73 The Romans breach the final defenses at Masada

305 Roman Emperor Diocletian (284-305) retires to grow cabbages at Spoletum, while his partner Maximian (286-305) retires too, under protest

1006 Supernova in Lupus

1045 Giovanni Graziani elected Pope as Gregory VI (1045-1046; abdicated, d. 1048)

1654 England's Protestant Parliament imposed the Pale on Ireland forcing Catholics west of the Shannon

1703 Battle at Pultusk: Swedes defeat the Russians & Saxons

1707 Parliament forms the United Kingdom of Great Britain

1759 British fleet captures Guadeloupe from the France

1815 Battle of Tolentino: the Austrians defeat Joachim Murat's invasion of nothern Italy from Naples

1857 Filibuster William Walker surrenders to USN to avoid execution by the Nicaraguans

1862 David Farragut captures New Orleans

1863 Battle of Chancellorsville beings (ends on the 4th)

1863 Confederate Congress urges the killing of black men captured in the military service of the United States

1863 Grant's Vicksburg Campaign: Battle of Port Gibson, Mississippi

1865 Some 10,000 black citizens of Charleston, SC, dedicate a cemetery to 267 Union soldiers who died as Confederate prisoners-of-war

1866 Memphis Race Rioting: Whites begin attacking blacks until federal troops arrive on the 3rd, 46 blacks, 2 whites die, black women are raped, much African American property destroyed

1866 The Fenian armed schooner 'Friend' takes a British ship off Canada

1869 The Folies-Bergere opens in Paris, a beacon for soldiers in three Franco-German wars

1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago opens for 18 months

1898 Battle of Manila Bay: "You may fire when ready, Mr. Gridley"

1915 A German U-boat sinks the American tanker 'Gulflight', 3 killed

1917 German torpedo plane sinks the British steamer 'Gena'

1919 Eruption of Mount Kelud, Indonesia, c. 5,000 die

1919 U.S. anti-radical "May Day Raids"

1929 Berlin: May Day demonstrators shot by police, 19 killed & injured

1931 The Empire State Building opens

1936 Emperor Haile Selassie leaves Ethiopia as the Italians rout his army

1937 FDR signs the Second Neutrality Act

1941 German assault on Tobruk

1942 Japanese troops occupy Mandalay, Burma, and press on westwards.

1943 Wartime food rationing begins in US

1944 U.S. Navy bombards Ponape, in the Carolines.

1945 Australians land on Tarakan, Borneo.

1947 Vice Adm Roscoe Hillenkoeter becomes 1st CIA director

1948 Democratic People's Republic of [North] Korea established

1954 Puerto Rican radicals shoot up the House of Representatives, 4 injured

1960 Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane is shot down over Sverdlovsk

1961 Fidel Castro announces there will be no more elections in Cuba

1961 First hijack of an American commercial airliner, to Cuba

1962 First French underground nuclear blast, in the Sahara

1992 Rioting in Los Angeles over the Rodney King verdict