May 5
1646 English Civil War: Following his defeat at the battle of Naseby, Charles I surrenders to a Scottish army at Newark.
1705 Death: Leopold I, Emperor of Holy Roman Empire, at 64.
1760 Death: Laurence, Earl Ferrers, the last British peer to be executed, is hanged at Tyburn in London for murdering his valet; the first use of hangman's drop.
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1789 French Revolution: The revolution begins as the French National Assembly (Estates-General) meets at Versailles. "...The starting point of the French Revolution was the convocation of the States General by Louis XVI. They comprised three orders, nobility, clergy, and the third estate, the last named being permitted to have as many members as the two other orders together. The electoral regulation of 24 January, 1789, assured the parochial clergy a large majority in the meetings of the bailliages which were to elect clerical representatives to the States General. While chapters were to send to these meetings only a single delegate for ten canons, and each convent only one of its members, all the curés were permitted to vote. The number of the "order" of clergy at the States General exceeded 300, among whom were 44 prelates, 208 curés, 50 canons and commendatory abbots, and some monks. The clergy advocated almost as forcibly as did the Third Estate the establishment of a constitutional government based on the separation of the powers, the periodical convocation of the States General, their supremacy in financial matters, the responsibility of ministers, and the regular guarantee of individual liberty. Thus the true and great reforms tending to the establishment of liberty were advocated by the clergy on the eve of the Revolution. When the Estates assembled 5 May, 1789, the Third Estate demanded that the verification of powers should be made in common by the three orders, the object being that the Estates should form but one assembly in which the distinction between the "orders" should disappear and where every member was to have a vote. Scarcely a fourth of the clergy advocated this reform, but from the opening of the Estates it was evident that the desired individual voting which would give the members of the Third Estate, the advocates of reform, an effectual preponderance..."
1802 The city of Washington, DC, is incorporated.
1809 A patent is granted for a technique for weaving straw with silk and thread, to Mary Kies, of South Killingly, Connecticut; the first woman to be issued a US patent.
1813 Birth: Soren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher; will found Existentialism.
1818 Birth: Karl Heinrich Marx, in Trier, Germany, socialist writer, Father of Communism.
1821 John Constable's painting The Hay Wain is first shown, but attracts little interest in Britain. Bought by a French collector, it will eventually win a Gold Medal from the French king.
1821 The population of Britain is reckoned at 20.8 million, France at 30.4 million and the US a mere 9.6 million.
1821 Death: Napoleon, alone and deserted, dies on St. Helena. On his deathbed he is reported to have said, "They wanted me to be another Washington..."
1847 The American Medical Association is organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi and his 'Thousand Redshirts' sail from Genoa to conquer Sicily and Naples in a bid to unify Italy. "...Yes, young men, Italy owes to you an undertaking which has merited the applause of the universe. You have conquered and you will conquer still, because you are prepared for the tactics that decide the fate of battles. You are not unworthy of the men who entered the ranks of a Macedonian phalanx, and who contended not in vain with the proud conquerors of Asia. To this wonderful page in our country's history another more glorious still will be added, and the slave shall show at last to his free brothers a sharpened sword forged from the links of his fetters. To arms, then, all of you! all of you! And the oppressors and the mighty shall disappear like dust. You, too, women, cast away all the cowards from your embraces; they will give you only cowards for children, and you who are the daughters of the land of beauty must bear children who are noble and brave. Let timid doctrinaires depart from among us to carry their servility and their miserable fears elsewhere. This people is its own master..."
1862 Cinco de Mayo: This date will become a holiday that is greatly celebrated by the Mexican and Mexican American communities, as Mexican troops defeat the French army, despite being outnumbered 3:1 and having fewer weapons. The military confrontation will become known as the Battle of Puebla, after the Mexican state where it takes place. General Laurencez leads 6,000 French troops toward Puebla, Mexico, just 100 miles from Mexico City, against General Ignacio Zaragoza, a Texas-born Mexican who has been ordered to defend Juarez with a force of 4,000 troops, many of them agricultural workers armed with antiquated rifles and machetes.
1862 US Civil War: The Confederates, with 32,000 men under Longstreet, succeed in blocking 40,000 Federal troops at the battle of Williamsburg.
1864 US Civil War: The battle of the Wilderness begins as General Robert Lee, with just over 60,000 men against Grant's 100,000 men, heavily defeat the Federal troops, who lose over 17,000 men.
1893 The worst economic crisis in US history to date occurs as panic hits the New York Stock Exchange. Stock prices plummet, major railroads go into receivership, 15,000 businesses go bankrupt and 15 to 20 percent of the work force is unemployed. Within seven months, over 600 banks will have closed, and by the year's end, the country will be in a severe depression.
1902 Women's political groups are banned in Germany by the Prussian Government.
1908 A US Circuit Court judge places moving pictures under copyright laws with royalties to be paid.
1925 Biology teacher John Scopes is arrested in Tennessee for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in violation of Tennessee state laws. "...School Board President Frank Earl Robinson, who owned a drug store in town and was also a correspondent for some newspapers, and other board members approached Scopes to be the test case. Scopes was the football coach at Rhea Central High School who also taught math and general science, and sometimes substitute-taught biology, Larson said. He reluctantly agreed to discuss evolutionary theory in class, and was arrested when he did, experts say. Darrow agreed to take the case for free; he was by then famous as an orator and for taking on socially unpopular causes like defending labor leaders. Bryan agreed to defend the state because he believed the Bible and because he thought Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory had led to destructive social movements..."
1926 Author Sinclair Lewis rejects the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Arrowsmith, telling the selection committee in a letter, 'All prizes, like all titles, are dangerous'.
1925 Weimar: Dr. Karl Haushofer founds the Deutsche Akademie. Rudof Hess becomes an assistant on his staff and a close friend of Haushofer's son, Albrecht. Hess later abandons the idea of obtaining a doctorate. "...The full story of the Vril Society, the Thule Group, the Ahnenerbe, the Schwartze Orden (The Black Order) and other manifestations of the Black Lodge in the pre-Nazi and Nazi era has yet to be told, though Pauwels and Bergier take an informal stab at it in The Morning of the Magicians. Rudolph Hess, the last known member of the Thule Group, told Jack Fishman (The Seven Men of Spandau) that Thule leader and occult initiate General Karl Haushofer (1869-1946) "was the magician, the secret Master..." of Nazi Germany. Hess believed in the cause to the end of his life. The last prisoner at Spandau, Hess died at the significant age of 93, proclaiming his loyalty to the Thule ideal to the very end..."
1933 University students in Cologne burn books concerning Judaism or written by Jewish authors.
1936 Mussolini announces total victory over Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Although the League of Nations has imposed an embargo against Italy, it fails to include a vital item, oil, thereby discrediting itself once again.
1941 WW2: Rudolf Hess has a four-hour private talk with Hitler. Hess' son, Wolf, will later declare that he believes this is when Hess' flight to Britain is unofficially approved by Hitler. Most historians doubt this claim. (Children)
1942 WW2: Sales of sugar resumes in the United States under a rationing program.
1942 WW2: A combined British military and naval force lands on Madagascar and by the afternoon the town of Diego Suarez is captured.
1942 WW2: Japanese forces land on the Philippine island of Corregidor.
1945 WW2: In Austria, French politicians Reynaud and Daladier and former Austrian Chancellor Schuschnigg, imprisoned by the Nazis, are released.
1945 WW2: The poet Ezra Pound is arrested in Italy for treason.
1945 WW2: The Soviets take Swinemuende and Peenemuende, where V1 and V2 rockets were launched, on the Baltic coast.
1945 WW2: The American 101st Airborne Division arrives at Berchtesgaden and removes Goering's art treasures valued at $500 million to a Luftwaffe building in nearby Unterstein. (Secrets)
1945 WW2: German Army Group G surrenders to the Americans at Haar in Bavaria.
1945 Holocaust: Mauthausen, together with satellite camps at Gunskirchen and Ebensee, are the last concentration camps to be liberated by the Allies, by elements of the US 11th Armored Division. The bodies of 10,000 prisoners are found in a huge communal grave. Of the 110,000 survivors, 28,000 of whom are Jews, 3,000 die after liberation. (Atlas)
1945 WW2: The US War Department announces that 400,000 men will remain in Germany as an occupation force.
1945 WW2: Fighting breaks out in Copenhagen and is brought to an end when British forces arrive by air.
1945 WW2: Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five neighborhood children are killed in Lakeview, Oregon, when a Japanese balloon they had found in the woods explodes; the only known WW2 civilian fatalities in the continental United States.
1945 The US Air Forces vainly attempts to destroy an ice jam near Bishop Rock with 33 250-kg bombs and 44 50-kg bombs in the Yukon River, Yukon.
1946 International Military Tribunals for the Far East: In Tokyo, Japan, the Tribunal begins hearing the case against 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. On 4 November 1948, the trial will end with 25 of 28 Japanese defendants being found guilty. Of the three other defendants, two will die during the lengthy trial, and one will be declared insane. On 12 November, the war crimes tribunal will pass death sentences on seven of the men, including General Hideki Tojo, who served as Japanese premier during the war, and other principles, such as Iwane Matsui, who organized the Rape of Nanking, and Heitaro Kimura, who brutalized Allied prisoners of war. Sixteen others will be sentenced to life imprisonment, and two sentenced to lesser terms in prison. On 23 December 1948, Tojo and the six others will be executed in Tokyo. In addition to the central Tokyo trial, various tribunals sitting outside Japan will judge some 5,000 Japanese guilty of war crimes, of whom more than 900 will be executed. Some observers believe that Emperor Hirohito should be tried for his tacit approval of Japanese policy during the war, but he is protected by US authorities who see him as a symbol of Japanese unity and conservatism, both favorable traits in the postwar US view.
1955 The Federal Republic of Germany becomes a sovereign state after the Allied High Commission dissolves itself.
1960 The US government tells a huge whopper when it claims that (1) its U2 spy plane, shot down over Russia four days earlier is for weather research and (2) its pilot Gary Powers is a civilian. Ike will later regret acquiescing in the lame denial, while correctly commenting on the beneficial effects of his proposed 'Open Skies' policy, doomed now to failure because of this incident.
1961 Alan Shepard becomes the first US astronaut and the second human to reach outer space, making a 15-minute sub-orbital flight in a capsule launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The first person to reach outer space was the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Shepard's return to Earth is viewed on live television by millions of people around the globe.
1961 President Kennedy signs a bill that raises the minimum wage in the US from $1.00 to $1.25 an hour.
1965 A cease-fire is signed between rebels and the military junta in the Dominican Republic civil war.
1965 The Nam: The first large-scale US Army ground units arrive in South Vietnam.
1972 Paul Simon, Chicago and Carole King all perform at a benefit concert for US presidential candidate George McGovern.
1979 Terrorists in El Salvador storm the French, Venezuelan and Costa Rican embassies demanding the release of political prisoners.
1980 In London, troops of the SAS storm the Iranian Embassy, killing four of the five gunmen who had taken over the building and seized hostages. They rescue 19 hostages.
1981 Death: Irish Republican Army hunger-striker Bobby Sands, protesting his treatment as a criminal rather than a political prisoner by British authorities, at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland in his 66th day without food.
1983 The West German magazine Stern begins publishing the 'Hitler Diaries', later proved to be a hoax.
1985 President Reagan ignores an international uproar and visits a cemetery at Bitburg, West Germany, that contains the graves of WW2 Nazi SS storm troopers.
1993 Death: Irving Howe, writer; World of Our Fathers.
1993 The self-declared Bosnian-Serb parliament rejects the international peace plan aimed at ending the yearlong war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
1994 Civil war erupts in Yemen.
1994 Singapore carries out a controversial caning sentence imposed for vandalism on US teenager Michael Fay. Four strokes in a Singapore prison after being convicted of vandalism.
1995 Rescue workers end their search for bodies in the Oklahoma City bombing.
1999 President Clinton begins a morale-boosting trip to Europe that includes a visit to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he meets the three American soldiers just released by Yugoslavia.
2000 Conjunction of the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon.
2000 The FBI and Justice Department announce an investigation into whether former CIA director John Deutch mishandled classified material.
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