability to England until his death in 1483
1493 – Alexander VI divided non-Christian world between Spain and Portugal.
1535 – Five Carthusian monks from London Charterhouse monastery hung, drawn and quartered at Tyburn, London, for refusing to acknowledge Henry VIII as head of the Church of England
1626 – Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on Manhattan Island. Native Americans later sold the island (20,000 acres) for $24 in cloth and buttons.
1675 – King Charles II of England commissions the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, The observatory was built on the prime meridian. The mean solar time at this location is the basis for Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
1688 – King James II orders his Declaration of Indulgence read in English churches
1715 – A French manufacturer debuted the first folding umbrella.
1776 – Rhode Island declared its freedom from England two months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted.
1783 – William Herschel reports seeing a red glow near lunar crater Aristarchus
1814 – King Ferdinand VII of Spain signs the Decree of the 4th of May, returning Spain to absolutism
1814 – Napoleon Bonaparte disembarked at Portoferraio on the island of Elba in the Mediterranean.
1846 – US state Michigan ends death penalty
1863 – The Battle of Chancellorsville ended when the Union Army retreated.
1886 – A bomb exploded on the fourth day of a workers’ strike in Chicago, IL. Eight people died in the violence during violence that day.
1886 – Chichester Bell and Charles S. Tainter patented the gramophone. It was the first practical phonograph.
1904 – The U.S. formally took control of the property for construction of the Panama Canal.
1905 – Belmont Park opened in suburban Long Island. It opened as the largest race track in the world.
1916 – Germany agreed to limit its submarine warfare after a demand from U.S. President Wilson.
1917 – A flotilla of US destroyer ships arrive in Queenstown, Ireland, to aid in convoying ships to England
1923 – New York state revokes its Mullan-Gage Act Prohibition law; federal Volstead Act still in place
1927 – Nicaragua agrees to a US supervised presidential election in 1928
1942 – The Battle of the Coral Sea commenced as American and Japanese carriers launched their attacks at each other.
1942 – The United States began food rationing.
1948 – The Hague Court of Justice convicts Nazi SS officer in the Netherlands Hans Rauter of Crimes against Humanity (executed 24 March 1949)
1949 – Plane carrying the entire Torino Serie A soccer squad crashes on the outskirts of Turin, Italy; 31 killed; Torino awarded League title at the request of their rivals
1953 – Ernest Hemingway wins the Pulitzer Prize, The American author was awarded the prestigious accolade for his novel The Old Man and the Sea. The story about a fisherman and his battle with a large marlin also earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1959 – The Grammy is presented for the first time, It is one of the most prestigious awards in the music industry. Winners of the first edition included Ella Fitzgerald, Henry Mancini, and Frank Sinatra.
1961 – Thirteen civil rights activists, dubbed “Freedom Riders,” began a bus trip through the South.
1967 – Lunar Orbiter 4 launched by US; begins orbiting Moon May 7
1968 – 1st ABA championship: Pitts Pipers beat NO Buccaneers, 4 games to 3
1970 – Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin confirms the existence of Russian military advisors in Egypt
1970 – The Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on students during an anti-Vietnam war protest at Kent State University. Four students were killed and nine others were wounded. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/national-guard-kills-four-at-kent-state
1977 – US Catholic bishops rescind automatic excommunications for divorced and remarried Catholics (receiving communion still outlawed if the previous marriages were not annulled by Church tribunals)
1979 – Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first woman prime minister.
1981 – The Federal Reserve Board raised its discount rate to 14%.
1982 – British destroyer HMS Sheffield hit by Exocet rocket off Falkland Islands: 20 of her crew died.
1987 – The First Bank of the United States was listed as a National Historic Landmark.
1988 – PEPCON chemical plant in Henderson, Nevada explodes killing 2 and injuring 372 causing damage within 10-mile (16 km) radius
1991 – US politician Mo Udall, Representative for Arizona (1961-91), resigns due to Parkinson disease
1991 – US President George H. W. Bush is hospitalized for erratic heartbeat
1992 – US Army and Marine Corps forces arrive in Los Angeles to end rioting following the acquittal of four police officers over the beating of Rodney King
1994 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat signed a historic accord on Palestinian autonomy that granted self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.
1998 – A federal judge in Sacramento, California, gives “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski four life sentences plus 30 years after Kaczynski accepts a plea agreement sparing him from the death penalty.
2000 – The citizens of London elected their mayor for the first time.
2003 – Idaho Gem was born. He was the first member of the horse family to be cloned.
2012 – 14 decapitated bodies and 9 hung from a bridge are found in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico
2012 – In Las Vegas, NV, Google received the first self-driving vehicle testing license.
2013 – 5 US soldiers are killed by a bomb in Kandahar, Afghanistan
2013 – 77 people are killed by the Syrian Army in Baniyas
2018 – California overtakes Great Britain to become the worlds fifth largest economy
2020 – Countries in Europe begin cautious reopening after COVID-19 lockdown, Italy restarts construction and takeaways, Germany reopens schools
2020 – World leaders pledge $8 billion to research treatments and a vaccine for COVID-19, with the US and Russia not taking part
2021 – Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador makes an historic apology to the Mayan people for abuses against them in the five centuries since the Spanish conquest
2022 – “‘World’s most dangerous trafficker” Columbian drug kingpin Dairo Antonio Úsuga (known as Otoniel) is extradited to the US for drug charges
2022 – First of its kind study of transgender children, by Princeton University, transitioning aged 3-12, found vast majority continue to identify with their new gender five years later
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
