This Day in History – May 1
Today is the 121st day of 2017. There are 244 days left in the yearTODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
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.OTHER EVENTS
1522: England declares war on France and Scotland.
1648: Scots begin second Civil War.
1703: Chushingura Incident occurs in Japan when Kiva Yoshinaka is slain in revenge by 47 ronin, or masterless samurai, who hold him responsible for the death of their leader, the lord of Ako.
1707: Union between England and Scotland goes into effect under name Great Britain.
1819: Freedom of the press is introduced in France.
1884: Construction of the first skyscraper in the United States, the 10-storey Home Insurance Building in Chicago, begins.
1898: A US naval force destroys a Spanish fleet in Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War.
1919: Mount Kelud erupts in Indonesia, killing 5,000 people.
1925: Cyprus is declared a British crown colony.
1942: Japanese forces take Mandalay, Burma, in World War II, while British retreat along Chindwin Valley to India.
1948: The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, known as North Korea, is proclaimed.
1960: The Soviet Union shoots down US U-2 spy plane over Sverdlovsk.
1967: Elvis Presley marries Priscilla Beaulieu in Las Vegas. They divorce in 1973.
1970: US and South Vietnamese troops invade Cambodia to root out Vietnamese Communist bases.
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: During a visit to West Germany, Pope John Paul II beatifies Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Carmelite nun gassed in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.
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.
1991: Iraq tells international regulators that 18 of its 24 nuclear facilities were destroyed in allied bombing.
