In Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, approximately 3,000 students from 13 Beijing universities gathered on May 4, 1919, to protest the Treaty of Versailles, which transferred Chinese territory to Japan.
A marketing representative for the Digital Equipment Corporation sent the world’s first spam message (unsolicited commercial email) on May 3, 1978, to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
On May 2, 1989, the Hungarian government began dismantling its border fence with Austria, allowing a number of East Germans to defect.
The Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, written by philosopher Benedetto Croce in response to the Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals by Giovanni Gentile, declared the unreconcilable split between the philosopher and the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, to which he had previously given a vote of confidence on October 31, 1922.
The manifesto was published by Il Mondo on May 1, 1925, which was Workers’ Day, symbolically responding to the publication of the Fascist manifesto on the Natale di Roma, the founding of Rome (traditionally celebrated on April 21). The Fascist press claimed that Croce’s manifesto was “more authoritarian” than its Fascist counterpart — a typical leftist dismissal of what used to be called “liberalism.”
According to official records and all the respectable historians, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun — after being married for less than 40 hours — committed suicide on April 30, 1945. Nevertheless, rumors about Hitler’s survival in South America, until the 1960s, continue.
On April 29, 1945, U.S. troops of the Seventh Army liberated the Dachau concentration camp.
On April 28, 1788, Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the new United States Constitution.
On April 26, 1803, thousands of meteor fragments fell from the sky over L’Aigle, France — convincing European scientists that meteors exist.
On April 25, 1792, Nicolas J. Pelletier, a highwayman, became the first person to be executed by guillotine.