This Day In History – May 5

1215 – Rebel barons renounce their allegiance to King John of England — part of a chain of events leading to the signing of the Magna Carta.

1260 – Kublai Khan becomes ruler of the Mongol Empire.

1494 – Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Jamaica and claims it for Spain.

1809 – Mary Kies becomes the first woman awarded a U.S. patent, for a technique of weaving straw with silk and thread.

1818 – Karl Marx, German political philosopher (d. 1883), was born.

1821 – Napoleon I of France (b. 1769), died.

1877 – Indian Wars: Sitting Bull leads his band of Lakota into Canada to avoid harassment by the United States Army under Colonel Nelson Miles.

1886 – The Bay View Tragedy: A militia fires into a crowd of protesters in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, killing seven.

1925 – Scopes Trial: serving of an arrest warrant on John T. Scopes for teaching evolution in violation of the Butler Act.

1946 – The International Military Tribunal for the Far East begins in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

1949 – The Treaty of London establishes the Council of Europe in Strasbourg as the first European institution working for European integration.

1955 – West Germany gains full sovereignty.

1964 – The Council of Europe declares May 5 as Europe Day.

1980 – Operation Nimrod: The British Special Air Service storms the Iranian embassy in London after a six-day siege.

1987 – Iran-Contra affair: start of Congressional televised hearings in the United States of America

1991 – A riot breaks out in the Mt. Pleasant section of Washington, D.C. after police shoot a Salvadoran man.

1992 – Ratification by Alabama brings into effect the 27th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1994 – American teenager Michael P. Fay is caned in Singapore for theft and vandalism, a punishment that many in the United States deemed to be excessive for a teenager committing a non-violent crime.

2010 – Mass protests in Greece erupt in response to austerity measures imposed by the government as a result of the Greek debt crisis.

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