FRIDAY, MAY 4
1626, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on present-day Manhattan Island. Minuit later bought the island from the Indians with cloth and brass buttons.
1886, the first practical phonograph — known as the gramophone — was patented.
1929 Actress Audrey Hepburn (Sabrina, Breakfast At Tiffany’s, My Fair Lady) is born. She dies in 1993.
1932, convicted of income tax evasion, mobster Al Capone — “Public Enemy Number One” — entered a federal penitentiary.
1958, Graffiti-turned-pop artist Keith Haring was born. He died from AIDS-related causes in 1990.
1959, the first Grammy Awards were presented.
1960, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz divorced.
1960, the birth control pill was approved by the Food & Drug Administration.
1970, Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on anti-Vietnam War protesters at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others.
1975 Actor-comedian Moe Howard (the Three Stooges) dies at age 77.
1989, fired White House aide Colonel Oliver North was convicted of shredding documents and two other obstruction of justice crimes and acquitted of nine other charges related to the Iran-Contra affair. The convictions were later overturned on appeal.
1994, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafatsigned a historic accord granting Palestinian self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.
1998, Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was given four life sentences plus 30 years under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty.
2001, Bonny Lee Bakley, the wife of actor Robert Blake, was shot to death as she sat in a car near a Los Angeles restaurant. Blake was arrested in April 2002 in connection with the murder. He was eventually tried for murder but was exonerated.
2001 The movie The Mummy Returns, starring Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, John Hannah, Arnold Vosloo, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, opens.
2003 The 100th victim of the Great White club fire at The Station nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, dies at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she’d been in critical condition since the blaze on February 20th.
SATURDAY, MAY 5
1862, badly outnumbered Mexican troops defeated invading French forces in the Battle Of Puebla. The anniversary — Cinco De Mayo (literally Fifth Of May) — is observed as a regional holiday in Mexico, but as a cultural holiday in the U.S., and is an excuse for a Mexican-themed party…
1893, the stock market crashed, leading to the second-worst economic crisis in U.S. history — behind the Great Depression of the 1930s — with 15-to-20 percent of the work force unemployed.
1904, the American League’s first perfect game was pitched by Cy Young, who led his Boston Americans to a 3-0 victory over Philadelphia.
1925, Tennessee teacher John T. Scopes was arrested for teaching Charles Darwin‘s theory of evolution in violation of state law. His trial was the basis for the play and movie Inherit The Wind.
1945, in the only fatal attack of its kind during World War II, a Japanese balloon bomb exploded on Oregon’s Gearhart Mountain, killing a pregnant woman and five children who were on a picnic.
1973, Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby. He went on to take the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, winning the Triple Crown.
1981, Irish Republican Army hunger-striker Bobby Sands died at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland on his 66th day without food.
1994, Singapore caned American teen Michael Fay for vandalism, one day after the sentence was reduced from six lashes to four after an appeal by President Bill Clinton.
1995, As rescue workers ended their search for bodies in the Oklahoma City bombing, President Clintondenounced self-styled anti-government militias, saying, “How dare you call yourselves patriots and heroes.”
1996, Israel and the Palestinians began the final stage of their peace talks in Taba, Egypt.
1996, The FBI released preliminary figures showing that serious crimes reported to police fell for the fourth straight year in 1995.
1996, King Juan Carlos swore in conservative leader Jose Maria Aznar as Spanish prime minister, opening a new era in Spanish politics after 13 years of Socialist rule.
1997, A jury in Jacksonville, Florida, found R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company was not responsible for the death of Jean Connor, a lifelong smoker.
1998, Secretary Of State Madeleine Albright called on Israel to agree to hand over an additional 13 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians, on top of the 27 percent already relinquished.
1999, The first Kosovo refugees brought to the United States, 453 of them, arrived at Fort Dix, New Jersey.
2000, The Labor Department reported the nation’s unemployment rate had hit a 30-year low of 3.9 percent in April 2000, with blacks and Hispanics recording the lowest jobless rates in history.
2000, Reformers swept Iran’s run-off elections, winning control of the legislature from conservatives for the first time since 1979 Islamic revolution.
SUNDAY, MAY 6
1889, the Paris Exposition, featuring the just-completed Eiffel Tower, formally opened.
1915, Orson Welles is born. He dies in 1985.
1915, Babe Ruth hit the first of his 714 major league home runs at the Polo Grounds while playing for the Boston Red Sox against the New York Yankees.
1937, the hydrogen-filled German dirigible Hindenburg caught on fire and crashed as it was coming in for a landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 of the 97 people on board.
1941, dictator Josef Stalin took over as premier of the Soviet Union.
1950, Elizabeth Taylor married hotel chain heir Nicky Hilton, in the first of her seven marriages.
1957, Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book Profiles In Courage.
1960, Britain’s Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II‘s sister, married commoner Anthony Armstrong-Jones. The couple divorced in 1978.
1986, In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, Soviet officials revealed that radiation escaped from the damaged nuclear reactor for 36 hours before area residents were evacuated, because the plant staff did not realize the seriousness of the accident.
1994, former Arkansas state worker Paula Jones filed suit against President Bill Clinton, alleging he’d sexually harassed her in 1991 when he was governor of Arkansas.
1994, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and French President Francois Mitterrand formally opened the Channel Tunnel — dubbed the “Chunnel” — establishing a rail link between their countries underneath the English Channel.
1998, Chicago Cubs rookie Kerry Wood tied a major league record with 20 strikeouts in a nine-inning game. Roger Clemens had accomplished the feat twice, in 1986 and 1996, and Randy Johnson has also since matched the record, in 2001.
1998, Astronomers announced the detection of a gamma ray burst in a galaxy 12 billion light years away that was equal to the energy expended by the sun in one trillion years.
