May 4 Goering gave me the old German Army salute, not the "Heil Hitler," and I returned it. I asked him if he wished to surrender unconditionally and he said "Yes" but that he would request my promise that his family would be brought inside the American lines. I hoped we would all get back inside United States lines so I agreed. We talked through my Sergeant-Interpreter although Goering said he spoke English but that he had not had much practice in the last five years. He did not wish to speak English as he might misunderstand or be misunderstood. His wife was crying so he comforted her saying everything was all right now as this was an American General. I told him I would lead the column, then his automobile, then the rest of his detachment, and that my aide, Captain Bond, in his jeep would bring up the rear. Goering’s automobile was a large Mercedes-Benz with bullet-proof glass and steel body: I kept it a week or so but it was so heavy that it was a "white elephant" on country roads. I presented it to the Commanding General Seventh Army. I believe it is now in the Museum of our Military Academy at West Point. Unfortunately his pistol, which I took, was not the gold one he was reputed to possess. We drove back to Brucht and here at the gateway to the manor was a fantastic sight, an American soldier as guard on one side and a German on the other!...Goering was not as fat as the cartoons made him although he was very corpulent. He was perfectly healthy and his own people, the Luftwaffe, liked him very much. I am not a doctor but I could not recognize any signs that he was under the influence of drugs, nor of drug addiction. He was sober. Goering seemed to have no idea that he would be considered a "war criminal." When I dismissed him after this talk and told him to be ready to leave in half an hour, he said to my Sergeant-Interpreter, "Ask General Stack if I should wear a pistol or my ceremonial dagger when I appear before General Eisenhower." I knew he would never see the Allied Commander so I said, "Das ist mir ganz wurst." Literally this means, "that’s goose liver bologna to me" but it is German slang for "I don’t give a damn." As this was the first Goering knew I spoke German, he was a bit surprised and startled. When we started back for the American lines, I took only Goering, General von Epp, Colonel Fegelein and the Adjutant, leaving the rest of the party and the Florian Geyer Division in charge of the half platoon of the Rcn. Tr. I took Fegelein and the Adjutant because they might make trouble for the lieutenant. I had no difficulty being recognized at the American lines but the S.S. Adjutant went nuts and attempted to escape. One of the drivers killed him. 36th Division Headquarters had moved forward and was located in the Grand Hotel in Kitzbuhel where I turned Goering over to the Division Commander, General Dahlquist. After another interrogation and lunch, Goering was sent by Cub plane to Headquarters Seventh Army, then in Augsburg. We had doubts he would fit in the miniature plane but we stuffed him in. Shortly after this incident, some United States columnists ran stories that we had shaken hands with Goering and fed him a chicken dinner. Neither General Dahlquist nor I shook hands with Goering. We fed him a chicken dinner because that was all we had, chicken and rice out of a tin can. The people making the criticism never saw any Germans with weapons, never killed any Germans, never took any German prisoners. We did."
1471 Battle of Tewkesbury: The Yorkists defeat the Lancastrians in the last battle in the Wars of the Roses. "...Somerset's men actually outnumbered Edward's army by some 2000 men. Neither side had any reserve, but threw all their men into the fight. Somerset led some of his men on a flanking manouevre, but they were pushed back fiercely. Some reports claim that Somerset became enraged because promised support from Lord Wenlock had not arrived and when he eventually returned to his lines he split Wenlock's skull in rage. Whatever the truth of this somewhat unlikely tale, the Lancastrians were demoralized by their failure, and when King Edward attacked the centre of their lines, they put up only a token resistance - despite their numerical advantage. The Yorkist advance pushed Somerset's men back on the town and the river, where many drowned trying to escape. No quarter was given, and as many as 2000 Lancastrians may have died, compatred to about 500 of King Edward's men. The most vital loss was Prince Edward, the last legitimate descendant of Henry IV..."
1493 Pope Alexander VI, a Spaniard, decrees that all new lands discovered west of the Azores are Spanish.
1626 Governor of Dutch West India Company Peter Minuit, buys a 20,000-acre island from local Indians, all of what is now Manhattan Island.
1769 Birth: Sir Thomas Lawrence, artist.
1776 US Revolutionary War: Rhode Island declares its freedom from England, two months before the Declaration of Independence is adopted.
1820 Birth: Julia Tyler, US First Lady. "...Daughter of Juliana McLachlan and David Gardiner, descendant of prominent and wealthy New York families, Julia was trained from earliest childhood for a life in society; she made her debut at 15. A European tour with her family gave her new glimpses of social splendors. Late in 1842 the Gardiners went to Washington for the winter social season, and Julia became the undisputed darling of the capital. Her beauty and her practiced charm attracted the most eminent men in the city, among them President Tyler, a widower since September. Tragedy brought his courtship poignant success the next winter. Julia, her sister Margaret, and her father joined a Presidential excursion on the new steam frigate Princeton; and David Gardiner lost his life in the explosion of a huge naval gun. Tyler comforted Julia in her grief and won her consent to a secret engagement. The first President to marry in office took his vows in New York on June 26, 1844. The news was then broken to the American people, who greeted it with keen interest, much publicity, and some criticism about the couple's difference in age: 30 years. As young Mrs. Tyler said herself, she "reigned" as First Lady for the last eight months of her husband's term. Wearing white satin or black lace to obey the conventions of mourning, she presided with vivacity and animation at a series of parties. She enjoyed her position immensely, and filled it with grace. For receptions she revived the formality of the Van Buren administration; she welcomed guests with plumes in her hair, attended by maids of honor dressed in white. She once declared, with truth: "Nothing appears to delight the President more than...to hear people sing my praises." The Tylers' happiness was unshaken when they retired to their home at Sherwood Forest in Virginia. There Julia bore five of her seven children; and she acted as mistress of the plantation until the Civil War. As such, she defended both states' rights and the institution of slavery..."
1825 Birth: Thomas Henry Huxley, English naturalist, champion of Darwinism. "...He met Charles Darwin around 1856. Initially sceptical, Huxley was eventually won over to Darwin's theories, and took them further. Darwin had deliberately avoided the issue of the ancestry of man, but Huxley was not so shy. He had long believed in the transmutation of species, although he did not initially accept the concept of single progenitor ancestor. Instead he envisaged a number of progenitors, each giving rise to a group of animals, equally evolved from each other: he had grasped the idea of evolution, but had no mechanism. The Origin of Species was published in 1859. It took a little while for the waves to build, but by Christmas it was the provoking enormous controversy. What made Darwin's idea shocking was that it removed God from the mechanism, and stripped mankind of all special privileges. The first public lecture on the subject of the book - given by Huxley - took place in February 1860 at the Royal Institution and in June the British Association for the Advancement of Science held a conference in Oxford. This culminated in a session on Darwinism (as it was already called), where Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, traded verbal blows in front of some 700 people. The debate raged on..."
1839 The Cunard shipping line is founded by Samuel Cunard of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
1858 War of the Reform: Mexican Liberals establish the capital at Vera Cruz.
1864 US Civil War: The Wade-Davis Reconstruction bill passes the House.
1882 Birth: Sylvia Pankhurst, English suffragette.
1886 Chichester Bell and Charles Tainter receive a US patent for the graphophone. This invention replaces Thomas Edison's phonograph, and featurs wax-coated cylinders. These are considered an improvement over the phonograph's tinfoil cylinders, which had been delicate and difficult to remove.
1886 Haymarket Square Riot: In Chicago, a labor demonstration for an eight-hour work day turns into a riot when a bomb explodes. Seven policemen are killed.
1904 In Manchester England's Midland Hotel, car seller and repairer Charles Rolls signs a provisional agreement with electrical engineer and car builder Henry Royce to produce Rolls-Royce cars.
1911 Young Adolf Hitler is ordered by a court in Linz to surrender his orphan's pension to his sister, Paula. From the memoirs of August Kubizek, Hitler's best friend: "...orphans of under twenty-four years of age, with no means of their own, were entitled to claim an orphan's pension amounting to one half of the widow's pension which their mother had been receiving. Frau Hitler had received a pension of 100 crowns a month since her husband's death; therefore, Adolf and Paula were entitled to a total of 50 crowns a month, and Adolf's share was thus 25 crowns a month. This, of course, was not enough for him to live on: for example, he had to pay 10 crowns a month for his room at Mrs. Zakreys'. The application was granted, and the first payment was made on February 12, 1908, when Adolf was already in Vienna. Incidentally, three years later he renounced his share in favour of his sister Paula, although he could have continued to claim it until he reached the age of twenty-four, i.e., in April, 1913. The document of renunciation, dated May 4th, 1911, is still in the possession of his guardian, Joseph Mayrhofer. The document concerning the inheritance, which Adolf signed in the presence of his guardian before he left for Vienna, also mentioned his share in his father's estate, amounting to about seven hundred crowns. It is possible that he had already spent part of this money during his previous stay in Vienna, but in view of his very economical way of life -- the only large item in his budget was books -- he was left with enough to tide him over at least the beginning of his new sojourn there. As regards our future together, Adolf was more fortunate than I, not only because he had some capital and a fixed monthly income, however small -- a matter which I had still to arrange with my parents -- but also because, having prevailed over his guardian, he was free to make his own decisions, whereas my decisions were subject to my parents' confirmation. For me, moreover, moving to Vienna meant giving up the trade I had learned, whereas Adolf could continue to lead there more or less his previous life..."
1918 Birth: Kakuei Tanaka, Japanese prime minister; will be convicted of bribe-taking.
1919 Students demonstrate in China against the Versailles Peace Conference decision to hand Germany's possessions in Shantung Province to Japan. Known as the May Fourth Movement, it will lead to the birth of the Chinese Communist Party.
1919 Death: Slovak General Milan R. Stefanik, in a mysterious plane crash over Bratislavia. Stefanik is soon succeeded by Edouard Benes, a Czech.
1923 Weimar: An early example of Hitler's speechifying: "...The Government should also have asked itself: who is willing to undertake active resistance in Germany? Only those to whom Germany still means something. Not the parliamentary blabbermouths, not the scum who are our politicians today, but only the men who wear a steel helmet and the swastika..."
1926 The first General Strike in British history begins, called by the Trades Union Congress with almost half of the country's 6,000,000 trade-union members participating. Troops are called in to man essential services. It will be called off on 12 May.
1928 Birth: Hosni Mubarak, Egyptian President.
1931 Weimar: Credit-Anstalt, Austria's principal bank, and several others fail due to French financial pressure. The collapse is seen by many as an attempt to prevent an anschluss (union) between Germany and Austria.
1932 Mobster Al Capone, convicted of indulging in the American tradition of income-tax evasion, enters the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.
1933 The Nazis publish a second ordinance of the Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service.
1938 Dr. Douglas Hyde becomes the first president of Ireland under its new constitution.
1939 Holocaust: A second anti-Jewish law in Hungary deprives Jews naturalized after July 1, 1914 of their citizenship.
1939 Holocaust: The Housing Segregation Law is enacted in Germany. (Edelheit)
1940 WW2: The Polish destroyer Grom is sunk near Narvik.
1940 WW2: US Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes writes in his secret diary, "Chamberlain appears to be facing a political test in Great Britain. Practically from the beginning of his premiership I have regarded him as the evil genius not only of Britain but of Western civilization. His diplomatic policy has been blundering and inept. Hitler always out-smarted him until Germany was strengthened to that point where it could go to war with confidence of a victorious result." (Ickes)
1941 WW2: May 4-11 Heavy German air raids over Liverpool, Glasgow, and Hull.
1941 WW2: Hitler gives his seventh major speech of WW2 in the Reichstag in Berlin: "At a time when only deeds count and words are of little importance, it is not my intention to appear before you, the elected representatives of the German people, more often than absolutely necessary. The first time I spoke to you was at the outbreak of the war when, thanks to the Anglo-French conspiracy against peace, every attempt at an understanding with Poland, which otherwise would have been possible, had been frustrated. The most unscrupulous men of the present time had, as they admit today, decided as early as 1936 to involve the Reich, which in its peaceful work of reconstruction was becoming too powerful for them, in a new and bloody war and, if possible, to destroy it. They had finally succeeded in finding a State that was prepared for their interests and aims, and that State was Poland..."
1942 Holocaust: The killing center at Auschwitz goes into operation, first at Auschwitz itself, then at the nearby camp of Birkenau, where four gas chambers and crematoria are built during late 1942 and early 1943. (total victims: 1.5 - 2 million, survivors: 2,000+) Note: Jews from each deportation are selected to live as slave laborers, some at Birkenau itself, others at nearby factories, including a synthetic oil and rubber plant later built at Monowitz. At Birkenau many Jews, particularly women, are selected by SS doctors for bizarre and painful medical experiments. During the War, Birkenau will be known as Auschwitz II and Monowitz as Auschwitz III or "Buna.") (Atlas)
1942 Holocaust: May 4 1,200 Jews chosen from recent transports from Germany, Slovakia and France are gassed at Auschwitz.
1943 WW2: The Ukrainian Galician division of the Waffen-SS is announced by the Wehrmacht and will be manned by thousands of volunteers urged on by Ukrainian leaders and the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
1944 WW2: In Owcarnia, 17 AK (Polish Freedom Fighters) soldiers are murdered by the People's Army (Communist-led Polish underground).
1945 WW2: An SS detachment burns Hitler's Berghof.
1945 WW2: The US 7th Army captures Hitler's country retreat of Berchtesgaden as General LeClerc's French 2nd Armored Division discovers Hermann Goering's private train, loaded with priceless art objects, on a siding at the railway station. (Secrets)
1945 WW2: Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering surrenders to the Allies. " ...We finally came came to a detachment of about 25 vehicles, halted on the road and facing in the direction from which we were coming. This was Goering’s personal convoy. He had with him his wife, his sister-in-law, his daughter, General von Epp, (the Gauleiter of Bavaria), his chef, valet, butler, aides, headquarters commandant, guards, etc, — altogether about 75 persons. He and I got out of our vehicles and von Brauschitz introduced us.
1945 Death: Fedor von Bock, General Field Marshal with monarchist sympathies. Bock won the prestigous Pour le Merite in WW1 and rose rapidly through the ranks. He served Hitler in Austria, Poland, Holland, Belgium, and France. Commanding Army Group Center during Barborrossa, he was relieved of command for his failure to take Moscow. He had the same bad luck in 1942 when he again failed to capture one of his Fuehrer's pet objectives, Stalingrad. Perminantly retired by a disgusted Hitler, he is killed in an Allied bombing raid.
1945 WW2: Field Marshal Montgomery announces that all enemy forces in the Netherlands, Northwest Germany and Denmark have surrendered unconditionally.
1951 The long awaited Festival of Britain is opened by the King and Queen on the South Bank of the River Thames. Highlights include the Dome of Discovery, the Royal Festival Hall, the towering Skylon and the Battersea Fun Fair.
1961 A group of Freedom Riders leaves Washington for New Orleans to challenge racial segregation in interstate buses and bus terminals.
1970 The Nam: In Kent, Ohio, 28 National Guardsmen fire their weapons at a group of antiwar demonstrators on the Kent State University campus, killing four students, wounding nine, and permanently paralyzing another. The four students killed are Allison Krause, Sandra Lee Scheuer, Jeffrey Glenn Miller and William K. Schroeder. Two days earlier, the National Guard troops were called to Kent to suppress students rioting in protest of the Vietnam War and the US invasion of Cambodia. The next day, scattered protests were dispersed by tear gas, and on this day classes resume at Kent State University. By noon, despite a ban on rallies, some 2,000 people have assembled on the campus. National Guard troops arrive and order the crowd to disperse, firing tear gas, and advancing against the students with bayonets fixed on their rifles. Some of the protesters, refusing to yield, respond by throwing rocks and verbally taunte the troops. Minutes later, without firing a warning shot, the Guardsmen discharge more than 60 rounds toward a group of demonstrators in a nearby parking lot, killing four and wounding nine. The closest casualty is 20 yards away, and the farthest is almost 250 yards away. After a period of disbelief, shock, and attempts at first aid, angry students gather on a nearby slope and are again ordered to move by the Guardsmen. Faculty members are able to convince the group to disperse, and further bloodshed is narrowly prevented. In 1974, at the end of a criminal investigation into the Kent State incident, a federal court will drop all charges levied against eight Ohio National Guardsmen for their role in the students' deaths.
1977 Former President Richard M. Nixon, after having been in seclusion for the two previous months, speaks with interviewer David Frost in the first of four television interviews. Note: These interview segments have been culled from 12 hours of interviews, for which the cash-strapped disgrace will recieve one million dollars.
1979 53-year-old Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman Prime Minister of Great Britain as the Tories sweep back into power in Britain with a majority of 43 seats in the House of Commons. Mrs Thatcher promises to transform the British economy and industrial climate.
1980 Death: Marshal Josip Broz Tito, president of Yugoslavia, three days before his 88th birthday.
1982 Falklands War: French-made Argentine missiles sink the British destroyer HMS Sheffield; 20 are killed.
1989 The space shuttle Atlantis is launched. Its main objective is to deploy the spacecraft Magellan, making this the first time that a craft is launched from a space shuttle. Magellan's mission is to map the surface of Venus.
1989 Iran-Contra: Colonel Oliver North is found guilty in the investigations into the Iran-Contra affair.
1990 The Lativian Parliament votes 138-0, with 1 abstention, to declare itself an independent democratic republic in the first stage of withdrawal from the Soviet Union.
1991 President George H. Bush is hospitalised for an erratic heartbeat.
1993 The United States hands over command of multinational forces in Somalia to the United Nations.
1994 Israel and the PLO sign a historic agreement giving Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip their first measure of freedom since the 1967 Middle East war.
1995 An Iranian nuclear official declares that spent fuel from Iran's Russian-made reactors, potential raw material for nuclear bombs, will be returned to Russia for safeguarding.
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