PHOTO CREDITS- WIKIPEDIA/INTERNET ARCHIVE

2011 Osama Bin Laden is killed in Abbottabad Pakistan by US Navy SEALS in Operation Neptune Spear.

1986 The Tass News Agency reports the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.

1978  Naomi Uemura becomes of the first person to reach the North Pole alone

1970 Students from Kent State University riot in downtown Kent, Ohio, in protest of the American invasion of Cambodia.

1968 In the second day of battle, U.S. Marines, with the support of naval fire, continue their attack on a North Vietnamese Division at Dai Do.

1961 Fidel Castro announces there will be no more elections in Cuba.

1960 Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane is shot down over Russia.

1950 Gwendolyn Brooks becomes the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for her book of poetry called Annie Allen.

1948 North Korea is established.

1945 Martin Bormann, private secretary to Adolf Hitler, escapes the Führerbunker as the Red Army advances on Berlin.

1944 The Messerschmitt Me 262, the first combat jet, makes its first flight.

1941 The film Citizen Kane—directed by and starring Orson Welles—opens in New York.

1940 Bobbie Ann Mason, American writer (Shiloh and Other Stories, In Country).

1937 President Franklin Roosevelt signs an act of neutrality, keeping the United States out of World War II.

1934 The Philippine legislature accepts a U.S. proposal for independence.

1931 The Empire State Building opens in New York.

1927 Adolf Hitler holds his first Nazi meeting in Berlin.

1925 The world's largest trade union is founded

1924 Terry Southern, novelist and screenwriter (Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider).

1923 Joseph Heller, American author best known for Catch-22, originally published in 1961.

1916 Glenn Ford, actor (The Blackboard Jungle, 1955).

1915 The British luxury liner Lusitania leaves New York Harbor for a voyage to Europe. A week later it would be torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat.

1909 Kate Smith, singer famous for her rendition of “God Bless America.”