- 124th Day of 241 2015 Remaining
- Summer Begins in 48 Days
- Sunrise:6:09
- Sunset:8:03
- 13 Hours 54 Minutes
- Moon Rise:8:48pm
- Moon Set:6:44am
- Phase:100%
- Full Moon May 3 @ 8:44pm
- Full Flower Moon In most areas, flowers are abundant everywhere during this time. Thus, the name of this Moon. Other names include the Full Corn Planting Moon, or the Milk Moon.
- Tides
- High:12:32pm/11:42pm
- Low:5:52am/5:41pm
- Holidays
- Bird Day
- Melanoma Monday
- National Candied Orange Peel Day
- Petite And Proud Day
- Renewal Day
- Respect For Chickens Day
- Star Wars Day (May the 4th be with you)
- International Firefighters Day
- Casinga Day-Namibia
- National Youth Day-China
- Independence Day-Latvia
- Herdenkings (Remembrance) Day-Nederlands
- Greenery Day-Japan
- World Give Day
- On This Day
- 1471 --- In England, the Yorkists defeated the Landcastrians at the battle of Tewkesbury in the War of the Roses.
- 1626 --- Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on what is now Manhattan.
- 1776 --- Rhode Island, the colony founded by the most radical religious dissenters from the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony, becomes the first North American colony to renounce its allegiance to King George III. Ironically, Rhode Island would be the last state to ratify the new American Constitution more than 14 years later on May 29, 1790.
- 1865 --- Abraham Lincoln is laid to rest in his hometown of Springfield, Illinois. His funeral train had traveled through 180 cities and seven states before reaching Springfield.
- 1886 --- What begins as a peaceful labor protest in Haymarket Square in Chicago, Illinois, turns into a riot, leaving more than 100 wounded and 8 police officers dead. After Chicago authorities arrested and detained nearly every anarchist and socialist in town, eight men, who were either speakers in or organizers of the protest, were charged with murder. The day before the riot, a couple of people were killed and others were wounded in an unprovoked attack by police officers firing into a crowd of striking workers at the nearby McCormick Reaper Works. Despite tension the following day, the crowd at Haymarket Square was listening quietly to speakers advocating a mandatory eight-hour workday for employees. As the final speaker was winding the rally down, police officers forced their way toward the stage to disperse the crowd, provoking someone to throw a bomb into the crowd. After the explosion, officers began firing wildly in all directions, inciting a riot among protestors.About sixtypolice officers were wounded and eight died. Although the public was later led to believe that the deaths resulted from the bomb, seven of the eight fatalities and the great majority of the injuries were caused by shots fired by fellow officers during the confusion.
- 1905 --- Belmont Park opened in suburban Long Island. It opened as the largest race track in the world.
- 1942 --- War time food rationing began in the U.S.
- 1948 --- Twenty-five-year-old Norman Mailer’s first novel, The Naked and the Dead, is published
- 1957 --- The "Alan Freed Show" premiered on ABC-TV. It was the first prime-time network rock show.
- 1959 --- At the first Grammy Awards, 'Tequila' by the Champs won best Best Rhythm & Blues Performance for 1958.
- 1961 --- Secretary of State Dean Rusk reports that Viet Cong forces have grown to 12,000 men and that they had killed or kidnapped more than 3,000 persons in 1960. While declaring that the United States would supply South Vietnam with any possible help, he refused to say whether the United States would intervene militarily. At a press conference the next day, President John F. Kennedy said that consideration was being given to the use of United States forces. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, did eventually commit more than 500,000 American troops to the war.
(l-r) Rusk, Kennedy, McNamara - 1961 --- A group of Freedom Riders left Washington, D.C., for New Orleans to challenge racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals.
- 1965 --- San Francisco Giants outfielder Willie Mays hits his 512th career home run to break Mel Ott’s National League record for home runs. Mays would finish his career with 660 home runs, good for third on the all-time list at the time of his retirement.
- 1970 --- National Guardsmen fire their weapons at a group of antiwar demonstrators on the Kent State University campus, killing four students, wounding eight, and permanently paralyzing another. Two days earlier, the National Guard troops were called to Kent to suppress students rioting in protest of the Vietnam War and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. The next day, scattered protests were dispersed by tear gas, and on May 4 class resumed at Kent State University. By noon that day, despite a ban on rallies, some 2,000 people had assembled on the campus. National Guard troops arrived and ordered the crowd to disperse, fired tear gas, and advanced against the students with bayonets fixed on their rifles. Some of the protesters, refusing to yield, responded by throwing rocks and verbally taunting the troops. Minutes later, without firing a warning shot, the Guardsmen discharged more than 60 rounds toward a group of demonstrators in a nearby parking lot, killing four and wounding nine. The closest casualty was 20 yards away, and the farthest was almost 250 yards away. After a period of disbelief, shock, and attempts at first aid, angry students gathered on a nearby slope and were again ordered to move by the Guardsmen. Faculty members were able to convince the group to disperse, and further bloodshed was prevented.
- 1977 --- David Frost interviews former President Richard Nixon. In the televised interview, Nixon answered questions regarding the Watergate scandal and his resignation, admitting that he had let the American people down through his role in the 1972 Watergate burglary and cover-up.
- 1979 --- Margaret Thatcher, leader of the Conservative Party, is sworn in as Britain’s first female prime minister. The Oxford-educated chemist and lawyer was sworn in the day after the Conservatives won a 44-seat majority in general parliamentary elections.
- 1984 --- Bruce Springsteen releases “Pink Cadillac” as a B-side to “Dancing in the Dark,” which will become the first and biggest hit single off “Born in the U.S.A.,” the best-selling album of his career.
- 1985 --- The Apollo Theater reopened with a 50th Anniversary grand reopening celebration. There was an associated television special entitled "Motown Salutes the Apollo."
- 1990 --- Jesse Tafero is executed in Florida after his electric chair malfunctions three times, causing flames to leap from his head. Tafero’s death sparked a new debate on humane methods of execution. Several states ceased use of the electric chair and adopted lethal injection as their means of capital punishment.
- 1994 --- Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat signed an accord on Palestinian autonomy that granted self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.
- 1998 --- Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was given four life sentences plus 30 years by a federal judge in Sacramento, Calif., under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty.
- 2002 --- An EAS Airline plane crashes into the town of Kano, Nigeria, killing 148 people. The Nigerian BAC 1-11-500 aircraft exploded in a densely populated section of the northern Nigerian city. The Executive Airline Services twin-engine plane took off from Kano at about 1:30 p.m. with 76 people on board headed for Lagos. Witnesses on the ground saw that the plane immediately showed signs of distress before plunging toward the ground.
- 2010 --- Pablo Picasso's "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust" sold for $106.5 million.
- Birthdays
- Audrey Hepburn
- Horace Mann
- Heloise
- Hosni Mubarak
- Maynard Ferguson
- Roberta Peters
- Dick Dale
- Ron Carter
- George Will
- David LaFlamme
- Nick Ashford
- Pia Zadora
- Ana Gasteyer
- Mike Dirnt
Monday May 4, 2015
