May 4
1626: Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrived in New Netherland (present-day Manhattan Island) aboard the See Meeuw.
1871: The National Association, the first professional baseball league, opened its first season in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
1904: The United States began building the Panama Canal. Auto pioneers Charles Stewart Rolls and Frederick Henry Royce met for the first time at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, England.
1932: Mobster Al Capone began serving an 11-year prison sentence for tax evasion, in Atlanta, Ga.
1945: Germany’s five-year occupation of Denmark ended.
1953: Ernest Hemingway won the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea.
1959: The first Grammy Awards were held, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.
1998: A federal judge in Sacramento, Calif., gave “Unabomber” Theodore Kaczynski of Lincoln, Mont., four life sentences plus 30 years after Kaczynski accepted a plea agreement sparing him from the death penalty.
May 5
1494: Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Jamaica and claimed it for Spain.
1821: Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile on the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.
1862: Troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza halted a French invasion in the Battle of Puebla in Mexico, dealing the French army its first battle defeat in 50 years. The victory provided the morale boost Mexico needed to ultimately repel the invasion by France. The date is celebrated as Cinco de Mayo in parts of Mexico and the United States. (The battle was a pivotal point in U.S. history because, if the Mexicans had lost, France would have occupied Mexico during the U.S. Civil War, and would have aided the Confederate States of America, likely altering the outcome of that war.)
1865: The first train robbery in the United States took place, in North Bend, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati.
1891: The Music Hall in New York City (later known as Carnegie Hall) had its grand opening and first public performance, with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.
May 6
1844: The world’s first mechanically frozen skating rink, The Glaciarium, opened in London.
1889: The Eiffel Tower in Paris opened for the first time.
1940: John Steinbeck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Grapes of Wrath.
1981: A jury of architects and sculptors unanimously selected Maya Ying Lin’s design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial from 1,421 other entries.
1994: The Channel Tunnel, “Chunnel,” opened, connecting England to France for the first time in millions of years.
2013: Three women missing for more than a decade were found alive in Cleveland, Ohio; 52-year-old Ariel Castro was taken into custody.
May 7
1718: The city of New Orleans was founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville.
1789: The first inaugural ball was held in New York to honor President and Mrs. George Washington.
1846: The Cambridge Chronicle, America’s oldest surviving weekly newspaper, was published for the first time in Cambridge, Mass.
1946: Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering (later renamed Sony) was founded with 20 employees.
1998: Mercedes-Benz bought Chrysler for $40 billion and formed DaimlerChrysler in the largest industrial merger in history.
May 8
1886: Pharmacist John Pemberton first sold a carbonated beverage named “Coca-Cola” as a patent medicine, in Atlanta, Ga.
1877: The first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show opened at Gilmore’s Gardens in New York City.
1912: Paramount Pictures was founded in Hollywood, Calif.
1976: The rollercoaster ‘Revolution,’ the first steel coaster with a vertical loop, opened at Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, Calif.
May 9
1887: Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show opened in London, England.
1960: The Food and Drug Administration approved Searle’s Enovid, making it the world’s first approved oral contraceptive pill.
1961: Jim Gentile of the Baltimore Orioles became the first player in baseball history to hit grand slams in consecutive innings. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton N. Minow gave his famous speech to the convention of the National Association of Broadcasters in which he said television was a “vast wasteland.”
May 10
1869: The First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, was completed at Promontory Summit, Utah, with a golden spike.
1872: Victoria Woodhull became the first woman nominated for president of the United States.
1908: Mother’s Day was observed for the first time in the United States, in Grafton, West Virginia.
1924: J. Edgar Hoover was appointed director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and remained so until his death in 1972.
1954: Bill Haley & His Comets released “Rock Around the Clock,” the first rock-and-roll record to reach No. 1 on the Billboard charts.
1960: The nuclear submarine USS Triton completed Operation Sandblast, the first underwater circumnavigation of the earth.
1962: Marvel Comics published the first issue of The Incredible Hulk.
2002: FBI agent Robert Hanssen was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for selling U.S. secrets to Moscow for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds.
ON THIS DAY… MAY 4 – MAY 10
May 4
NATIONAL ORANGE JUICE DAY
Orange juice is one of the most popular fruit juices in the country and it is very healthy as long as it’s not full of sugar.
May 5
CINCO DE MAYO
Tacos, margaritas, fun, and fiesta. Let’s take a deep dive into Mexican-American history!
May 6
NATIONAL SPACE DAY
There’s so much going on in the universe, it definitely deserves a day to reflect on everything!
May 7
NATIONAL FITNESS DAY
This day was founded by famous life and career coach Kim Bielak in 2017 to dedicate a whole day to the importance of fitness.
May 8
MOTHERS DAY
Moms don’t get days off, nor do they receive handsome salaries or generous pensions. Instead, their rewards come in the form of sticky kisses, necklaces made of elbow macaroni, and the satisfaction of seeing their children grow up to be happy, healthy adults.
May 9
NATIONAL MOSCATO DAY
May 10
NATIONAL SHRIMP DAY
In the United States, shrimp is eaten more than any other type of seafood, so of courses, it deserves its own day!