TODAY IN HISTORY

SUNDAY MAY 1, 2022

2011

President Barack Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden during a U.S. commando operation.

1707

The Kingdom of Great Britain was created as a treaty merging England and Scotland took effect.

1866

Three days of race-related rioting erupted in Memphis, Tennessee, as white mobs targeted Blacks, 46 of whom were killed, along with two whites.

1960

The Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 reconnaissance plane over Sverdlovsk and captured its pilot, Francis Gary Powers.

1963

James W. Whittaker became the first American to conquer Mount Everest as he and Sherpa guide Nawang Gombu reached the summit.

1964

The computer programming language BASIC was created by Dartmouth College professors John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz.

1971

The intercity passenger rail service Amtrak went into operation.

1991

Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers threw his seventh no-hitter at age 44, shutting out the Toronto Blue Jays 3-0.

1992

On the third day of the Los Angeles riots, a visibly shaken Rodney King appeared in public to appeal for calm, pleading, “Can we all get along?”

2009

Supreme Court Justice David Souter announced his retirement effective at the end of the court’s term in late June.

2011

Pope Benedict XVI beatified Pope John Paul II, moving his predecessor a step closer to sainthood in a Vatican Mass attended by some 1.5 million pilgrims.

2015

Baltimore’s top prosecutor charged six police officers with felonies ranging from assault to murder in the death of Freddie Gray, a Black man who’d suffered a spinal injury while riding in a police van.