May 3: What Happened on This Day in History (High_school Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1802 - Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city.
2. 1830 - The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway is opened. It's the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.
3. 1921 - West Virginia becomes the first state to legislate a broad sales tax, but does not implement it until a number of years later due to enforcement issues.
4. 1936 - Joe DiMaggio, familiarly referred to as Joltin' Joe and The Yankee Clipper makes his major league debut for the New York Yankees.
5. 1937 - Gone with the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
6. 1948 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Shelley v. Kraemer that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable.
7. 1952 - Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict of the United States land a plane at the North Pole.
8. 1960 - The Anne Frank House museum opens in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
9. 1963 - The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responds with violent force to stop the "Birmingham campaign" protesters. Images of the violent suppression are transmitted worldwide, bringing new-found attention to the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
10. 1979 - After the general election, Margaret Thatcher forms her first government as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
11. Famous Birthdays: Niccolò Machiavelli (Italian historian and philosopher), Vito Volterra (Italian mathematician and physicist), Vagn Walfrid Ekman (Swedish oceanographer), George Paget Thomson (English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate), Alfred Kastler (French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: May 2

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: May 4

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.