TODAY IN HISTORY

 

Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space

Alan Shepard holds the pole of a US flag on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971, ten years after he became the first American in space. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

On May 5, 1961, Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. is launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to travel into space. The suborbital flight, which lasted 15 minutes and reached a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere, was a major triumph for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

NASA was established in 1958 to keep U.S. space efforts abreast of recent Soviet achievements, such as the launching of the world’s first artificial satellite—Sputnik 1—in 1957. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the two superpowers raced to become the first country to put a man in space and return him to Earth. On April 12, 1961, the Soviet space program won the race when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into space, put in orbit around the planet, and safely returned to Earth. One month later, Shepard’s suborbital flight restored faith in the U.S. space program.

NASA continued to trail the Soviets closely until the late 1960s and the successes of the Apollo lunar program. In July 1969, the Americans took a giant leap forward with Apollo 11, a three-stage spacecraft that took U.S. astronauts to the surface of the moon and returned them to Earth. On February 5, 1971, Alan Shepard, the first American in space, became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission.

SPORTS

1904

Cy Young pitches first perfect game in MLB history

On May 5, 1904, 37-year-old Cy Young pitches the first perfect game in modern Major League Baseball history as the Boston Americans defeat the Philadelphia Athletics, 3-0. Young strikes out eight of the 27 batters he faces and benefits from excellent defense in a game that is completed in only 83 minutes. "Unparalleled feat,” a newspaper calls the achievement. A perfect game is achieved when a pitcher retires all the batters he faces in order, with no one reaching base.

ROARING TWENTIES

1921

Chanel No. 5 perfume launches

On May 5, 1921, a date of symbolic importance to its iconic creator, the perfume Chanel No. 5 officially debuts in Coco Chanel’s boutique on the Rue Cambon in Paris. The new fragrance immediately revolutionized the perfume industry and remained popular for a century. 

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1967

"One Hundred Years of Solitude" is published

On May 5, 1967, Gabriel Garcia Márquez's Cien años de soledad, or One Hundred Years of Solitude, is first published. The book, often referred to as a defining work of Latin American literature, made Márquez a prime candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he was awarded  in 1982. One Hundred Years of Solitude follows seven generations of the Buendía family, fictional founders of the fictional town of Macondo in Márquez's native Colombia. The town and the family remain isolated from the outside world for much of the novel, but new technologies, political upheavals, and foreign businesses (the novel's American Fruit Company is a clear reference to the real-life United Fruit Company) encroach upon them and shape the narrative.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

2002

“Spider-Man” becomes first movie to top $100 million in opening weekend

Directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire in the title role, the eagerly awaited comic book adaptation Spider-Man was released on Friday, May 3, 2002, and quickly became the fastest movie ever to earn more than $100 million at the box office, raking in a staggering $114.8 million by Sunday, May 5. After a genetically altered spider bites the teenager Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) during his class field trip to a university laboratory, he discovers that the bite has given him supernatural powers. Though his principal goal is pursuing his longtime crush, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), Parker soon transforms himself into Spider-Man in order to combat evil, in the form of the Green Goblin, the villainous result of an experiment that the scientist Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) has performed on himself.

FRANCE

1821

Napoleon dies in exile

Napoleon Bonaparte, the former French ruler who once ruled an empire that stretched across Europe, dies as a British prisoner on the remote island of Saint Helena in the southern Atlantic Ocean. The Corsica-born Napoleon, one of the greatest military strategists in history, rapidly rose in the ranks of the French Revolutionary Army during the late 1790s. By 1799, France was at war with most of Europe, and Napoleon returned home from his Egyptian campaign to take over the reins of the French government and save his nation from collapse. After becoming first consul in February 1800, he reorganized his armies and defeated Austria. In 1802, he established the Napoleonic Code, a new system of French law, and in 1804 was crowned emperor of France in Notre Dame Cathedral. By 1807, Napoleon controlled an empire that stretched from the River Elbe in the north, down through Italy in the south, and from the Pyrenees to the Dalmatian coast.

MEXICO

1862

Outnumbered Mexican army defeats French at Battle of Puebla

During the French-Mexican War (1861-1867), an outnumbered Mexican army defeats a powerful invading French force at Puebla. The retreat of the French troops at the Battle of Puebla represented a great moral victory for the people of Mexico, symbolizing the country’s ability to defend its sovereignty against a powerful foreign nation.

WORLD WAR II

1945

Six killed in Oregon by Japanese bomb

In Lakeview, Oregon, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five neighborhood children are killed while attempting to drag a Japanese balloon out the woods. Unbeknownst to Mitchell and the children, the balloon was armed, and it exploded soon after they began tampering with it. 

1980S

1981

IRA militant Bobby Sands dies

On May 5, 1981, imprisoned Irish-Catholic militant Bobby Sands dies after refusing food for 66 days in protest of his treatment as a criminal rather than a political prisoner by British authorities. His death immediately touched off widespread rioting in Belfast, as young Irish-Catholic militants clashed with police and British Army patrols and started fires.

NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY

1877

Sitting Bull leads his people into Canada

Nearly a year after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull and a band of followers cross into Canada hoping to find safe haven from the U.S. Army. On June 25, 1876, Sitting Bull’s warriors had joined with other Native peoples in the Battle of the Little Bighorn in  Montana, which resulted in the massacre of George Custer and more than 200 troops of the 7th Cavalry. Worried that their great victory would provoke a massive retaliation by the U.S. military, the Native Americans scattered into smaller bands. During the following year, the U.S. Army tracked down and attacked several of these groups, forcing them to surrender and move to reservations.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1816

The Examiner publishes John Keats’ first poem

The first published poem by 20-year-old John Keats appears in The Examiner on May 5, in 1816. Unlike many writers of his day, Keats came from a lower-middle-class background. His father worked at a stable in London and eventually married the owner’s daughter. John was the first of the couple’s five children. John was sent to private school, where he was high spirited and boisterous, given to fist fights and roughhousing despite his small stature-as an adult, he was barely over five feet tall. Keats’ schoolmasters encouraged his interest in reading and later introduced him to poetry and theater.

CRIME

2004

Human remains found in suitcase near Virginia Beach

On May 5, 2004, a suitcase holding what is later identified as the partial remains of William McGuire, a 39-year-old Navy veteran and computer analyst is pulled from the water near Virginia Beach. A second suitcase of body parts was found nearby on May 11, and a third washed up near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel on May 15. McGuire was last seen alive on April 28, 2004, shortly after closing on a house in New Jersey’s scenic Warren County with wife Melanie, 34, a nurse. According to Melanie, William had packed his bags and left after the couple had a fight, leaving Melanie with the couple’s two young sons. Soon afterward, she filed for a restraining order and divorce.

COLD WAR

1955

Allies end occupation of West Germany

The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) becomes a sovereign state when the United States, France and Great Britain end their military occupation, which had begun in 1945. With this action, West Germany was given the right to rearm and become a full-fledged member of the western alliance against the Soviet Union. In 1945, the United States, Great Britain, and France had assumed the occupation of the western portion of Germany (as well as the western half of Berlin, situated in eastern Germany). The Soviet Union occupied eastern Germany, as well as the eastern half of Berlin. As Cold War animosities began to harden between the western powers and Russia, it became increasingly obvious that Germany would not be reunified. By the late-1940s, the United States acted to formalize the split and establish western Germany as an independent republic, and in May 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany was formally announced.

WORLD WAR I

1919

Italian delegates return to Paris peace conference

On May 5, 1919, the delegation from Italy—led by Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando and Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino—returns to the Versailles Peace Conference in Paris, France, after leaving abruptly 11 days earlier during contentious negotiations over the territory Italy would receive after the First World War. Italy’s entrance into World War I on the side of Britain, France and Russia in May 1915 had been based on the Treaty of London, signed the previous month, in which the Allies promised Italy post-war control over a good deal of territory. This included the land along Italy’s border with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, stretching from Trentino through the South Tyrol to the city of Trieste (an area of historic dispute between Italy and Austria); parts of Dalmatia and numerous islands along Austria-Hungary’s Adriatic coast; the Albanian port city of Vlore (Italian: Valona) and a central protectorate in Albania; and territory from the Ottoman Empire. When Orlando and Sonnino arrived in Paris in 1919, they regarded the Treaty of London as a solemn and binding agreement, and expected its terms to be carried out and Italy to be rewarded for its participation alongside the victorious Allies.