Today in history
On May 5,1494, during his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus first sighted Jamaica.
In 1818 political theorist Karl Marx was born in Treves, Prussia.
In 1821 Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile on the island of St. Helena.
In 1862 Mexican forces loyal to Benito Juarez defeated French troops sent by Napoleon III in the Battle of Puebla.
In 1891 Carnegie Hall (then named Music Hall) opened in New York.
In 1892 Congress passed the Geary Chinese Exclusion Act, which required Chinese in the United States to be registered or face deportation.
In 1893 panic hit the New York Stock Exchange; by year’s end, the country was in the throes of a severe depression.
In1904 Cy Young pitched the American League’s first perfect game as the Boston Red Sox defeated the Athletics 3-0 in Philadelphia.
In 1925 John Scopes, a biology teacher in Dayton, Tenn., was arrested for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in violation of a state statute. (He would be found guilty in the famous “monkey trial.”)
In 1942 during World War II, Japanese forces landed on the Philippine island of Corregidor.
In 1945 in the only fatal attack of its kind during World War II, a Japanese balloon bomb exploded on Gearhart Mountain in Ore- gon, killing the pregnant wife of a minister and five children.
In1955 West Germany became a sovereign state. Also in 1955, the baseball musical “Damn Yankees” opened on Broadway.
In 1961 astronaut Alan Shepard Jr. became America’s first space traveler as he made a 15-minute suborbital flight in a capsule launched from Cape Canaveral.
In 1980 a siege at the Iranian embassy in London by armed men demanding the release of political prisoners in Iran ended as British commandos and police stormed the building. Nineteen hostages were rescued; two others had already been killed by their captors; four of the five hostage-takers also were killed.
In 1981 Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands died at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland in his 66th day without food.
In 1985 President Ronald Reagan kept a promise to West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl by leading a wreath-laying ceremony at the military cemetery in Bitburg.
In 1994 Singapore caned American teenager Michael Fay for vandalism, a day after the sentence was reduced from six lashes to four in response to an appeal by President Bill Clinton, who thought the punishment was too harsh.
In 1997 a Jacksonville jury found R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. was not responsible for the death of Jean Connor, a lifelong smoker. Also in 1997, American Airlines pilots ratified a contract, ending nearly three years of negotiations.
In 2000 reformers swept Iran’s run-off elections, winning control of the legislature from conservatives for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
In 2001Pope John Paul II became the first pope to visit Syria, where President Bashar Assad asked him to take the Arabs’ side in their dispute with Israel, referring to what Assad described as Jewish persecution of Jesus Christ.
In 2002 French President Jacques Chirac was reelected in a landslide victory over extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.
In 2003 Walter Sisulu, the quiet giant of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle for five decades, died in Johannesburg; he was 90.
In 2004 seeking to calm international outrage, President George W. Bush acknowledged mistakes but stopped short of an apology as he condemned the abuse and deaths of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. soldiers during appearances on two Arabic-language TV networks. Also in 2004, Pablo Picasso’s 1905 painting “Boy With a Pipe” sold for $104 million at Sotheby’s in New York, breaking the record for an auctioned painting.
In 2005 Tony Blair won a historic third term as Britain’s prime minister, but his Labor Party suffered a sharply reduced parliamentary majority.
In 2014 the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in a Greece, N.Y., case that local officials can open public meetings with prayers, even if it favors a specific religion.