TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – MAY 1
408 Theodosius II succeeds to the throne of Constantinople.
1308 King Albert is murdered by his nephew John, because he refused his share of the Habsburg lands.
1707 Acts of Union comes into force, uniting England and Scotland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain
1805 The state of Virginia passes a law requiring all freed slaves to leave the state, or risk either imprisonment or deportation.
1841 First emigrant wagon train leaves Independence, Missouri, for California
1867 Reconstruction in the South begins with black voter registration.
1877 President Rutherford B. Hayes withdraws all Federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.
1886 US general strike for 8-hour working day begins
1898 The U.S. Navy under Commodore George Dewey defeats the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines.
1927 Adolf Hitler holds his first Nazi meeting in Berlin.
1931 The Empire State Building opens in New York.
1937 President Franklin Roosevelt signs an act of neutrality, keeping the United States out of World War II.
1941 The film Citizen Kane–directed and starring Orson Welles–opens in New York.
1941 The first “Code talkers” Navajo Indians are specially recruited by the Marines to serve in their standard communications units in the Pacific Theater, they provide an unbreakable combat voice communications code.
1944 The Messerschmitt Me 262, the first combat jet, makes its first flight.
1945 Adolf Hitler’s death is announced on German radio
As the Soviet flag is raised over the Reich Chancellery, the German people are informed that “our leader, Adolf Hitler, has fallen for Germany, fighting to his last breath against Bolshevism.”
1948 The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was proclaimed.
1960 An American U–2 spy plane is shot down over the Soviet Union near Sverdlovsk. The Soviet Union captured the pilot Gary Powers which prompted continuing deterioration in relations between the US and the Soviet Union
1961 Fidel Castro announces there will be no more elections in Cuba.
1970 Students from Kent State University riot in downtown Kent, Ohio, in protest of the American invasion of Cambodia.
1971 Amtrak went into service, to provide inter city passenger train services. All Amtrak’s preferred stock is owned by the U.S. federal government.
1986 The Tass News Agency reports the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.
1992 On the third day of the Los Angeles riots resulting from the Rodney King beating trial. King appeared in public to appeal for calm, he asked, “Can we all get along?”
2001 Thomas E. Blanton Jr. became the second ex-Ku Klux Klansman to be convicted in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing by members of a Ku Klux Klan group in Birmingham, Alabama. The bombing of the African-American church resulted in the deaths of four girls.
2003 President George W. Bush on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the California coast announces in a speech to the nation, major combat in Iraq is over.
2011 Osama Bin Laden is killed in Abbottabad Pakistan by US Navy SEALS in Operation Neptune Spear.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
