This Week in History

USPA NEWS - Osama bin Laden is killed by US Special Forces, a new range of mountains is discovered in Antarctica, Ohio National Guard kills four at Kent State University in Ohio, Alan Shepard becomes first American in space, and US President Gerald Ford declares an end to “Vietnam Era”. All this and more happened this week in history.

May 2 (1887) Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film (used in Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope). (1908) Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer register their popular song “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” for copyright. (1945) World War II: More than 1,000,000 German soldiers officially surrender to the Western Allies in Italy and Austria. (1952) First scheduled jet airliner passenger service began with a British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) Comet from London to Johannesburg carrying 36 passengers. (1969) British liner Queen Elizabeth II leaves Southampton on maiden voyage to New York. (1988) Jackson Pollock’s “Search” sold for $4,800,000. (2011) Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI’s most wanted man is killed by US special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan. (2012) A pastel version of “The Scream”, by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch sells at auction for $119,922,500. (2018) Indian city of Kanpur declared world’s most polluted city by WHO with 14 other Indian cities in the top 20. (2019) A clean-up on Mt. Everest has removed three metric tons (6,613 pounds) of rubbish and four bodies in just two weeks.

May 3 (1374 BC) Solar eclipse (2m 07s) seen at Ugarit by Mesopatamian astronomers “On the day of the new moon, in the month of Hiyar, the Sun was put to shame, and went down in the daytime, with Mars in attendance.” (1937) Margaret Mitchell wins Pulitzer Prize for “Gone With The Wind”. (1945) World War II: German ship “Cap Arcona” laden with prisoners sunk by Royal Air Force in East Sea, 5,800 killed. Is one of largest maritime losses of life. (1956) A new range of mountains discovered in Antarctica, two over 13,000 feet. (1960) The Anne Frank House opens in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. (1965) First use of satellite television, Today Show on Early Bird Satellite. (1971) Nixon administration arrests 13,000 anti-war protesters in 3 days. (1978) First unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (spam) is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every Arpanet address on the US west coast. (2000) The sport of geocaching begins, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet. (2018) Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences members vote to expel Bill Cosby and Roman Polanski.

May 4 (1868) World’s largest book, the Kuthodaw Inscription Shrines recording whole of Buddhist scriptures on 729 marble tablets completed and opened to the public in Mandalay, Burma. (1904) Charles Rolls meets Henry Royce at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, England. Go on to form the car manufacturer Roll-Royce. (1932) Al Capone enters Atlanta Penitentiary convicted of income tax evasion. (1945) German forces in Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands surrender unconditionally to British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at Luneburg Heath. German forces in Bavaria surrender unconditionally to American commander Jacob L. Devers. (1970) Ohio National Guard kills four at Kent State University in Ohio. (1979) Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman to be elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. (1989) NASA launches Magellan probe to Venus from Space Shuttle Atlantis. (1992) US Army and Marine Corps forces arrive in Los Angeles to end rioting following the acquittal of four police officers over the beating of Rodney King. (1998) A federal judge in Sacramento, California, gives “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski four life sentences plus 30 years after Kaczynski accepts a plea agreement sparing him from the death penalty. (2021) Malian woman, Halima Cisse gives birth to nonuplets (nine babies) in Morocco, on only third know case worldwide.

May 5 (1865) First US train robbery at North Bend, Ohio. (1877) Indian Wars: Sitting Bull leads his band of Lakota into Canada to avoid harassment by the United States Army under Colonel Nelson Miles. (1891) Carnegie Hall opens in New York City. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is guest conductor.1921) (1921) Perfume Chanel No. 5 released by fashion designer Coco Chanel. (1948) First squadron of jet aircraft aboard a carrier. (1961) Alan Shepard becomes first American in space, aboard Freedom 7. (1965) First large-scale US Army ground units arrive in South Vietnam. (1986) Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation announces Cleveland, Ohio chosen as the site of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum. (2000) Conjunction of Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon. (2021) Evidence of Africa’s earliest burial, a three-year-old boy, 78,000 years ago, in a cave in Kenya published.

May 6 (1541) King Henry VIII orders a bible in English be place in every church in England. (1840) World’s first adhesive postage stamp, the “Penny Black”, is first used in Great Britain. (1937) German airship Hindenburg explodes in flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 35 of the 97 on board and one on the ground. (1940) Pulitzer prize awarded to John Steinbeck for “The Grapes of Wrath”. (1962) First nuclear warhead fired from the Ethan Allen class submarine “Polaris”. (1976) An earthquake strikes Friuli in Northern Italy, causes 989 deaths and the destruction of entire villages. (1987) American televangelist Jim Bakker and Rich Dortch dismissed from Assemblies of God after revelations of an alleged rape of a church secretary. (1994) Channel tunnel linking England and France officially opens. (2002) Entrepreneur Elon Musk founds SpaceX. (2017) France bans too thin fashion models and makes labeling of digitally enhanced photos mandatory.

May 7 (1867) Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel patents dynamite in England, the first of three patents he would receive for the explosive material. (1915) RMS Lusitania sunk by German submarine off the southern coast of Ireland, 1198 lives lost. (1941) Glenn Miller records “Chattanooga Choo Choo” for RCA, it becomes first record to be designated “gold”. (1975) US President Gerald Ford declares an end to “Vietnam Era”. (1980) Paul Geidel, Jr., American murderer and longest-serving prison inmate in the United States, paroled after 68 years, 296 days, at the age of 86. (1984) $180 million out-of-court settlement reached in Agent Orange suit. (1994) Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” is recovered three months after it was stolen. (1998) Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler for $US40 billion and forms Daimler-Chrysler in the then largest industrial merger in history. (2018) Vladimir Putin is sworn in as Russian President for another six years. (2021) Ransomware attack on US Colonial pipeline by the DarkSide criminal group stops supply to half of east coast.

May 8 (1348) Ship from Bordeaux carrying the plague, lands in Melcombe Regis (now Weymouth), Dorset. The beginning of the Terrible Pestilence (Black Death) in England. (1877) First Westminster Dog Show held. (1886) Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta sells the first Coca-Cola, containing cocaine. (1919) Edward George Honey first proposes the idea of a moment of silence to commemorate The Armistice of World War I, leads to the creation of Remembrance Day. (1945) V-E Day: World War II ends in Europe after Germany signs an unconditional surrender. (1970) Thousands of students protest against the Vietnam War following the Kent State shootings in Ohio. (1980) World Health Organization announces smallpox has been eradicated. (1984) The Soviet Union announces it will not participate in Los Angeles Summer Olympics in retaliation for the American boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. (1999) Nancy Mace becomes the first female cadet to graduate from The Citadel military college. (2019) UK goes a week without using a coal-fired power station for the first time in 137 years due to use of more renewable energy.

Thank you for reading my article. These are merely my thoughts and insights based on the facts. I use only verified sources. No fake news here. I write about a variety of subjects, mainly things I want to research and know more about. You can check out my website – Small Village Life at smallvillagelife.com, where I share useful articles and news.

Wendy writes for the United States Press Agency and is a former columnist with the Fulton County Expositor, Wauseon, Ohio.