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Today in History: May 1

Publish Date
Fri, 1 May 2015, 9:20AM
Photo: Getty Images
Photo: Getty Images

Today in History: May 1

Publish Date
Fri, 1 May 2015, 9:20AM

Today is Friday, May 1, the 121st day of 2015. There are 244 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1517 - 'Evil May Day' riots in London as apprentices attack foreign residents. Sixty rioters are later hanged.

1522 - England declares war on France and Scotland.

1648 - Scots begin second Civil War.

1707 - Union between England and Scotland goes into effect under name Great Britain.

1770 - Forby Sutherland is laid to rest at Botany Bay. He is the first European to be buried in NSW.

1786 - Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro premieres in Vienna.

1819 - Freedom of the press is introduced in France.

1884 - Work begins on a 10-storey building in Chicago using a unique steel-framed interior, making it the world's first skyscraper.

1889 - May 1 is chosen by socialist congress meeting in Paris as the date to demonstrate for the eight hour day.

1896 - Naser od-Din, the unpopular Shah of Persia, is murdered by a fanatic.

1904 - Death of Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, noted for his ninth symphony, From the New World.

1913 - The Australian Government releases the first commonwealth banknote - ten shillings. It's a good week's wages for some.

1919 - Mount Kelud erupts in Indonesia, killing 5,000 people.

1925 - Cyprus is declared a British crown colony.

1931 - The 102-storey Empire State Building in New York, at the time the world's tallest building, is officially opened.

1937 - Spanish painter Pablo Picasso produces the first sketch of his masterpiece Guernica, five days after the Basque town is bombed by the Germans.

1942 - Japanese forces take Mandalay, Burma, while British retreat along Chindwin Valley to India.

1945 - Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels commits suicide in his Berlin bunker; German headquarters in Italy formally agrees to an unconditional surrender.

1948 - Democratic People's Republic of Korea, known as North Korea, is established.

1960 - The Soviet Union shoots down an American U-2 plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers, who is jailed for spying before being exchanged in an East-West spy swap in February 1962.

1961 - Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares the country a socialist nation and abolishes elections.

1967 - Elvis Presley marries Priscilla Beaulieu.

1970 - US and South Vietnamese troops invade Cambodia to root out Vietnamese Communist bases.

1979 - Greenland is granted home rule by Denmark.

1986 - Millions of blacks stay away from jobs and schools in what is described as largest anti-apartheid protest in South Africa's history.

1987 - Pope John Paul II beatifies a Jewish-born nun killed at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp.

1988 - Police clash with demonstrators throughout Poland as thousands heed labour group Solidarity's call for national day of protest.

1989 - Government of Kampuchea changes country's name to Cambodia.

1990 - Soviet protesters heckle President Mikhail Gorbachev at May Day parade on Red Square.

1992 - US President George Bush orders 1,000 riot police to Los Angeles, torn by ethnic rioting, and puts 4,000 Army troops on standby.

1994 - Ayrton Senna, three times world Formula One auto racing champion, dies after a high-speed crash in the San Marino Grand Prix.

1995 - The Croatian Army mounts a full-scale assault on the Serb-held enclave of Slavonia in Croatia, sending thousands of civilians fleeing.

1996 - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat visits Washington, where he criticises Israel for keeping its borders closed to Palestinian workers.

1997 - Britain's Labour Party, led by Tony Blair, wins a landslide victory in a general election.

1998 - The former prime minister of Rwanda, Jean Kambanda, becomes the first person ever to plead guilty before an international tribunal, admitting to his role in the 1994 genocide of more than 500,000 Rwandans.

1999 - During a visit by American civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic agrees to release three US soldiers held captive for more than a month.

1999 - The body of British mountaineer George Mallory is found on Mount Everest, almost 75 years after he disappeared on a climbing expedition.

2000 - Joerg Haider, leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party, steps down after 14 years as party leader; Actor Steve Reeves dies in Escondido, California, aged 74.

2001 - A team of US technicians arrives on the southern Chinese island of Hainan to figure out how to get a damaged Navy spy plane back to the United States.

2002 - The Queen opens her Golden Jubilee with an address to both houses of Parliament at Westminster Hall in London; Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf coasts to a landslide victory in a referendum extending his rule by five years.

2003 - UN international staff return to Baghdad for the first time since the US invasion.

2004 - Montreal archbishop Andrew Hutchison, elected as new leader of the Anglican Church of Canada, says he personally favours church blessings for same-sex couples but remains open about how he'll vote on the issue.

2005 - North Korea test fires a short-range missile that plunges into the Sea of Japan.

2007 - President Hugo Chavez's government takes over Venezuela's last privately run oil fields, intensifying a power struggle with international companies over the world's largest known petroleum deposit.

2008 - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd makes Time magazine's list of the world's most influential people, alongside US President George W Bush and Iraq's radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

2009 - Hundreds of Venezuelan police and National Guard troops break up a protest march with volleys of tear gas and blasts from water cannon that scatters a crowd of President Hugo Chavez's opponents.

2010 - Pope Benedict XVI cracks down on the scandal-plagued Legionaries of Christ, announcing that a papal envoy would take over and reform the conservative order that has been discredited by revelations that its founder sexually abused seminarians and fathered at least one child.

2011 - Some 1.4 million pilgrims flood Rome to watch Pope John Paul II move a step closer to sainthood in one of the largest Vatican Masses in Roman Catholic history, an outpouring of adoration for the late beloved and historic figure after years marred by church scandal.

2012 - In a swift and secretive trip to the war zone, President Barack Obama signs an agreement vowing long-term ties with Afghanistan after America's combat forces come home.

2013 - Workers around the world unite in anger during May Day rallies- from fury in Europe over austerity measures that have cut wages, reduced benefits and eliminated many jobs altogether, to rage in Asia over relentlessly low pay, the rising cost of living and hideous working conditions that have left hundreds dead in recent months.

2014 - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry says he had no advance warning of Palestinian deal for unity government that scuttled Mideast peace talks.

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