GMT

Today in History: May 1

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.

1867 Reconstruction in the South begins with black voter registration.

1877 President Rutherford B. Hayes withdraws all Federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.

1915 The British luxury liner Lusitania leaves New York Harbor for a voyage to Europe. A week later it would be torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat.

1931 The Empire State Building opens in New York.

1937 President Franklin Roosevelt signs an act of neutrality, keeping the United States out of World War II.

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.

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.


Born on May 1

1764 Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect of the U.S. Capitol.

1878 James Graham, inventor of the first naval aircraft-carrying ship and first man to film a total eclipse of the sun.


JOTD
When I was a kid, my parents would always say, “Excuse my French!” after a swear word...

I’ll never forget that first day at school when the teacher asked did we know any French