May 1 Historical Events
The following events took place on May 1. The list is arranged in chronological order.
Found 88 events. Showing 31 - 60.
- 1893The World’s Columbian Exposition opens in Chicago.
- 1894Coxey’s Army, the first significant American protest march, arrives in Washington, D.C.
- 1898Spanish–American War: Battle of Manila Bay: The United States Navy destroys the Spanish Pacific fleet in the first battle of the war.
- 1900The Scofield Mine disaster kills over 200 men in Scofield, Utah in what is to date the fifth-worst mining accident in United States history.
- 1901The Pan-American Exposition opens in Buffalo, New York.
- 1915The RMS Lusitania departs from New York City on her two hundred and second, and final, crossing of the North Atlantic. Six days later, the ship is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland with the loss of 1,198 lives.
- 1925The All-China Federation of Trade Unions is officially founded. Today it is the largest trade union in the world, with 134 million members.
- 1925The first Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer is held at the University of Toronto, Canada.
- 1927The first cooked meals on a scheduled flight are introduced on an Imperial Airways flight from London to Paris.
- 1927The Union Labor Life Insurance Company is founded by the American Federation of Labor.
- 1930The dwarf planet Pluto is officially named.
- 1931The Empire State Building is dedicated in New York City.
- 1933The Roca–Runciman Treaty between Argentina and Great Britain is signed by Julio Argentino Roca, Jr., and Sir Walter Runciman.
- 1933The Humanist Manifesto I published.
- 1940The 1940 Summer Olympics are cancelled due to war.
- 1941World War II: German forces launch a major attack on Tobruk.
- 1944World War II: Two hundred Communist prisoners are shot by the Germans at Kaisariani in Athens, Greece in reprisal for the killing of General Franz Krech by partisans at Molaoi.
- 1945World War II: A German newsreader officially announces that Adolf Hitler has “fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancellery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany”. The Soviet flag is raised over the Reich Chancellery, by order of Stalin.
- 1945World War II: Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda commit suicide in the Reich Garden outside the Führerbunker. Their children are also killed by having cyanide pills inserted into their mouths by their mother, Magda.
- 1945World War II: Up to 2,500 people die in a mass suicide in Demmin following the advance of the Red Army.
- 1945World War II: Yugoslav Partisans free Trieste.
- 1946Start of three-year Pilbara strike of Indigenous Australians.
- 1946The Paris Peace Conference concludes that the islands of the Dodecanese should be returned to Greece by Italy.
- 1947Portella della Ginestra massacre against May Day celebrations in Sicily by the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano where 11 persons are killed and 33 wounded.
- 1948The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is established, with Kim Il-sung as leader.
- 1950Guam is organized as a United States commonwealth.
- 1956The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk is made available to the public.
- 1956A doctor in Japan reports an “epidemic of an unknown disease of the central nervous system”, marking the official discovery of Minamata disease.
- 1957Thirty-four people are killed when a Vickers Viking airliner crashes in Hampshire England.
- 1960Formation of the western Indian states of Gujarat and Maharashtra. Also known as “Maharashtra Day”.
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