Portal:United States/On this day/May 4
On this day for the United States
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Events
- 1855 - American adventurer William Walker departs from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua.
- 1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Chancellorsville – The battle ends with a Union retreat.
- 1871 - The National Association, the first professional baseball league, opens its first season in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
- 1886 - Haymarket Square Riot: A bomb is thrown at policemen trying to break up a labor rally in Chicago, Illinois, United States, killing eight and wounding 60. The police fire into the crowd.
- 1904 - Construction begins by the United States on the Panama Canal.
- 1932 - In Atlanta, Georgia, mobster Al Capone begins serving an eleven-year prison sentence for tax evasion.
- 1942 - World War II: Battle of the Coral Sea – The battle begins with an attack by aircraft from the United States aircraft carrier Yorktown on Japanese naval forces at Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands. The Japanese forces had invaded Tulagi the day before.
- 1946 - In San Francisco Bay, US Marines from the Treasure Island Marine Barracks stop a two-day riot at Alcatraz federal prison. Five people are killed in the riot.
- 1953 - Ernest Hemingway is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea.
- 1961 - American civil rights movement: The "Freedom Riders" begin a bus trip through the South.
- 1970 - Vietnam War: Kent State shootings – The Ohio National Guard, sent to Kent State University after the ROTC building was burnt down, opens fire killing four students and wounding nine others. The students were protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia.
- 1988 - The PEPCON disaster rocked Henderson, Nevada, as tons of Space Shuttle fuel detonated during a fire.
- 1998 - A federal judge in Sacramento, California, gives "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski four life sentences plus 30 years after Kaczynski accepted a plea agreement sparing him from the death penalty.
- 2001 - The Milwaukee Art Museum addition, the first Santiago Calatrava-designed structure in the United States, opens to the public.