This Week in History

MAY 2

Mary Kilgallen was born.

1939 – Lou Gehrig set a major-league baseball record when he played his 2,130th consecutive game. Cal Ripken, Jr., broke it 57 years later.

2011 – U.S. troops and CIA operatives shot and killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad,

Pakistan.

MAY 3

Marian Scannell Slakman was born.

Claudine Larson was born.

Jennifer Roberts was born.

Jen Corning Egan was born.

1937 – Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for “Gone With the Wind.”

MAY 4 

Steven Greenberg was born.

Tracey Benison Mullen was born.

Nancy Koulouris-Erigo was born.

1932 – Public Enemy Number One, Al Capone, was jailed for tax evasion.

1970 – Four Kent State University students were shot down by National Guard members during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration.

MAY 5

Seibert Ward was born.

1891 – Carnegie Hall (then known as Music Hall) opened in New York City. Peter Tchaikovsky was the guest conductor.

1961 – Alan Shepard became the first American in space.

MAY 6

Kitty Kelly was born.

Coleen Mimnagh was born.

Marissa Shannon was born.

1941 – Dictator Joseph Stalin became the premier of Russia.

1954 – British athlete Roger Bannister became the first person to run a mile in under four minutes (3:59:4).

1994 – “The Chunnel” between England and France officially opened.

MAY 7

Megan Prendergast-Millard was born.

Rosemary Munro was born.

1915 – The British ocean liner Lusitania was sunk by a German submarine in World War I off the coast of Ireland.

2000 – Vladimir Putin was inaugurated as Russia’s president.

MAY 8

Marina Callaghan was born.

Donna Serrone Fajen was born.

Bob Killian was born.

Colleen Vielandi was born.

Eileen O’Callaghan was born.

1945 – V-E Day marks the European victory of the Allies in World War II.