1260 – Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, becomes ruler of the Mongol Empire
1430 – Jews are expelled from Speyer, Germany
1494 – Christopher Columbus sighted Jamaica on his second trip to the Western Hemisphere. He named the island Santa Gloria.
1762 – Russia & Prussia sign Treaty of Saint Petersburg ending the Seven Years’ War
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.
1814 – The British attacked the American forces at Ft. Ontario, Oswego, NY.
1821 – Napoleon Bonaparte died on the island of St. Helena.
1862 – The Battle of Puebla took place. It is celebrated as Cinco de Mayo Day.
1863 – Irish boxer Joe Coburn KOs American Mike McCoole in the 67th round in his first defence of Heavyweight C’ship of America in Charlestown, Maryland
1877 – Indian Wars: Sitting Bull leads his band of Lakota into Canada to avoid harassment by the United States Army under Colonel Nelson Miles
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 causes a large crash on the NY Stock Exchange
1916 – US Marines invade Dominican Republic, stay until 1924
1920 – US President Woodrow Wilson makes Communist Labor Party illegal
1920 – Italian migrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti charged with murder of a paymaster at a US shoe factory in Massachusetts, both are later executed
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 – The comedy trio soon became famous, especially in the U.S., for their short films featuring slapstick humor.
1945 – A Japanese balloon bomb exploded on Gearhart Mountain in Oregon. A pregnant woman and five children were killed
1945 – World War II: Admiral Karl Dönitz, leader of Germany after Hitler’s death, orders all U-boats to cease offensive operations and return to their bases
1955 – The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) became a sovereign state.
1961 – Alan Shepard became the first American in space when he made a 15 minute suborbital flight.
1965 – First large-scale US Army ground units arrive in South Vietnam
1980 – The British Special Air Service (SAS) terminate the Iranian Embassy siege in London – Six gunmen had held 26 people hostage for six days, demanding the release of Iranian Arab prisoners. Two of the hostages were killed.
1981 – Bobby Sands of the Irish Republican Army died in a prison hospital on the 66th day of his hunger strike.
1987 – The U.S. congressional Iran-Contra hearings opened.
2000 – Conjunction of Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon
2012 – Japan shuts down its nuclear reactors leaving the country without nuclear power for the first time since 1970
2014 – China announces it will upgrade Ethiopia’s infrastructure in an effort to improve a China-Africa strategic partnership
2019 – Violent clashes between Israel and Gaza militants over three days have left 4 Israelis and 23 Palestinians dead
2020 – Global confirmed cases of COVID-19 reach 3.65 million, US cases pass 70,000 while the UK becomes the most affected in Europe with 29,427 known deaths
2021 – A week of mass protests and demonstrations against government tax reform and poverty in Colombia leaves 24 dead
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
