Category: Today

On May 4, 1970, four students were killed and eleven others wounded when National Guardsmen opened fire on a group of students at Kent State University. The students were protesting President Richard Nixon’s April 30 announcement that U.S. forces would move into Cambodia to destroy North Vietnamese bases there.

On May 4, 1886, a riot broke out in Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, as a labor protest turned into a riot, leaving more than 100 wounded and 8 police officers dead. In the aftermath, Chicago authorities charged eight men, who were either speakers in or organizers of the protest, with murder. Seven of the eight defendants received death sentences. Four of the defendants were hanged. One man scheduled for execution killed himself the day before. The governor pardoned the remaining three defendants in 1893, after they had served seven years in prison.

On May 4, 1776, Rhode Island became the first North American colony to renounce its allegiance to King George III. Ironically, Rhode Island would be the last state to ratify the U.S. Constitution more than 14 years later on May 29, 1790.

On May 3, 1469, Italian philosopher and writer Niccolo Machiavelli was born. Machiavelli became one of the fathers of modern political theory, writing “The Prince” in 1532.

On May 3, 1940, David Koch, a billionaire businessman, who ran for Vice-President in 1980 as the Libertarian Party candidate, was born in Wichita, Kansas. Koch continues to fund numerous groups working toward libertarian goals.

On May 3, 1942, the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first modern air-naval battle, began. Though Imperial Japan won the battle and went on to occupy all of the Solomon Islands, it was a Pyrrhic victory. Japan lost 70 planes to 66 lost by the U.S., but unlike the U.S., the Japanese could not replace their lost pilots, forcing them to pull back other attack plans in the Pacific.

On May 2, 1903, Benjamin Spock, the American pediatrician whose book, “Baby and Child Care,” published in 1946, was one of the best-sellers of all time, was born in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1968, Dr. Spock was charged with conspiracy to counsel, aid, and abet resistance to the draft, along with four others (William Sloane Coffin, Marcus Raskin, Mitchell Goodman, and Michael Ferber). Spock was convicted and given a two-year prison sentence, but in 1969 a federal court set aside his conviction.

On May 2, 2011, U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks and the FBI’s most wanted man, in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

On May 1, 1885, the original Chicago Board of Trade Building opened for business.

On May 1, 1915, the RMS Lusitania left New York City on her 202nd, and final, crossing of the North Atlantic. Six days later, the ship was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland with the loss of 1,198 lives, including 128 Americans, rousing American public sentiment against Germany.

On May 1, 1991, Oakland Athletics outfielder Rickey Henderson stole his 939th base to break Lou Brock’s record for career stolen bases. Henderson ended his major league career stealing a total of 1,406 bases, almost 500 more than Brock, the next closest player.

On April 30, 1492, Spain gave Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration.

On April 30, 1789, George Washington was sworn in as the first American president and delivered the first inaugural speech at Federal Hall in New York City.

On April 30, 1945, Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin, Germany.

On April 28, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched an invasion of the Dominican Republic by more than 20,000 U.S. troops, claiming the military action prevented a “communist dictatorship.” Johnson’s evidence was flimsy, but U.S. military power dominant.

On April 28, 1967, boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the U.S. Army and was immediately stripped of his heavyweight title. Ali, a Muslim, cited religious reasons for his decision to forgo military service, and added, “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.”

On April 27, 1773, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea trade. Since it lowered the price of tea in America, British Prime Minister Lord North couldn’t imagine that the colonists would protest cheaper tea. He was mistaken. Within the year, the East India Company’s tea was dumped into Boston harbor in what became known as the Boston Tea Party.

On April 27, 1820, Herbert Spencer was born in Derby, England. Spencer became a philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist. An “enthusiastic exponent of evolution,” even writing about it “before Darwin did,” Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest.” He was considered “the single most famous European intellectual in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.”

On April 26, 121, Marcus Aurelius was born in Rome. He would become emperor of Rome from 161 to 180 AD, and write “Meditations,” which remains revered as a literary monument to the Stoic philosophy.

On April 26, 1607, English colonists made landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia.

On April 26, 1933, the Gestapo, the brutal secret police force of Nazi Germany, was established.

On April 26, 1937, during the market’s busiest hour in Guernica, Spain, the Nazi Luftwaffe began an unprovoked three-hour attack aerial bombardment, which killed or wounded one-third of the city’s 5,000 residents. The indiscriminate killing of civilians at Guernica became a symbol of fascist brutality.

On April 25, 1599, Oliver Cromwell, who would become Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, was born in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.

On April 25, 1908, journalist Edward R. Murrow was born. Murrow became widely heard by listeners in the United States and Canada through his series of radio news broadcasts during World War II. Murrow produced a series of TV news reports that helped lead to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy, which was portrayed in the 2005 movie, “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

On April 25, 1961, Robert Noyce was granted a patent for an integrated circuit.