Celebrated as Labour Day and observed as a holiday in many parts of the world.

0408 – Theodosius II succeeded to the throne of Constantinople.

1308 – King Albert was murdered by his nephew John, because he refused his share of the Habsburg lands.

1486 – Christopher Columbus convinced Queen Isabella to fund an expedition to the West Indies.

1707 – England, Wales and Scotland were united to form Great Britain.

1805 – The state of Virginia passed a law requiring all freed slaves to leave the state, or risk either imprisonment or deportation.

1867 – Reconstruction in the South began with black voter registration.

1877 – U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew all Federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.

1898 – The U.S. Navy under Dewey defeated the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in the Philippines.

1912 – In London’s Kensington Gardens, a statue of Peter Pan was erected.

1915 – A German submarine sank the U.S. ship Gulflight.

1927 – Adolf Hitler held his first Nazi meeting in Berlin.

1931 – The Empire State Building in New York was dedicated and opened. It was 102 stories tall and was the tallest building in the world at the time.

1934 – The Philippine legislature accepted a U.S. proposal for independence.

1937 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed an act of neutrality, keeping the United States out of World War II.

1944 – The Messerschmitt Me 262, the first combat jet, made its first flight.

1945 – Martin Bormann, private secretary to Adolf Hitler, escaped from the Fuehrerbunker as the Red Army advanced on Berlin.

1945 – Admiral Karl Doenitz succeeded Hitler as leader of the Third Reich. This was one day after Hitler committed suicide.

1948 – The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was proclaimed.

1958 – James Van Allen reported that two radiation belts encircled Earth.

1960 – Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union. Powers was taken prisoner.

1961 – Fidel Castro announced there would be no more elections in Cuba.

1967 – Anastasio Somoza Debayle became president of Nicaragua.

1986 – The Tass News Agency reported the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.

1998 – Arrow Air was fined $5 million for using spare parts that lacked federal approval in the U.S.

2011 – U.S. President Barack Obama announced that U.S. soldiers had killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan.