1987 – Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot, landed a private plane in Moscow’s Red Square after evading Soviet air defenses. He was released August 3, 1988.
585 BC – A solar eclipse occurs, as predicted by Greek philosopher and scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battling Cyaxares in the Battle of the Eclipse, leading to a truce. This is one of the cardinal dates from which other dates can be calculated
1349 – 60 Jews murdered in Breslau Silesia
1503 – James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor are married by Pope Alexander VI according to Papal Bull.
1503 – The Treaty of Everlasting Peace between Scotland and England is signed, which would actually last 10 years
1533 – England’s Archbishop declared the marriage of King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn valid.
1588 – The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, begins to set sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel. (It will take until May 30 for all ships to leave port)
1644 – Bolton Massacre by Royalist troops under the command of the Earl of Derby.
1731 – All Hebrew books in Papal State are confiscated
1830 – Congress authorizes Indian removal from all states to western prairie
1863 – The first black regiment left Boston to fight in the U.S. Civil War.
1892 – Sierra Club forms by John Muir in San Fransisco, for conservation of nature
1918 – Azerbaijan declared independence.
1923 – Attorney General says it is legal for women to wear trousers anywhere
1928 – Chrysler Corporation merged with Dodge Brothers, Inc.
1929 – Warner Brothers debuted “On With The Show” in New York City. It was the first all-color-talking picture.
1934 – The Dionne quintuplets were born near Callender, Ontario, to Olivia and Elzire Dionne. The babies were the first quintuplets to survive infancy.
1937 – Volkswagen (VW) is founded, The automobile manufacturer whose name means “People’s Car” in German is one of the world’s biggest. It produced classics like the VW Golf and the VW Beetle.
1937 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington, DC, signaling that vehicular traffic could cross the newly opened Golden Gate Bridge in California.
1940 – World War II: Norwegian, French, Polish and British forces recapture Narvik. First allied infantry victory in World War II
1940 – During World War II, Belgium surrendered to Germany.
1952 – The women of Greece gain the suffrage.
1953 – The Walt Disney film “Melody” premiered in the Paramount Theatre in Hollywood. The picture was the first 3-D cartoon.
1956 – Eisenhower signs farm bill allows government to store agricultural surplus
1957 – National League club owners voted to allow the Brooklyn Dodgers to move to Los Angeles and that the New York Giants could move to San Francisco.
1961 – Peter Benenson’s article “”The Forgotten Prisoners”” is published in several internationally read newspapers. This will later be thought of as the founding of the human rights organization Amnesty International
1961 – Amnesty International, a human rights organization, was founded.
1962 – Suit alleging de facto school segregation filed in Rochester NY
1964 – Palestine National Congress forms the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) in Jerusalem
1970 – The formerly united Free University of Brussels officially splits into two separate entities, the French-speaking Universit Libre de Bruxelles and the Dutch-speaking Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
1974 – Italians fascist bomb demonstrators in Brescia, 6 killed
1976 – The Peaceful Nuclear Explosion Treaty was signed, limiting any nuclear explosion – regardless of its purpose – to a yield of 150 kilotons.
1977 – Fire raced through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, KY. 165 people were killed.
1985 – David Jacobsen, director of the American University Hospital in Beirut, Lebanon, was abducted by pro-Iranian kidnappers. He was freed 17 months later.
1987 – Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot, landed a private plane in Moscow’s Red Square after evading Soviet air defenses. He was released August 3, 1988. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/the-notorious-flight-of-mathias-rust-7101888/
1987 – A robot probe finds the wreckage of the USS Monitor near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.
1991 – The capital city of Addis Ababa, falls to the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, ending both the Derg regime in Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Civil War.
1996 – U.S. President Clinton’s former business partners in the Whitewater land deal were convicted of fraud.
1998 – Pakistan matched India with five nuclear test blasts. The U.S., Japan and other nations imposed economic sanctions. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said “Today, we have settled the score with India.”
1998 – Dr. Susan Terebey discovered a planet outside of our solar system with the use of photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
1999 – In Milan, Italy, Leonardo de Vinci’s “The Last Supper” was put back on display after more than 20 years of restoration work.
2002 – Russia became a limited partner in NATO with the creation of the NATO-Russia Council.
2004 – The Iraqi Governing Council chooses Ayad Allawi, a longtime anti-Saddam Hussein exile, to become prime minister of Iraq’s interim government.
2008 – The first meeting of the Constituent Assembly of Nepal formally declares Nepal a republic, ending the 240-year reign of the Shah dynasty
2010 – Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer, is planning to raise wages for its Chinese workers by about 20 percent after a spate of suicides at its main plant in southern China
2016 – Harambe, a gorilla at Cincinnati Zoo, is shot after dragging a 3 year old boy who had slipped into its enclosure (Cincinnati, Ohio)
2018 – Coca-Cola launched Lemon-Do in Kyushu, Japan. The three fizzy lemon drinks ranged in alcohol content from 3-8%.
2019 – Johnson & Johnson go on trial in Oklahoma accused of deceptively marketing painkillers and downplaying risks of addiction helping create “opioid epidemic”, first of 2,000 cases against US pharmaceutical firms
2020 – Iranian President Hassan Rouhani calls for new protections for women after the ‘honor killing’ of a 14-year old by her father
2021 – Discovery of a mass grave with the remains of 215 children from Kamloops Indian Residential School announced by First Nation in British Columbia, Canada
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
