May 4

Events

1471 - Wars of the Roses: The Battle of Tewkesbury: Edward IV defeats a Lancastrian Army and kills Edward, Prince of Wales.
1493 - Pope Alexander VI divides the New World between Spain and Portugal along the Line of Demarcation.
1494 - Christopher Columbus lands in Jamaica.
1626 - Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrives in New Netherland (present day Manhattan Island)
1814 - Emperor Napoleon I of France arrives at Portoferraio on the island of Elba to begin his exile.
1855 - American adventurer William Walker departs from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua.
1863 - American Civil War: The Battle of Chancellorsville ends with a Union retreat.
1904 - Construction begins by the United States on the Panama Canal.
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 disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, open fire killing four students and wounding nine others. The students were protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia.
1979 - Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1654 - Kangxi Emperor of China (d. 1722)
1825 - Thomas Henry Huxley, English scientist (d. 1895)
1894 - Archibald Maule Ramsay, British nationalist and only interned Member of Parliament (d. 1955)
1928 - Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt

1944 - Elmer J. Garner - publisher and defendant at the Great Sedition Trial of 1944 (b. 1864)
1945 - Fedor von Bock - Generalfeldmarschall of the German Wehrmacht
1955 - George Enescu, Romanian composer (b. 1881)
1980 - Josip Broz Tito, President of Yugoslavia (b. 1892)
1984 - Austin J. App, German-American revisionist professor (b. 1902)
1994 - Jeffrey Hamm, British Fascist leader (b. 1915)
2005 - David Hackworth, U.S. Army officer and military journalist (b. 1930)