TODAY HISTORY LESSON: MAY 5
1260 Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, becomes ruler of the Mongol Empire
1494 Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Jamaica, which he names Santa Gloria.
1798 U.S. Secretary of War William McHenry ordered that the USS Constitution be made ready for sea. The frigate was launched on October 21, 1797, but had never been put to sea.
1809 Mary Kies of South Killingly, Conn., became the first woman to be granted a patent. The patent was for the rights to a technique for weaving straw with silk and thread.
1814 British attack the American forces at Ft. Ontario, Oswego, New York.
1847 American Medical Association organized (Philadelphia)
1862 Cinco de Mayo, or the fifth of May, is a holiday that celebrates the date of the Mexican army’s May 5, 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the Franco-Mexican War. While it is a relatively minor holiday in Mexico, in the United States, Cinco de Mayo has evolved into a commemoration of Mexican culture and heritage, particularly in areas with large Mexican-American populations.
1892 The U.S. Congress extended the Geary Chinese Exclusion Act for 10 more years. The act required Chinese in the U.S. to be registered or face deportation.
1893 Panic of 1893: Great crash on New York Stock Exchange
1901 The first Catholic mass for night workers was held at the Church of St. Andrew in New York City.
1912 Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda begins publishing.
1916 U.S. Marines invade the Dominican Republic, stay until 1924
1920 US President Wilson makes Communist Labor Party illegal
1925 John T. Scopes, a biology teacher in Dayton, TN, was arrested for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution.
1934 The first Three Stooges film is released
1943 Postmaster General Frank C Walker invents Postal Zone System
1945 A Japanese balloon bomb exploded on Gearhart Mountain in Oregon. A pregnant woman and five children were killed.
1949 The Council of Europe is founded. The organization was the first to work for European integration. It has 47 member countries and is a completely separate entity from the European Union (EU).
1955 West Germany is granted full sovereignty by its three occupying powers
1961 Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space.
1965 First large-scale US Army ground units arrive in South Vietnam
1980 Siege at Iranian Embassy in London ends as the SAS and police storm the building
1987 Congress begins Iran-Contra hearings
2000 The Sun, Earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn align – Earth’s moon is also almost in this alignment – leading to Doomsday predictions of massive natural disasters, although such a ‘grand confluence’ occurs about once in every century.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
