1415 — Council of Constance At the Council of Constance, called to resolve the schism of the Western Church (i.e., competing popes: Rome versus Avignon), the council also takes care of some heresy, condemning the already dead English reformer and Bible translator John Wycliffe, ordering his bones exhumed, burned, and scattered in the River Swift, running through his hometown of Lutterworth. They also call to trial the still-living Bohemian reformer Jan Hus who will end up on the stake in July. The council’s condemnation of Wycliffe — a man already dead for over 30 years — says something about how seriously the Church took the threat of his ideas. His translation of the Bible into English put Scripture directly into the hands of common people, a revolutionary act that planted seeds the Reformation would harvest a century later.
1469 — Birth of Niccolò Machiavelli (d. 1527) Observer of the machinations of the Borgia crimino-politico-religio family mafia, and author of the definitive treatise on governance: The Prince. Machiavelli wrote The Prince not as an endorsement of ruthless rule but, many scholars argue, as a practical survival guide for a Florence perpetually squeezed between predatory great powers. Whether cynical realist or reluctant pragmatist, he gave the world a word: “Machiavellian” — which tells you how most people ultimately read him.
1494 — Columbus Sights Jamaica On his second voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus sights the island of Jamaica. He names it St. Iago. The British re-name it Jamaica when they take the island in 1655. The name “Jamaica” derives from the indigenous Taíno word Xaymaca*, meaning “Land of Wood and Water” — a far more poetic name than St. Iago, and one the British, to their credit, had the good sense to restore.*
1664 — Louis XIV Opens Versailles Louis XIV, France’s “Sun King,” opens the Palais du Versailles, originally the site of a small royal hunting lodge about 20 km outside of Paris. May 7th was the first day of a week-long fete that doubled as not only a fund-raiser but also foreshadowed the opening moves in Louis’ concentration of political power by bringing the regional nobility quite literally under his roof. During this first use of the palace, it was large enough to comfortably house all 600 of his invited guests. It only got bigger after that. The political genius of Versailles is often overlooked in favor of its spectacle: by requiring the nobility to reside at court, Louis kept his potential rivals close, idle, and financially dependent on royal favor — turning would-be challengers into well-dressed courtiers competing for the honor of handing the king his morning shirt.
1729 — Birth of Catherine the Great (d. 1796) Empress of Russia, born in Stettin, Prussia. Born Sophie of Anhalt-Zerbst, a minor German princess, she arrived in Russia at 15 to marry the heir to the throne — a man she despised. Within years she had outmaneuvered him, seized power in a palace coup, and gone on to expand the Russian Empire more than any ruler since Peter the Great. Not bad for a foreigner with no claim to the throne.
1789 — Louis XVI Convenes the Estates-General King Louis XVI of France convenes the Estates-General for the first time since 1614. The Estates is a nominally representative, “tri-cameral” governing body answerable to the king; the First Estate representing the clergy, the Second Estate the nobility, and the Third Estate the common people. The proximate issue that triggered the event was a financial crisis — France’s enormous national debt — brought on by extravagant spending, an archaic tax system, and high food costs. The political turmoil that arose at the seating of the Estates-General finally spilled across all three Estates and into the streets of Paris, eventually undermining the very legitimacy of the monarchy and unleashing the violence that would define the French Revolution. Louis convened the Estates-General to solve a budget problem. He ended up losing his head — literally. It stands as one of history’s great cautionary tales about the unpredictable momentum of political reform once set in motion.
1796 — Birth of Horace Mann (d. 1859) Who, in the 1830s, became one of the earliest and most prominent advocates for professionalism and state sponsorship of education, including secularizing a process that to this point had been the purview of the church. As a Congressional Representative from Massachusetts he became a strong abolitionist, engaging intellectual horns with Daniel Webster over extension of the Fugitive Slave Law. He spent the last seven years of his life as President of Antioch College. Mann’s model of publicly funded, professionally staffed, non-sectarian schools — shaped in part by his admiration for the Prussian education system — became the template for American public education. Whether you credit him or blame him for what that system eventually became probably depends on your zip code.
1802 — Washington, DC Incorporated as a City Both Virginia and Maryland cede to the federal government several thousand acres of swampy bottom land to create the District of Columbia — not the “State” of Columbia, you’ll notice — a non-sovereign federal district designed to be administered by Congress, in case anyone was wondering who really runs the place. The Virginia portion of the original diamond-shaped district — including what is now Arlington and Alexandria — was retroceded back to Virginia in 1847, leaving the smaller, Maryland-derived footprint that exists today. The residents who live there still have no voting representation in Congress, a fact that appears on their license plates: “Taxation Without Representation.”
1813 — Birth of Søren Kierkegaard (d. 1855) The Danish philosopher is widely regarded as the father of existentialism, with the focus of his writings on the introspection of self and its relationship to the world around. He was a strong advocate of Christian ethics, but was also a strong antagonist to the established Danish National Church. A couple of choice quotes: “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” Along similar lines, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” Kierkegaard wrote many of his most provocative works under elaborate pseudonyms, crafting fictional authors with distinct personalities to argue different philosophical positions — a technique he called “indirect communication.” He wanted readers to wrestle with ideas rather than simply defer to his authority. Fittingly, there is still no consensus on what he actually believed.
1821 — Death of Napoleon Bonaparte (b. 1769) In exile on the remote British island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic. His body is returned to France in 1840 for burial in a new memorial tomb at Les Invalides. Before his final interment, officials open his casket to confirm his identity. All who are there are shocked as they gaze on the perfectly preserved form of the emperor, complete with skin that is both correctly colored and ductile. A strong odor of almonds rises from the casket, immediately raising suspicions of arsenic poisoning, vice stomach cancer, as the cause of death. Analysis of Napoleon’s hair samples conducted in the 20th century did reveal elevated arsenic levels, though debate continues over whether it was deliberate poisoning or chronic low-level exposure from the arsenic-laced green wallpaper dye fashionable at the time. On the damp walls of St. Helena, the dye may have off-gassed toxic fumes for years. An ignominious end either way.
1824 — World Premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 Vienna. By 1824, Beethoven was almost completely deaf — and had been for years. He nonetheless conducted the premiere alongside the official conductor, keeping his own tempo. When the audience erupted in applause at the finale, Beethoven could not hear it; a soloist had to physically turn him around to see the standing ovation. It was his last public appearance.
1840 — The “Penny Black” Postage Stamp The world’s first adhesive postage stamp, the “Penny Black,” is issued in England. If you have one tucked away in a shoebox full of old stamps, you will find it’s worth more than a penny today. Before the Penny Black, postage was paid by the recipient, not the sender — and charged by the number of sheets and the distance traveled. A single letter could cost a day’s wages for a working man. Sir Rowland Hill’s prepaid stamp system democratized written communication almost overnight, and every postal system in the world eventually followed.
1840 — Birth of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (d. 1893) In a remarkable coincidence of dates, Tchaikovsky shares his birthday year with the Penny Black. His three ballets — Swan Lake*,* Sleeping Beauty*, and* The Nutcracker — remain the most performed in the classical repertoire, and his 1812 Overture (commissioned to commemorate Napoleon’s disastrous Russian campaign) is still regularly punctuated with actual cannon fire at outdoor performances.
1856 — Birth of Robert Peary (d. 1920) American arctic explorer and the first man to reach the North Pole. Peary’s claim to have reached the North Pole on April 6, 1909 has been disputed almost from the moment he made it. His rival Frederick Cook claimed to have gotten there first, in 1908. Neither claim has ever been conclusively verified or refuted. What is not in dispute: Peary made eight grueling Arctic expeditions, lost eight toes to frostbite, and devoted 23 years of his life to the quest.
1862 — Cinco de Mayo A local holiday in the Mexican state of Puebla, celebrates the unlikely Mexican victory over a superior invading French army. The French invasion was an attempt to force payment for Mexico’s 1861 default on its massive debt to France and other countries. Despite their defeat in this battle, and confident that the United States was too preoccupied with its own civil war to intervene south of the border, the French army went on to conquer Mexico City and install Emperor Maximilian I on the throne of Mexico in 1864. Cinco de Mayo is more widely observed as a celebration of Mexican culture and food in the United States than in Mexico. Maximilian I, a Habsburg archduke, proved to be a surprisingly idealistic and even liberal emperor who refused to undo many of the reformist laws of his predecessor Benito Juárez. It didn’t save him: when French troops withdrew in 1867, he was captured by republican forces and executed by firing squad. Édouard Manet painted the scene.
1863 — Battle of Chancellorsville Opens Opening engagement in the Battle of Chancellorsville. The week-long battle cemented Lee’s reputation as a master tactician, repelling a Union force twice his strength and foiling “Fighting Joe” Hooker’s efforts to perform a double pincer movement against the Army of Northern Virginia. Chancellorsville is often called Lee’s “perfect battle,” but it came at a devastating cost. Confederate casualties approached 13,000 — a toll the South, with its smaller manpower pool, could not sustain indefinitely. Lee’s victories were tactically brilliant and strategically bleeding him white.
1863 — Stonewall Jackson Mortally Wounded While making a nighttime inspection of his outer defense lines, Confederate General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson is shot and mortally wounded by Confederate pickets during the Battle of Chancellorsville. Jackson’s wounding was a catastrophe for the Confederacy that arguably changed the outcome of the war. Shot in the arm by his own men in the dark and confusion, he had the arm amputated and seemed to be recovering — then died of pneumonia eight days later. Lee reportedly said, “He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right.”
1877 — Chief Crazy Horse Surrenders Chief Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux nation surrenders to the US Army in Nebraska. Crazy Horse built his reputation as a warrior during multiple fighting seasons against the Sioux’s traditional enemies. He first fought against the US Army in 1864 to avenge the Sand Creek Massacre of the nearby Cheyennes, and then continued to lead raids and attacks, culminating in the Great Sioux War of 1876–77, where he played a leading role in the defeat of the 7th US Cavalry at Little Big Horn (June 1876). He was killed under “mysterious circumstances” in September of 1877. No authenticated photograph of Crazy Horse is known to exist — a fact that, whether by accident or design, gives him an almost mythic quality. The Crazy Horse Memorial being carved into the Black Hills of South Dakota has been under construction since 1948 and, when complete, will be the largest sculpture in the world.
1898 — Battle of Manila Bay Steaming into Manila Bay under darkened ship, Commodore George Dewey, commander of the United States Asiatic Squadron, completely surprises the 10 ships of the Spanish navy lying at anchor off of Cavite Station. At dawn, with his ships arrayed 5,400 yards from the Spanish, Dewey turns to the captain of the flagship Olympia and utters those immortal words, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.” Dewey orders a cease fire at 08:00 to allow the Spanish to surrender but they refuse. Re-opening the engagement around 10:00, the one-sided fight continues until 12:30 with the capitulation of the 10th Spanish ship. 6 Americans are wounded in the action to the more than 400 Spanish sailors killed. Dewey becomes a national hero. His flagship now resides in Philadelphia as a museum ship. The battle lasted barely four hours and destroyed the entire Spanish Pacific fleet at a cost of exactly zero American ships lost. Congress struck a special medal for Dewey and eventually created the rank of Admiral of the Navy — equivalent to a six-star admiral — specifically for him. No one has held the rank since.
1898 — US Marines Capture Cavite Station Following up the spectacular naval victory at Manila Bay, US Marines storm ashore and capture Cavite Station, raising the American Flag for the first time on soon-to-be American territory. The Spanish-American War lasted less than four months in total, but its consequences reshaped American foreign policy for generations. The United States emerged from it in possession of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines — suddenly and somewhat awkwardly an imperial power with Pacific commitments that would eventually draw it toward confrontation with Japan.
1903 — Birth of Dr. Benjamin Spock (d. 1998) Much of what you don’t like about the Baby Boom generation you can attribute directly to his wide-spread “teachings” on child-rearing. He was an expert. A psychologist. What do actual parents know, really? Spock’s Baby and Child Care*, first published in 1946, was the second best-selling book in America for decades, trailing only the Bible. His advice to trust your instincts and treat children as individuals was a genuine departure from the prevailing “don’t spoil them” orthodoxy — though he himself later expressed reservations about how his message was interpreted by a generation inclined to hear what it wanted to hear.*
1904 — Work Begins on the Panama Canal The United States begins work on the long-planned Panama Canal. The decades prior to this witnessed the technical and organizational failure of a French canal company (on whose board engineer Gustave Eiffel served as advisor) and a US-fomented revolution of Colombia’s Panama province against the central government. The canal finally opened for business on 15th August, 1914, but whatever hoopla might have accompanied this event was far overshadowed by the concurrent opening guns of the Great War. The French failure was not merely engineering — it was biological. Yellow fever and malaria killed an estimated 22,000 workers during the French attempt. The American success depended as much on Dr. William Gorgas’s mosquito eradication campaign as it did on the steam shovels. The canal remains one of the greatest feats of engineering ever completed.
1904 — Cy Young Pitches Perfect Game Boston Americans pitcher Cy Young pitches the first perfect game in the modern era of baseball; the fall guys for this feat were the Philadelphia Athletics. Young was 37 years old when he threw this perfect game — an age at which most pitchers have long since retired. He finished his career with 511 wins, a record so far beyond the reach of modern pitchers that the award given annually to the best pitcher in each league bears his name, almost as an acknowledgment that no one will ever approach his totals again.
1906 — Birth of Mary Astor (d. 1978) Bogart’s moll in The Maltese Falcon, the mother in Meet Me in Saint Louis, the versatile actress successfully made the transition from silent films to talkies to television. Thankfully for all of us, she decided to change her name when she went into show biz; Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke was just a bit too, too… Astor’s off-screen life rivaled any film noir plot. A scandalous 1936 divorce trial threatened to expose her private diary — allegedly containing very candid assessments of her extramarital affairs with Hollywood notables. Studio lawyers, a compliant judge, and a carefully managed press managed to keep the most explosive passages sealed. Hollywood has always been good at editing.
1915 — RMS Lusitania Departs on Final Voyage RMS Lusitania departs New York on her final voyage. Six days out, enroute to England, and only 8 miles off the coast of southern Ireland, she is torpedoed by a German submarine and sinks with the loss of nearly 1,200 lives, including 128 Americans. Germany had anticipated what was coming and openly published a warning in the New York papers, directly adjacent to an advertisement for her voyage back to England. The story of Lusitania’s final voyage is grippingly told in Erik Larson’s book, Dead Wake (2015). The Lusitania sank in just 18 minutes — faster than the Titanic — partly because she was traveling at reduced speed to conserve coal, and partly because a mysterious second explosion (possibly munitions, possibly a collapsing boiler) catastrophically accelerated flooding. The outrage over her sinking helped shift American public opinion toward the Allied cause, though it would be another two years before the US entered the war.
1919 — Birth of Eva Perón (d. 1952) Born Maria Eva Duarte de Perón. “Evita” rose from poverty in rural Argentina to become First Lady and the most powerful woman in South American history, and she did it in just over a decade. She died of cancer at 33, at the height of her popularity. Her body was subsequently embalmed, stolen, hidden in Italy for 16 years by military enemies, returned to her exiled husband, and finally interred in Buenos Aires in 1974 — a posthumous journey almost as dramatic as her life.
1931 — Empire State Building Dedicated In Manhattan. The Empire State Building was constructed in just 410 days — an almost incomprehensible pace by modern standards. At its 1931 opening it was the tallest building in the world, a title it held for 40 years until the World Trade Center surpassed it in 1971. During the Depression, its vacancy rate was so high that New Yorkers nicknamed it the “Empty State Building.”
1933 — Birth of Johnny Unitas (d. 2002) Often regarded as the greatest NFL quarterback of all time, although with you-know-who retiring after the 2017 season, and you-know-who-else still at it, it might be fun to compare and contrast some records. Unitas’ record of throwing TD passes in 47 straight games (1956–60) stands to this day. Unitas was cut by the Pittsburgh Steelers before ever playing a regular season game, then spent a year playing semi-pro football for $6 a game. The Baltimore Colts signed him off that sandlot for the cost of an 80-cent phone call. The rest is the stuff of legend — including the 1958 NFL Championship Game, still called “the greatest game ever played,” which went to overtime and introduced a national television audience to professional football.
1933 — First Modern Sighting of the Loch Ness Monster The sighting was reported in the Inverness Courier by a local couple who described a massive creature disturbing the surface of the loch. The story went global within weeks. Whether or not Nessie exists, she has been extraordinarily good for Scottish tourism for over 90 years, which may be the most economically significant thing about her.
1936 — Joe DiMaggio’s First Major League Game Wearing Yankee pinstripes, Joe DiMaggio plays his first major league ballgame. He gets three hits. DiMaggio had been so eagerly anticipated that the Yankees paid him $8,500 as a rookie — a substantial sum in 1936. He did not disappoint: in 13 seasons (interrupted by three years of military service), he made 13 All-Star teams, won three MVP awards, and hit in 56 consecutive games in 1941 — a record that has stood for 84 years and counting, and which most statisticians consider unbreakable.
1937 — The Hindenburg Disaster After a spectacular trans-Atlantic flight from Europe, including a photo fly-over of Manhattan, the hydrogen-filled German zeppelin Hindenburg bursts into flame and is completely destroyed in less than a minute as it makes its initial mooring in Lakehurst, NJ. Death toll was 36, including 35 of the 97 on board and one on the ground. Controversy over the disaster continues to this day, with no fewer than 10 competing theories about the ignition source. The dramatic newsreel footage of the crash is highlighted by announcer Herbert Morrison’s running commentary as it burns and falls to earth, punctuated by his plaintive cry, “Oh, the humanity!” The Hindenburg was designed to use helium — safer and non-flammable — but the United States, the world’s primary helium supplier, refused to export it to Nazi Germany. The Germans substituted hydrogen, and the rest is tragedy. Herbert Morrison’s recording remains one of the most emotionally raw pieces of broadcast journalism ever captured.
1939 — Margaret Mitchell Wins Pulitzer Prize For her novel Gone With the Wind. Mitchell wrote her only novel over roughly a decade, largely while recovering from a series of injuries, and initially refused to submit it for publication. When it was released in 1936 it sold a million copies in six months. The 1939 film adaptation, released the same year she won the Pulitzer, remains the highest-grossing movie in history when ticket prices are adjusted for inflation.
1941 — Premiere of Citizen Kane Orson Welles’ masterpiece, which he co-wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the lead role. Welles was 25 years old when Citizen Kane was released. The film was a commercial disappointment on release — William Randolph Hearst, the obvious inspiration for Charles Foster Kane, used his considerable media empire to suppress coverage and discourage theater owners from showing it. It wasn’t until years of critical re-evaluation that it claimed its place at the top of nearly every “greatest films” list ever compiled.
1942 — Battle of Coral Sea First day of the Battle of Coral Sea. This engagement represents the first full-strength American attempt to halt the Japanese juggernaut in the South Pacific. It also becomes the first naval battle in history where the combatant ships are not within visual range of each other. After four furious days of aerial combat the Japanese forces cancel their planned attack on Port Moresby, New Guinea. From the bean-counting perspective the battle is a tactical win for Japan but in reality it is a strategic victory for the United States. Although the US lost an aircraft carrier (USS Lexington, CV-2), a destroyer, an oiler and 70 aircraft, the force took its toll on the Japanese — the damage to two Japanese fleet carriers meant they were not available at Midway the following month, contributing directly to the massive American naval victory there. The battle was also remarkable for the role of intelligence: American codebreakers had given Admiral Nimitz advance warning of the Japanese plan, allowing him to position his carriers to intercept. The ability to read Japanese naval codes — code-named MAGIC — would prove even more decisive at Midway.
1942 — Surrender of Corregidor After six months of nearly continuous siege and direct combat with the invading Japanese army, LTG Jonathan Wainwright surrenders the remaining U.S. forces on Corregidor Island in Manila harbor. In a final radio message to President Roosevelt, Wainwright stated, “There is a limit to human endurance, and that point is long past.” Wainwright spent the rest of the war as a Japanese prisoner, enduring brutal conditions, and was present aboard USS Missouri for Japan’s formal surrender in September 1945. He was awarded the Medal of Honor upon his return. Few men in American military history have experienced both the depth of defeat and the height of vindication that Wainwright lived through.
1944 — First Flight of the ME-262 Sturmvogel The world’s first operational jet fighter. It became the terror of the Allied bombers striking Central Europe, but it was held back from air-to-air in favor of close air support, a mission for which it was less than terrific. A Texas firm recently reproduced five flyable machines under license from Messerschmitt, exact replicas of the venerable jet. Hitler’s insistence on converting the ME-262 into a bomber — over the vehement objections of the Luftwaffe — delayed its deployment as a fighter by months and limited its production numbers. Most historians consider this one of the Führer’s more consequential tactical blunders. Even in the numbers produced, the ME-262 destroyed far more Allied aircraft than it lost in air-to-air combat — a sobering indicator of what might have been.
1945 — German Armies in Italy Surrender German armies in Italy accept unconditional surrender to the Allies. The Italian Campaign had been grinding, costly, and overshadowed by the Normandy invasion — fought up a narrow, mountainous peninsula that consistently favored defenders. From the Allied landings in Sicily in July 1943 to this surrender in May 1945, the campaign lasted nearly two full years. The soldiers who fought it called Italy “the tough old gut.”
1945 — Germany’s Unconditional Surrender German Field Marshall Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender documents in Reims, France, formally ending the Second World War in Europe. Stalin, furious that the surrender had been signed in the West without sufficient Soviet ceremony, demanded a second, formal signing in Berlin the following day — May 9th — which is why Russia still celebrates Victory Day on May 9th while the West observes V-E Day on May 8th. The war that had begun in September 1939 had consumed an estimated 70 to 85 million lives.
1948 — Birth of Hurley Haywood Legendary Porsche race car driver. Three-time winner at the 24 Hours of Le Mans (1977, 1983, 1994); five-time winner of 24 Hours of Daytona (1973, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1991); twice winner at 12 Hours of Sebring (1973, 1981); IMSA GT Champion 1971. He currently is Chief Driving Instructor at the Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama. Haywood is widely regarded as the greatest American endurance racing driver of his era, and his five Daytona wins remain a record. What makes his story particularly remarkable is that he largely accomplished it as a privateer and gentleman driver, without the full factory backing that most of his rivals enjoyed.
1952 — First Commercial Flight of the de Havilland Comet First commercial flight of the world’s first commercial jetliner, the Comet, built in the United Kingdom. The London to Johannesburg flight was a public relations sensation, but within a year the Comet fleet suffered three high profile air disasters that ruined its reputation and led to its eventual commercial failure. With its design flaws analyzed and fixed, the aircraft continued to fly through June 2011 as the RAF Nimrod anti-submarine patrol plane. The Comet’s fatal flaw was metal fatigue around its square windows — a design feature that, under repeated pressurization cycles, caused catastrophic in-flight breakups. The British government’s exhaustive investigation into the crashes essentially invented the science of aircraft accident investigation, and the square-window design was abandoned industry-wide. Every modern airliner you board has oval windows because of the Comet’s tragedy.
1954 — Final Day of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu A catastrophic French defeat that sealed the loss of their colonial holdings in Indo-China. The French commander, General Navarre, chose Dien Bien Phu specifically because he believed the Viet Minh could not move heavy artillery through the surrounding jungle. General Giáp did exactly that — hauling howitzers piece by piece up steep jungle hillsides using human labor — and placed them in the high ground overlooking the French garrison. The resulting siege lasted 57 days. American military advisors watched closely; some drew the wrong lessons.
1960 — U-2 Spy Plane Shot Down A U-2 reconnaissance plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers is shot down over the Soviet Union. Powers is held by the Soviets until traded for a captured Soviet spy in 1962. The timing could hardly have been worse: the shootdown occurred just two weeks before a planned Eisenhower-Khrushchev summit in Paris. When the Soviets revealed they had both the wreckage and the pilot (the US had assumed Powers was dead), Eisenhower’s cover story collapsed, the summit collapsed with it, and any hope of a Cold War détente was set back years. Powers was traded on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin — the “Bridge of Spies” — for KGB Colonel Rudolf Abel in February 1962.
1961 — Commander Alan Shepard Becomes First American in Space Commander Alan Shepard, USN, becomes the first American into space, three weeks after Yuri Gagarin’s historic orbital flight. Shepard’s Freedom-7 Mercury capsule achieves 115 miles altitude during the 15-minute sub-orbital (i.e. ballistic) flight and experiences 11Gs on re-entry. “What a ride!” Shepard declares. Shepard was famously sitting on the launch pad for so long — held by one delay after another — that he radioed Mission Control with an urgent request to proceed, using language not suitable for a family history. He later walked on the Moon during Apollo 14 in 1971, hitting two golf balls on the lunar surface. He remains the only original Mercury astronaut to reach the Moon.
1964 — First BASIC Program Runs on a Computer BASIC — Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code — was developed at Dartmouth by professors John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz with the explicit goal of making computing accessible to students outside the sciences. It worked. A decade later, a young Bill Gates and Paul Allen would write a BASIC interpreter as the first product of a company they called Microsoft.
1970 — Kent State Shootings Troops from the Ohio National Guard fire 67 live rounds into a group of anti-war protesters on the Kent State campus, killing four and wounding nine students. The four students killed — Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, Sandra Scheuer, and William Schroeder — ranged in age from 19 to 20. Two of the four were not participating in the protest at all but were simply walking between classes. The killings sparked a nationwide student strike that shuttered hundreds of universities and colleges, and the photograph of 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over Jeffrey Miller’s body became one of the defining images of the Vietnam era.
1971 — First Broadcast of All Things Considered On National Public Radio. All Things Considered debuted on May 3, 1971 — the same week of massive anti-war demonstrations in Washington — and its first broadcast included coverage of those protests. More than 50 years later it remains the most listened-to afternoon drive radio program in the United States, a remarkable run for a format that its early critics assumed no one would tolerate.
1979 — Margaret Thatcher Becomes Prime Minister Of the United Kingdom. Thatcher became Britain’s first female Prime Minister after leading the Conservative Party to a decisive victory over James Callaghan’s Labour government, which had presided over the “Winter of Discontent” — widespread strikes, uncollected rubbish, and power cuts. She served 11 years, longer than any other 20th-century British Prime Minister, fundamentally reshaping the British economy and, many would argue, the British national character.
1982 — HMS Conqueror Sinks ARA General Belgrano The British nuclear-powered submarine HMS Conqueror (S48) torpedoes and sinks the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano (ex-USS Phoenix, CL-46) off the coast of the Falkland Islands. Although the sinking occurred outside the British declared 200-mile total exclusion zone, British forces recognized the ship as a legitimate threat and took action to eliminate it. Despite the fact that the UK and Argentina were at war, the sinking of the 1938-vintage vessel triggered an inordinate amount of moral preening and controversy over whether it was “legal” and necessary in Britain’s recovery of the islands. The General Belgrano was a survivor of Pearl Harbor — she was the USS Phoenix, one of the few American ships to come through the Japanese attack unscathed. She survived December 7, 1941 only to be sunk four decades later in the South Atlantic. Her loss, with 323 Argentine sailors killed, caused the Argentine navy to withdraw to port for the remainder of the Falklands War, ceding the sea lanes to Britain.
1992 — Death of Marlene Dietrich (b. 1901) The German actress, who defined the genre of “platinum blonde,” became an American citizen in 1939 after publicly rejecting Nazi attempts to bring her back to Germany, and making a particular point of her disgust with their anti-Semitism. Dietrich entertained Allied troops throughout the war — often close to the front lines — in direct defiance of the Nazi regime. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom by the United States and the Légion d’honneur by France. In Germany, her wartime choices were long controversial; full reconciliation with her homeland came only late in her life and largely after her death.
2002 — Death of Pim Fortuyn (b. 1948) Dutch parliamentarian and staunch critic of the corrosive effect of Islam on Dutch society. Fortuyn was assassinated nine days before Dutch parliamentary elections in which his party was projected to make major gains. He was shot by an animal rights activist who claimed Fortuyn was a danger to vulnerable groups — a jarring inversion of the usual political violence narrative. His party, leaderless and in shock, still finished second in the election. His assassination marked a new and troubling chapter in Western European political life.
2007 — Death of Wally Schirra (b. 1923) Naval Academy class of 1945, test pilot, and one of the original 7 Mercury astronauts. He is the only astronaut to fly in all three of America’s first space programs: Sigma-7, the fifth Mercury flight (6 orbits, 9 hours in space); Gemini-6A with Tom Stafford, making the first in-orbit rendezvous with Gemini-7; and Apollo-7, an eleven-day earth-orbital flight, the first flight of the program after the fatal Apollo-1 fire. Schirra was famously the only one of the original seven Mercury astronauts to retire voluntarily — on his own terms, at the top of his game. His Apollo-7 crew were the first astronauts to broadcast live television from orbit, and also the first — and last — to openly defy Mission Control during a flight, refusing to wear their helmets during reentry after a head-cold-fueled standoff. NASA never flew any of the three again. Schirra had always intended Apollo-7 to be his last flight anyway.
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When Trumps fires Hegseth, will he appoint Erika Kirk to run the DOD?
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