On May 5, 1494, during his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus first sighted Jamaica.
In 1813 Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen.
In 1862 Mexican forces loyal to Benito Juarez defeated French troops sent by Napoleon III.
In 1891 Carnegie Hall (then named Music Hall) opened in New York.
In 1892 Congress passed the Geary Chinese Exclusion Act, which required Chinese in the U.S. to be registered or face deportation.
In 1893 panic hit the New York Stock Exchange; by year’s end, the country was in a severe depression.
In 1904 Cy Young pitched the American League’s first perfect game as the Boston Red Sox defeated the Athletics 3-0 in Philadelphia.
In 1942, during World War II, Japanese forces landed on the Philippine island of Corregidor.
In 1945, in the only fatal attack of its kind during World War II, a Japanese balloon bomb exploded on Gearhart Mountain in Oregon, killing the pregnant wife of a minister and five children.
In 1955 the baseball musical “Damn Yankees” opened on Broadway.
In 1961 astronaut Alan Shepard Jr. became America’s first space traveler as he made a 15-minute sub-orbital flight in a capsule launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
In 1980 asiege at the Iranian embassy in London by armed men demanding the release of political prisoners in Iran ended as British commandos and police stormed the building. Nineteen hostages were rescued; two others had already been killed by their captors.
In 1981 Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands died at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland in his 66th day without food.
In 1994 Singapore caned American teenager Michael Fay for vandalism, a day after the sentence was reduced from six lashes to four in response to an appeal by President Clinton, who thought the punishment too harsh.
In 2004, seeking to calm international outrage, President George W. Bush acknowledged mistakes but stopped short of an apology in condemning the abuse and deaths of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of U.S. soldiers, during appearances on Arabic-language television.
