May 02
1885
Good Housekeeping magazine went on sale for the first time.
1939
Lou Gehrig established a new major-league baseball record when he played his 2,130th consecutive game. It would take another 57 years before Cal Ripken, Jr., broke it.
1945
The Soviet Union announced the fall of Berlin.
1955
Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
1969
The British ocean liner Queen Elizabeth II departed on her maiden voyage to New York.
1994
Nelson Mandela was victorious in South Africa’s first multiracial election.
1997
The Labour Party’s Tony Blair became Prime Minister of Britain, ending 18 years of conservative rule. At 44, he was the youngest prime minister in 185 years.
2011
U.S. troops and CIA operatives shot and killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
2012
A pastel version of The Scream, by painter Edvard Munch, sold for $120 million in a New York City auction. The transaction set a new world record for an auctioned piece of art.
Birthdays
Catherine the Great
1729–96, czarina of Russia (1762–96)
Alessandro Scarlatti
composer (1660)
Elijah J. McCoy
inventor (1843)
Theodor Herzl
Zionist (1860)
Manfred von Richthofen
aviator (1892)
Benjamin Spock
pediatrician (1903)