May 2 in History
1519 — Leonardo da Vinci, 67, Italian polymath of the High Renaissance, painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor and architect, dies at the Chateau du Clos-Luce, France.
1869 — The Folies Trévise (later cabaret hall Folies Bergère) opens as an opera house in Paris, France. 1902 — Filming for “Le Voyage dans la Lune” (“A Trip to the Moon”), the first science-fiction movie, starts. The 14-minute silent film — written, directed and produced by and starring Frenchman Georges Méliès — follows a group of astronomers who travel to the Moon in a cannon-propelled capsule, explore the Moon’s surface, escape from an underground group of Selenites and return to Earth with a captive Selenite. 1918 — General Motors Corporation (GM), which will become the world’s largest automotive company (now the fourth largest), buys Chevrolet Motor Co. 1945 — The Soviet Union announces the fall of Berlin and the Allies announce the surrender of Nazi troops in Italy and parts of Austria.
1952 — A de Havilland Comet, flying for British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), becomes the first jet aircraft to enter commercial service — carrying passengers from London to Johannesburg. 1954 — Bulelani T Ngcuka, SA’s first director of the National Prosecuting Authority (1998-2004), is born in Middledrift, Eastern Cape.
1975 — David Beckham, English footballer (19962009), is born in Leytonstone, London.
1980 — Pope John Paul II arrives Kinshasa, Zaire, to begin his first (11-day) African tour.
1997 — Tony Blair, whose Labour Party crushed the long-reigning Conservatives in the elections, becomes Britain’s youngest prime minister in 185 years — four days before his 44th birthday.
2008 — Cyclone Nargis makes landfall in Burma (Myanmar) during the worst natural disaster in the country’s recorded history. A storm surge 40km up the densely populated Irrawaddy delta causes catastrophic destruction and at least 138,373 deaths. 2011 — Osama bin Laden, 54, the face of global terrorism for more than two decades, is killed in an early morning firefight in Abbotabad, Pakistan, with elite US forces. His son Khalid, 23, two other men and a women are also killed. The first General Emir of al-Qaeda (since August 11 1988) is buried at sea in the North Arabian Sea within 24 hours.
2011 — The Swiss government says it has identified potential assets belonging to Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and his entourage amounting to $415m, assets of $473m linked to Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and $69m linked to Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.