What happened today
1931
Famous birthdays
1940
Get history's greatest tales
Subscribe to our HistoryNet Now! newsletter for a blast from the past each week in your inbox.
more events on May 1
-
2011
Osama Bin Laden is killed in Abbottabad Pakistan by US Navy SEALS in Operation Neptune Spear.
-
1986
The Tass News Agency reports the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.
-
1970
Students from Kent State University riot in downtown Kent, Ohio, in protest of the American invasion of Cambodia.
-
1968
In the second day of battle, U.S. Marines, with the support of naval fire, continue their attack on a North Vietnamese Division at Dai Do.
-
1961
Fidel Castro announces there will be no more elections in Cuba.
-
1960
Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane is shot down over Russia.
-
1950
Gwendolyn Brooks becomes the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for her book of poetry called Annie Allen.
-
1948
North Korea is established.
-
1945
Martin Bormann, private secretary to Adolf Hitler, escapes the Führerbunker as the Red Army advances on Berlin.
-
1944
The Messerschmitt Me 262, the first combat jet, makes its first flight.
-
1941
The film Citizen Kane—directed by and starring Orson Welles—opens in New York.
-
1940
Bobbie Ann Mason, American writer (Shiloh and Other Stories, In Country).
-
1937
President Franklin Roosevelt signs an act of neutrality, keeping the United States out of World War II.
-
1934
The Philippine legislature accepts a U.S. proposal for independence.
-
1931
The Empire State Building opens in New York.