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more events on May 5
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2000
The Sun, Earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn align – Earth’s moon is also almost in this alignment – leading to Doomsday predictions of massive natural disasters, although such a ‘grand confluence’ occurs about once in every century.
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1987
Congress opens Iran-Contra hearings.
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1969
Pulitzer Prize awarded to Norman Mailer for his ‘nonfiction novel’ Armies of the Night, an account of the 1967 anti-Vietnam War march on the Pentagon.
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1968
U.S. Air Force planes hit Nhi Ha, South Vietnam in support of attacking infantrymen.
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1965
173rd Airborne Brigade arrives in Bien Hoa-Vung, Vietnam, the first regular U.S. Army unit deployed to that country.
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1961
Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space.
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1945
Holland and Denmark are liberated from Nazi control.
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1943
Michael Palin, actor and screenwriter (Monty Python’s Flying Circus).
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1942
General Joseph Stilwell learns that the Japanese have cut his railway out of China and is forced to lead his troops into India.
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1935
American Jesse Owens sets the long jump record.
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1920
Anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are arrested for murder.
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1917
Eugene Jacques Bullard becomes the first African-American aviator when he earns a flying certificate with the French Air Service.
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1916
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1912
Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda begins publishing.
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1909
Carlos Baker, biographer.