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 uttered, “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 1924 novelist and screenwriter Terry Southern was born in Alvarado, Texas.
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 the Orson Welles movie “Citizen Kane” opened in New York.
In 1945 Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, 47, killed himself as Russian troops stormed Berlin.
In 1948 North Korea was proclaimed the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea.
In 1950 Chicago poet Gwendolyn Brooks became the first black to win a Pulitzer Prize, for her book, “Annie Allen.”
In 1951 Minnie Minoso made his White Sox debut as the first black player for the South Siders.
In 1967 Elvis Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu in Las Vegas. (They divorced in October 1973.) Also, Anastasio Somoza Debayle became president of Nicaragua.
In 1971 Amtrak, the national passenger rail service, began operation.
In 1978 Ernest Morial was inaugurated as the first black mayor of New Orleans.
In 1987 Pope John Paul II beatified Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Carmelite nun who was killed 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 John and Patsy Ramsey, the parents of JonBenet Ramsey, publicly declared their innocence and asked for the public’s help in finding the killer of their 6-year-old daughter.
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 Abraham Lincoln off the coast of San Diego, declared major combat over in Iraq.
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. Also, President Evo Morales nationalized Bolivia’s vast natural gas industry.
