On May 5, 1494, during his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus first sighted Jamaica.
In 1818 Karl Marx was born in Treves, Prussia.
In 1821 Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile on St. Helena.
In 1862 Mexican forces loyal to Benito Juarez defeated French troops sent by Napoleon III in the Battle of Puebla.
In 1925 John Scopes, a biology teacher in Dayton, Tenn., was arrested for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in violation of a state statute. (He would be found guilty in the famous “monkey trial.”)
In 1945, in the only fatal attack of its kind during World War II, a Japanese balloon bomb exploded in Oregon, killing the pregnant wife of a minister and five children.
In 1961 astronaut Alan Shepard Jr. became America’s first space traveler as he made a 15-minute sub-orbital flight.
In 1994 Singapore caned American teen Michael Fay for vandalism, a day after the sentence was reduced from six lashes to four following an appeal by President Bill Clinton.
In 2004, seeking to calm international outrage, President Bush acknowledged mistakes but stopped short of an apology as he condemned the abuse and deaths of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. soldiers, during appearances on two Arabic-language television networks.
