May 1
1517 In 'Evil May Day' riots in London, apprentices attack foreign residents. Wolsey suppresses the rioters, of whom 60 are hanged. (Bradley)
1707 English and Scottish Parliaments unite by an Act of the English Parliament - The Kingdom of Great Britain establishes the largest free-trade area in Europe at the time. (Bradley)
1808 After only a few days in power, Ferdinand relinquishes the Spanish throne in favor of Napoleon Bonaparte of France. (Bradley)
1830 Birth: Mary Harris 'Mother' Jones, American labor leader. "...With dramatic speeches and street theater, she organized workers, women, and minorities, drawing public attention to their hardships and giving them a voice. Mary Jones' greatest achievement may have been creating the persona of Mother Jones. She was born Mary Harris in Cork, Ireland, in 1837. When she was barely 10 years old, she witnessed the horrors of the potato famine, which drove her family from their homeland to Toronto, Canada. Her parents established a stable, working-class household, and young Mary learned the skills of dressmaking, and also trained to be a teacher, a high ambition for an Irish immigrant woman of her day. Wanderlust struck her in early adulthood -- she taught for a few months in Monroe, Michigan, then moved on to Chicago, and another few months later to Memphis, Tennessee. There, on the eve of the Civil War, she met and married George Jones, a skilled foundry worker and a member of the International Iron Molders Union. They had four children together. In 1867 a yellow fever epidemic struck Memphis, killing George and their four children. Now a 30-year-old widow, Jones returned to Chicago and dressmaking, where her tiny shop was burned out in the great fire of 1871. For the next quarter century, she worked in obscurity. As the new 20th century approached, Mary Jones was an aging, poor, widowed Irish immigrant, nearly as dispossessed as an American could be. She had survived plague, famine, and fire, only to confront a lonely old age. But then she invented Mother Jones. Or, to put it more precisely, she began to play a role that she and her followers made up as they went along..."
1839 Birth: Chardonnet, in France, inventor of rayon.
1851 Queen Victoria opens the first Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London.
1855 American feminist Lucy Stone weds Henry Blackwell, an Ohio abolitionist. The word 'obey' is omitted from their wedding vows. Lucy Stone is the first married woman in America to keep her own name, and is also the first woman to receive a college degree. She converted Susan B. Anthony and Julia Ward Howe to the Suffragists' cause. She is the founder and editor of The Woman's Journal in Boston, which is the principal woman's suffrage newspaper of the United States for nearly half a century.
1873 Death: David Livingstone, missionary and explorer, of malaria in Central Africa.
1876 The Royal Titles Bill is passed by the British Parliament, entitling Queen Victoria to call herself Empress of India, among many other things.
1881 Birth: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French Jesuit author, paleontologist.
1883 William F. 'Buffalo Bill' Cody stages his first Wild West Show.
1886 A national coalition of labor groups starts a strike in favor of the eight-hour work day. In Chicago on 4 May 1886, workers and police will clash, in what will become known as the 'Haymarket riot.' May 1 is celebrated in most countries in the world as the International Workers' Day.
1893 The World's Columbian Exposition is officially opened in Chicago by President Grover Cleveland.
1895 Adolf Hitler enters elementary school at Fischlham, Austria. "...In April 1895 the family was reunited temporarily in Linz, but Alois had purchased a farm in Hafeld near Lambach, 30 miles southwest of Linz, and it was in Hafeld that the family settled and the six-year-old Adolf was enrolled in the little country school at Fischlham, on I May 1895. On 25 June 1895 Alois retired after 40 years' service, which had included many transfers (which may partly account for his promiscuity), and came to the Rauscher Gut, as the farm was called, to devote himself to leisure and his hobby, beekeeping. Another reason for his early retirement (he was only 58 years old) was that it would enable him to participate more actively in the guidance of his children. Alois Jr. was just 14---an age when schooling was no longer obligatory-so Alois expected his oldest son to help him run the farming and beehive empire that he wanted to build. He had legitimized Alois Jr. (who was born out of wedlock) in order his mistake would not be repeated. But Franziska Matzelbergyer's first-born son had probably never forgiven his father the rapid replacement of his mother before she had even died. He had deaf ears to his father's wishes and when the old man tried to exert his authority, the adolescent decided to leave home..."
1896 Birth: Herbert Backe; will join the Nazi Party in 1931 and become head of the farmer's political organization in his district; Food Commissioner of the Four-Year Plan in 1936; in 1942, he nominated as Richard Darre's successor and given the responsibility for organizing the foodstuffs sector of the war against Russia. Backe will be appointed Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture and become a member of Hitler's last cabinet in April 1944. He will commit suicide by hanging himself at Nuremberg prison.
1896 Birth: Mark Clark, US general. "A career infantry officer, Mark W. Clark was best known for his remarkable physical courage and for his controversial command of the multinational US Fifth Army in Italy from September 1943 to December 1944. A 1917 graduate of West Point, Clark was wounded on his first day of combat while serving with the Fifth Division in France in June 1918. In 1942, George Marshall sent Clark to England, where he so impressed Winston Churchill that the prime minister nicknamed him "the American Eagle." Shortly thereafter he was appointed as Dwight Eisenhower's deputy supreme commander for the invasion of French North Africa. Clark's most famous exploit was a hazardous mission by submarine in October 1942 to negotiate secretly with Vichy French officers near Algiers prior to the Operation Torch landings the following month. His appointment to command Fifth Army made him the youngest lieutenant general in the US Army. Despite a well-earned reputation for bravery, Clark earned considerable criticism for the Salerno landings, the ill-fated Rapido River operation in January 1944, the Battle of Anzio, a series of unsuccessful and costly assaults against the town of Monte Cassino, the destruction of the abbey of Monte Cassino by Allied bombers, and his failure to encircle the German Tenth Army during the drive on Rome. Clark ended the war in command of the Allied Fifteenth Army Group in Italy. From 1945 to 1947 he was the US high commissioner in occupied Austria. During the final months of the Korean War, Mark Clark was commander in chief of the United Nations Command and ended a distinguished thirty-six-year career shortly after signing the armistice for the UN in July 1953."
1898 Spanish-American War: In the Battle of Manila Bay, US forces destroy the Spanish fleet. "...George Dewey aboard USS Olympia and leading a small squadron of warships entered Manila Bay. With the now famous phrase, "You may fire when ready, Gridley." Olympia's captain was instructed to begin the barrage that resulted in the destruction of Spain's fleet. Most of the Spanish ships were either destroyed or surrendered. The Spanish fleet fought back with great ferocity, but many crews were caught unaware - painting their vessels, at Mass, or doing other decidedly non-gunnery-related tasks. The results were decisive. A Spanish attempt to attack Dewey with Camara's Flying Relief Column came to naught, and the naval war in the Philippines devolved into a series of torpedo boat hit-and-run attacks for the rest of the campaign. In recognition of George Dewey's leadership during the Battle of Manila Bay, a special medal known as the Dewey Medal was presented to the officers and sailors under Admiral Dewey's command. Dewey himself would later be honored with promotion to the special rank of Admiral of the Navy; a rank that no one has held before or since in the United States Navy."
1915 WW1: A German U-boat torpedoes the American tanker Gulflight, causing three deaths. Germany quickly offers to make reparations and promises not to attack again without warning, unless the enemy ship tries to escape. Germany refuses to abandon submarine warfare, the only maritime warfare it can successfully carry out.
1915 The liner Lusitania leaves New York on the same day that the German Ambassador, Count von Bernstorff, takes out advertisements warning anyone traveling on ships carrying a British flag that they do so at their own risk. Note: Former President Teddy Roosevelt, writing in his magazine column after the sailing but before the sinking, declares that President Wilson should have had the German Ambassador and his staff arrested and placed on board the Lusitania with compliments.
1919 Weimar: Free Corps troops enter Munich and take it from the Communists after two days of heavy fighting. The famous Erhardt Brigade arrives at the city singing their marching song, which began with the words: "Hooked cross (swastika) on steel helmets..."
1919 Weimar: Rudolf Hess is wounded for a fourth time, this time in the leg, while manning a howitzer during street battles fought by General Franz von Epp's ragtag army to liberate Munich. (Missing Years)
1920 Weimar: Walter Riehl's Austrian Nazi party (DNSAP) introduces its new flag -- a swastika on a white field -- and flies it in public for the first time. (Forgotten Nazis)
1923 Weimar: Rudolf Hess and his "Student Battalion" fight their way into a Communist procession, seize the red hammer-and-sickle flag, and burn it. Hess is arrested and justifies his action by saying that public display of the flag which had led to the army's mutiny and Germany's military downfall is an outright provocation to any decent German. (Missing Years)
1923 Weimar: Armed SA detachments muster on the Oberwiesenfeld and are dispersed by state troops. (Maser)
1923 Weimar: Adolf Hitler speaks in Munich: "...If the first of May is to be transferred in accordance with its true meaning from the life of Nature to the life of peoples, then it must symbolize the renewal of the body of a people which has fallen into senility. In the life of peoples, senility means internationalism. What is born of senility? Nothing! Nothing at all! Whatsoever in human civilization has real value, that value arose not out of internationalism, it sprang from the soul of a single people. When peoples have lost their creative vigor, then they become international. Everywhere, wherever intellectual incapacity rules in the life of peoples, there internationalism appears..."
1925 Birth: Scott Carpenter, former Mercury astronaut.
1925 Cyprus becomes a British colony having originally been annexed in 1914 when Turkey supported Germany during WW1.
1926 Prescott Bush joins W.A. Harriman & Co. as a vice-president, under the bank's president, George Herbert Walker, his father-in-law.
1926 Volkishness: Johann Walthari Wölfl, Prior of Werfenstein, receives authorization from Lanz von Liebenfels to begin the publication a third Ostara edition. (Roots)
1927 Weimar: Hitler speaks at a closed meeting of 5,000 members in the Clou in Berlin. (Maser)
1931 At the White House in Washington, DC, President Herbert Hoover pushes a button that turns on the lights of New York City's Empire State Building, officially opening the then tallest building ever built. Standing 102 stories, or 1,454 feet from the top of its lightning rod to 34th Street and Fifth Avenue below, the skyscraper becomes a world-famous symbol of American ambition, and dominates the Manhattan skyline for decades. Designed by architect William Frederick Lamb, the Empire State Building was constructed during the height of the Great Depression, but took just over a year to complete at a cost of only forty-million dollars. In 1950, a 204-foot television sending-tower will be constructed on the building's roof. Although the Empire State Building will be surpassed as the world's tallest building in 1972 by New York's first World Trade Center tower, it remains today a top-ten tourist destination for US travelers.
1932 Death: Paul Doumer, President of France, assassinated by Russia's Paul Gargalov.
1933 The first telephone link is established between Britain and India.
1933 May Day Celebration: Hitler holds a massive May Day celebration, having co-opted the holiday from the socialists and communists.
1934 The German Labor Code is published.
1934 Holocaust: Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer (Stuemer) prints a "blood-libel" story accusing Jews of murdering "Aryan" children for ritual sacrifice.
1934 The Philippine legislature accepts a US proposal for independence.
1935 Holocaust: University students in Bucharest are required to fill out special forms describing their ethnic origins.
1935 Hitler's May Day Speech: "...What we want lies clear before us: not war and not strife. Just as we have established peace within our own people, so we want nothing else than peace with the world. For we all know that our great work can succeed only in a time of peace. But just as the leadership of the nation in the domestic sphere has never sacrificed its honor in its relations with the German people, so it can never surrender the honor of the German people in its dealings with the world... "
1937 President Roosevelt signs the third US Neutrality Act.
1937 Hitler's May Day Speech: "...We Germans, however, have been treated very shabbily by Nature on this earth. A great People, an infinitely capable People, a hardworking People, a People who want to live and have the right to expect something from life, live in an area which, no matter how hard we work, is much too confined and limited to provide us with all we need. When we sometimes hear foreign politicians say: "Why do you need more space?," we could reply by asking them: "Why is this so important for you?..."
1939 The first story of the Batman, created by Bob Kanes, hits the newsstands in Detective Comics #27.
1940 Holocaust: The Lodz ghetto, containing 160,000 Jews, is sealed off from the outside world.
1941 WW2: British forces complete the evacuation of Greece.
1945 WW2: General Krebs meets with Zhukov in an unsuccessful attempt to negotiate surrender terms for Berlin.
1945 WW2: Martin Bormann disappears; possibly shot by the Russians while attempting to flee besieged Berlin. Rumors of his survival will flourish after the war, and a number of sightings will be reported as recently as the mid 1990's.
1945 WW2: The Russian army secures Berlin.
1945 Holocaust: As American troops approach Mauthausen concentration camp, the last death marches of World War II begin. More than 30,000 have died in the camp during the last four months. (Atlas)
1945 WW2: Russians troops find the bodies of 1,000 volunteers of Himalayan origin in Berlin wearing German uniforms, but without any papers or identifying badges. Their identities have never been determined. (Pauwels)
1945 WW2: Hamburg radio announces the death of Adolf Hitler, and the appointment of Admiral Doenitz as second Fuehrer of the German Reich.
1945 WW2: Reich Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels writes his political testament, as an appendix to Hitlers. "The Fuehrer had ordered me to leave Berlin...and take part as a leading member in the government appointed by him. For the first time in my life, I must categorically refuse to obey an order of the Fuehrer. My wife and children join me in this refusal. Apart from the fact that feelings of humanity and personal loyalty forbid us to abandon the Fuehrer in his hour of greatest need, I would otherwise appear for the rest of my life as a dishonorable traitor and a common scoundrel and would lose my self-respect as well as the respect of my fellow citizens...In the nightmare of treason which surrounds the Fuehrer in these most critical days of the war, there must be someone at least who will stay with him unconditionally until death...I believe I am thereby doing the best service to the future of the German people. In the hard times to come, examples will be more important than men... For this reason, together with my wife, and on behalf of my children, who are too young to be able to speak for themselves and who, if they were old enough, would unreservedly agree with this decision, I express my unalterable resolution not to leave the Reich capital, even if it falls, but rather, at the side of the Fuehrer, to end a life that for me personally will have no further value if I cannot spend it at the service of the Fuehrer and at his side."
1945 Death: Joseph Goebbels. Germany's chief propagandist. "...In the last days of the Third Reich, Josef Goebbels joined Hitler in the Fuehrerbunker beneath the Reich Chancellery. He also brought his wife and six children, ages 5 to 13...Josef and Magda Goebbels resolved to die after Hitler. Since they did not want to leave their six children behind, they decided to kill them. In the evening of May 1st, Magda Goebbels told the children that they were going to leave the bunker and go to Hitler's mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden. She combed their hair, dressed each of them in white nightgowns and put them to bed. Hitler's personal physician, Dr. Ludwig Stumpfeggar, arrived and administered lethal injections to all of the Goebbels children. After the deaths of the children, it was time for Josef and Magda to take their own lives. Rather than shoot themselves, they agreed to have an SS orderly shoot them. They left instructions that their bodies are burned after their deaths. Josef Goebbels went to his death calm and composed. Magda was pale, but composed as well. Josef Goebbels put on his coat, hat, and gloves and calmly went out into the Chancellery garden with his wife. They were followed by an SS orderly who promptly shot them both in the back of the head. The bodies of Josef and Magda Goebbels were then burned in the Chancellery garden..."
1948 The People's Democratic Republic of Korea, better known as North Korea, is proclaimed.
1960 The Soviet Union shoots down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane near Sverdlovsk and captures its pilot, Francis Gary Powers. He is jailed for spying before being exchanged in an East-West spy swap in February 1962.
1961 Tanganyika is granted full internal self-government by Britain.
1961 Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares the country a socialist nation and abolishes elections as the first US plane is hijacked to Cuba.
1963 Sir Winston Churchill announces his retirement from the House of Commons.
1967 Anastasio Somoza Debayle becomes president of Nicaragua.
1971 The train company Amtrak begins to operate and offer passenger service throughout the United States. The US Congress had passed the Passenger Service Act the previous year, which allowed for the creation of Amtrak, a privately run company that runs with the aid of government subsidies combining the operations of 18 passenger railroads.
1982 In Poland, 50,000 supporters of Solidarity demonstrated in Warsaw against military rule.
1982 Falklands War: British planes attack two airstrips near Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands to rid the islands of Argentine forces.
1986 16 people are killed and 125 injured when hailstones of up to 11 pounds are reported in China.
1990 Chinese troops begin withdrawing from the Tibetan capital of Lhasa as martial law is lifted.
1990 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and other Kremlin leaders are jeered by thousands of people during the annual May Day parade in Red Square.
1992 President Bush orders 4,000 military troops into the riot-ravaged streets of Los Angeles.
1993 Death: Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa. of injuries sustained in a bomb blast during a May Day procession.
1995 Croatia recaptures the rebel Serb enclave of Western Slavonia it lost in 1991.
1995 Charges that Qubilah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X, had plotted to murder Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan are dropped as jury selection for her trial is about to begin in Minneapolis.
1997 18 years of Conservative Party rule in Great Britain ends with a Labour Party landslide victory in the elections, allowing party leader Tony Blair to succeed John Major as prime minister.
1998 Death: Eldridge Cleaver, the fiery Black Panther leader who later renounced his past and became a Republican, at age 62 in Pomona, Calif.
2000 A demonstration against global capitalism erupts into violence when eco-activists smashed their way into a London McDonald's restaurant.
2001 A former member of the Ku Klux Klan is convicted in state court in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1963 bombing of a church that killed four black girls. He will be sentenced to four life sentences.
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