May 5
1848
House Speaker Robert Winthrop of Massachusetts signed a resolution bestowing a third Congressional Gold Medal on Army Maj. Gen. Zachary Taylor. Taylor’s three medals were awarded within a span of two years. Each honored a different phase of his service during the Mexican-American War. Sworn into office as the nation’s 12th president on March 4, 1849, Taylor is one of five presidents to win this medal. But he remains the only person to receive three of them. Beginning with a presentation to George Washington, the Congressional Gold Medal has reflected the nation’s appreciation of distinguished military achievements or lifesaving heroics. In recent decades, though, lawmakers have significantly broadened the criteria.
1904
37-year-old Cy Young pitched the first perfect game in modern Major League Baseball history as the Boston Americans defeat the Philadelphia Athletics, 3-0. Young struck out eight of the 27 batters he faced and benefited from excellent defense in a game that is completed in only 83 minutes. A perfect game is achieved when a pitcher retires all the batters he faces in order, with no one reaching base. Young, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937, finished his 22-year career with an 511 career wins, 94 ahead Walter Johnson, who is second. In 1956, MLB created the Cy Young Award to honor the game's best pitcher. Starting in 1967, the award was given to the best pitchers in the National and American leagues.
1961
Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. was launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to travel into space. The suborbital flight, which lasted 15 minutes and reached a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere, was a major triumph for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). On February 5, 1971, Alan Shepard, the first American in space, became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission.
May 6
1935
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The agency was responsible for one of the many relief programs set up soon after Roosevelt entered the White House. Created under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, which Roosevelt signed a month earlier, it sought to ease the effects of the Great Depression. While FDR professed a strong belief in the “elementary principles of justice and fairness,” he also rejected the notion of paying welfare to able workers. So, in exchange for financial assistance to “the deserving poor,” recipients of WPA aid built highways, schools, hospitals and airports. At one point, the WPA was the nation’s largest employer.
1937
The airship Hindenburg, the largest dirigible ever built and the pride of Nazi Germany, burst into flames upon touching its mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 passengers and crew-members. On May 3rd, the Hindenburg left Frankfurt, Germany, for a journey across the Atlantic to Lakehurst’s Navy Air Base. The explosion most likely occurred after a spark ignited its hydrogen core. Stretching 804 feet from stern to bow, it carried 36 passengers and a crew of 61. Lighter-than-air passenger travel rapidly fell out of favor after the Hindenberg disaster, and no rigid airships survived World War II.
2004
The Rembrandts' “I’ll Be There For You” announced the beginning of the end as an estimated 51.1 million people tuned in for the final original episode of NBC’s long-running comedy series Friends. Friends debuted 10 years and 236 episodes earlier in 1994 and was set in NYC’s Greenwich Village, where six friends struggled with the ups-and-downs of young adult life in the big city—albeit while living in an impossibly large, cushy apartment, apparently without the burden of having to spend much time working actual jobs. Almost from the beginning, Friends was a cultural phenomenon, winning six Emmy Awards, sparking hairstyle trends (“the Rachel”), spawning catch phrases (“How you doin?”) and turning its six principal cast members into household names.
May 7
1789
George Washington attended a ball a week after being sworn in as the first U.S. president. Him and Martha danced a minuet, captured in a drawing displayed on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. Another decade passed before the first official inaugural ball, which was held in honor of James Madison, the fourth president. Since then, inaugural balls have become more or less a quadrennial presidential fixture. However, Woodrow Wilson, in 1913, and Warren Harding, in 1921, both passed up balls, citing the need to economize. FDR was another exception, choosing to work through the night rather than attend his first inaugural ball in 1933. He canceled the next three galas because of the Depression and WWII.
1945
The German High Command, in the person of General Alfred Jodl, signed the unconditional surrender of all German forces, East and West, at Reims, in northeastern France. At first, General Jodl hoped to limit the terms of German surrender to only those forces still fighting the Western Allies. But US General Dwight Eisenhower demanded complete surrender of all German forces, those fighting in the East as well as in the West. If this demand was not met, Eisenhower was prepared to seal off the Western front, preventing Germans from fleeing to the West in order to surrender, thereby leaving them in the hands of the enveloping Soviet forces. Fighting would still go on in the East for almost another day. But the war in the West was over.
1998
The German automobile company Daimler-Benz–maker of the world-famous luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz–announces a $36 billion merger with the United States-based Chrysler Corporation. The purchase of Chrysler, America’s third-largest car company, by the Stuttgart-based Daimler-Benz marked the biggest acquisition by a foreign buyer of any U.S. company in history and the new company was named DaimlerChrysler AG. While Daimler had been attracted by the profitability of Chrysler’s minivans and Jeeps, over the next few years profits were up and down, and by the fall of 2003 the Chrysler Group had cut some 26,000 jobs and was still losing money. By late 2008, increasingly dismal sales led Chrysler to seek federal funds to the tune of $4 billion to stay afloat.
May 8
1945
Both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine during World War II. German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms: In Prague, Germans surrendered to their Soviet antagonists; in Copenhagen and Oslo; at Karlshorst, near Berlin; in northern Latvia; on the Channel Island of Sark—the German surrender was realized in a final cease-fire. More surrender documents were signed in Berlin and in eastern Germany. Pockets of German-Soviet confrontation would continue into the next day. Consequently, V-E Day was not celebrated until the ninth in Moscow.
1975
The theme song from “Welcome Back, Kotter” was the #1 song in America. Written by John Sebastian, he tried writing a song that featured the show's title, Kotter. Somehow the rhymes he came up with for “Kotter”—otter, water, daughter, slaughter—didn’t really lend themselves to a show about a middle-aged schoolteacher returning to his scrappy Brooklyn neighborhood to teach remedial students at his own former high school. So Sebastian took a more thoughtful approach to the task at hand and came up with a song about finding your true calling in a life you thought you’d left behind. That song, “Welcome Back,” not only went on to become a #1 pop single, but it also led the show’s producers to change its title to Welcome Back, Kotter.
2010
88-year-old actress Betty White, known for her former roles on “The Golden Girls” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” became the oldest person to host the long-running, late-night TV sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live” (SNL). White’s hosting gig came about, in part, after hundreds of thousands of her fans signed onto a Facebook campaign rallying for it. As SNL’s eldest host, White earned positive reviews, and the show, which featured musical guest Jay-Z, drew its highest ratings in 18 months. The octogenarian actress later won the seventh Emmy Award of her career for her SNL appearance. White died on December 31, 2021, just shy of her 100th birthday.
May 9
1945
Herman Goering, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, head of the Gestapo, prime minister of Prussia and Hitler’s designated successor, was taken prisoner by Lt. Gen. A. M. Patch’s U.S. Seventh Army in Bavaria. When Goering fell into U.S. hands after Germany’s surrender, he had in his possession a rich stash of pills. He was tried at Nuremberg and charged with various crimes against humanity. Despite a vigorous attempt at self acquittal, he was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but before he could be executed, he died by suicide by swallowing a cyanide tablet he had hidden from his guards.
1950
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (1911-1986) published Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. With this book, Hubbard introduced a branch of self-help psychology called Dianetics, which quickly caught fire and, over time, morphed into a belief system called Scientology. In Dianetics, Hubbard explained that phenomena known as “engrams” (i.e. memories) were the cause of all psychological pain, which in turn harmed mental and physical health. He went on to claim that people could become “clear,” achieving an exquisite state of clarity and mental liberation, by exorcising their engrams to an “auditor,” or a listener acting as therapist.
1970
Preoccupied with the recent Kent State shootings and the unrest that spread to college campuses across the country, a frazzled President Nixon made an impromptu and bizarre visit to a group of anti-war protesters at the Lincoln Memorial. Nixon's account of the event differed greatly from that of the protesters, although both confirm it was a strange moment. The conversation lasted over an hour and both sides at least managed to explain their views on the war, although neither convinced the other. H.R. Haldeman, Nixon's Chief of Staff, wrote in his diary later that day: "I am concerned about his condition ... he has had very little sleep for a long time and his judgment, temper and mood suffer badly as a result." He described the day as "the weirdest day so far" of Nixon's presidency.
May 10
1869
The presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads met in Promontory, Utah, and drive a ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connects their railroads. This made transcontinental railroad travel possible for the first time in U.S. history. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific workers were able to finish the railroad–laying nearly 2,000 miles of track ahead of schedule and under budget. Journeys that had taken months by wagon train or weeks by boat now took only days. Their work had an immediate impact: The years following the construction of the railway were years of rapid growth and expansion for the United States, due in large part to the speed and ease of travel that the railroad provided.
1970
40 seconds into overtime of Game 4 of the Stanley Cup final, Boston Bruins star Bobby Orr slipped the winning goal past St. Louis Blues goaltender Glenn Hall. After scoring, Orr leapt into the air before landing flat and sliding into his teammates’ embrace. The famous celebration was immortalized by Boston Record-American photographer Ray Lussier, whose image of the soaring Orr is one of the most famous sports photographs of all time. In Boston sports lore, Orr's game-winner, which made the Bruins NHL champions, is known as "The Goal."
2002
Robert Hanssen, a former FBI agent who intermittently sold state secrets to Russia for two decades, received his sentencing for espionage: life in prison without the possibility of parole. Hanssen, who began working with Soviet military intelligence in 1979, was arrested after an ex-KGB officer revealed information to the FBI that identified him as a double agent. He took a plea bargain, which reduced the counts against him, guaranteed his wife a portion of his pension and ownership of their Virginia home and took the possibility of the death penalty off the table. Hanssen agreed to provide federal investigators with detailed accounts of his years as a spy. His espionage was described by the Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history."
May 11
1858
Minnesota entered the Union as the 32nd state. Known as the “Land of 10,000 Lakes,” Minnesota is the northern terminus of the Mississippi River’s traffic and the westernmost point of the inland waterway that extends through the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Atlantic Ocean. The Ojibwe and the Dakota were among the Native people who first made this land their home, and white settlement of the area began in 1820 with the establishment of Fort Snelling. The building of railroads and canals brought a land boom during the 1850s, and Minnesota’s population swelled from only 6,000 in 1850 to more than 150,000 by 1857. Minnesota’s “Twin Cities”—Minneapolis and St. Paul—grew out of Fort Snelling, the center of early U.S. settlement.
1973
The espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo in the "Pentagon Papers" case came to an end as Judge William M. Byrne dismissed all charges, citing government misconduct. The Pentagon Papers is a study of the history of U. S. decision-making in Indochina and of the Vietnam War. Fearing President Nixon would not initiate an end to the war, Ellsberg copied the 7000 page tome and leaked it to The New York Times. Government misconduct included wiretapping of defendants with their lawyers and even a break-in of the Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office. When it became clear that the break-in was committed by employees of the White House pursuing a project launched by the President, the basis for a mistrial grew compelling.
1947
The B.F. Goodrich Company of Akron, Ohio, announced it had developed a tubeless tire, a technological innovation that would make automobiles safer and more efficient. The culmination of more than three years of engineering, Goodrich’s tubeless tire effectively eliminated the inner tube, trapping the pressurized air within the tire walls themselves. By reinforcing those walls, the company claimed, they were able to combine the puncture-sealing features of inner tubes with an improved ease of riding, high resistance to bruising and superior retention of air pressure. An executive of the United States Rubber Company called the general adoption of the tubeless tire “one of the most far-reaching changes ever to take place in the tire industry.”