01 May History
- 408 - Theodosius II succeeds to the throne of Constantinople.
- 1308 - King Albert is murdered by his nephew John, because he refused his share of the Habsburg lands.
- 1486 - Christopher Columbus convinces Queen Isabella to fund expedition to the West Indies.
- 1805 - The state of Virginia passes a law requiring all freed slaves to leave the state, or risk either imprisonment or deportation.
- 1863 - The Battle of Chancellorsville begins as Union Gen. Joe Hooker starts his three-pronged attack against Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
- 1867 - Reconstruction in the South begins with black voter registration.
- 1877 - President Ruthoford B. Hayes withdraws all Federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.
- 1898 - The U.S. Navy under Dewey defeats the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines.
- 1915 - The luxury liner Lusitania leaves New York Harbor for a voyage to Europe.
- 1927 - Adolf Hitler holds his first Nazi meeting in Berlin.
- 1931 - The Empire State Building opens in New York.
- 1934 - The Philippine legislature accepts a U.S. proposal for independence.
- 1937 - President Franklin Roosevelt signs an act of neutrality, keeping the United States out of World War II.
- 1941 - The film Citizen Kane–directed and starring Orson Welles–opens in New York.
- 1944 - The Messerschmitt Me 262, the first combat jet, makes its first flight.
- 1945 - Martin Bormann, private secretary to Adolf Hitler, escapes the Fuehrerbunker as the Red Army advances on Berlin.
- 1948 - North Korea is established.
- 1950 - Gwendolyn Brooks becomes the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for her book of poetry called Annie Allen.
- 1960 - Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane is shot down over Russia.
- 1961 - Fidel Castro announces there will be no more elections in Cuba.
- 1968 - In the second day of battle, U.S. Marines, with the support of naval fire, continue their attack on a North Vietnamese Division at Dai Do.
- 1970 - Students from Kent State University riot in downtown Kent, Ohio, in protest of the American invasion of Cambodia.
- 1986 - The Tass News Agency reports the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.
- 2011 - Osama Bin Laden is killed in Abbottabad Pakistan by US Navy SEALS in Operation Neptune Spear.
01 May Birthdays
- 1493 - Phillippus Paracelsus, physician and alchemist.
- 1764 - Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect of the U.S. Capitol.
- 1769 - Arthur Wellsley, Duke of Wellington.
- 1830 - Mother (Mary Harris) Jones, reformer and labor organizer.
- 1839 - Louis-Maire-Hilaire Bernigaud, French chemist, inventor of rayon.
- 1878 - James Graham, inventor of the first naval aircraft-carrying ship and first man to film a total eclipse of the Sun.
- 1896 - Mark Clark, American general during World War II.
- 1909 - Kate Smith, singer.
- 1916 - Glenn Ford, actor (The Blackboard Jungle).
- 1923 - Joseph Heller, American author (Catch 22).
- 1924 - Terry Southern, novelist and screenwriter (Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider).
- 1940 - Bobbie Ann Mason, American writer (Shiloh and Other Stories, In Country).