On May 1, 1707, a union between England and Scotland was formed, and it was named Britain.
In 1786 Mozart’s opera “The Marriage of Figaro” premiered in Vienna.
In 1893 President Grover Cleveland opened the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago’s Jackson Park.
In 1898 Commodore George Dewey gave the command, “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley,” as an American naval force destroyed a Spanish fleet in Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War.
In 1923 novelist Joseph Heller (“Catch-22”) was born in Brooklyn, N.Y.
In 1931 the Empire State Building was dedicated in New York City. Also, the Baha’i House of Worship was opened in Wilmette.
In 1941 Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” opened in New York.
In 1945 Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels killed himself as Soviet troops stormed Berlin; he was 47.
In 1948 North Korea was proclaimed the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea.
In 1950 Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African-American to win a Pulitzer Prize, honoring her book ”Annie Allen.”
In 1951 Minnie Minoso made his White Sox debut, becoming the first black player to play for the South Siders.
In 1967 Elvis Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu in Las Vegas.
In 1971 Amtrak, the national passenger rail service, began operation.
In 1981 Sen. Harrison Williams Jr. (D-N.J.) was convicted of bribery and conspiracy in the FBI’s Abscam investigation.
In 1987 Pope John Paul II beatified Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Carmelite nun who was killed in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.
In 1992, on the third day of the Los Angeles riots, Rodney King appealed for calm, asking, “Can we all get along?”
In 1997 Britons went to the polls in a national election that gave the Labor Party a resounding victory over the ruling Conservatives.
In 1999 Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic agreed to hand over three captured U.S. soldiers to Jesse Jackson.
In 2003 President Bush, speaking from the deck of the USS Lincoln, declared major combat in Iraq over.
In 2006 hundreds of thousands of mostly Hispanic immigrants in the U.S. skipped work and took to the streets, flexing their economic muscle in a nationwide boycott.
