Today is May 6. On this date in:
1863
The Civil War Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia ended with a Confederate victory over Union forces.
1889
The Paris Exposition formally opened, featuring the just-completed Eiffel Tower.
1910
Britain’s Edwardian era ended with the death of King Edward VII; he was succeeded by George V.
1915
Babe Ruth hit his first major-league home run as a player for the Boston Red Sox.
1935
The Works Progress Administration began operating under an executive order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1937
The hydrogen-filled German airship Hindenburg caught fire and crashed while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey; 35 of the 97 people on board were killed along with a crewman on the ground.
Video:Hindenburg Disaster: Real Zeppelin Explosion Footage (1937)
1941
Josef Stalin assumed the Soviet premiership, replacing Vyacheslav M. Molotov.
1941
Comedian Bob Hope did his first USO show before an audience of servicemen as he broadcast his radio program from March Field in Riverside, California.
1942
During World War II, some 15,000 American and Filipino troops on Corregidor surrendered to Japanese forces.
1954
Medical student Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile during a track meet in Oxford, England, in 3:59.4.
1974
West German Chancellor Willy Brandt resigned after one of his aides was exposed as an East German spy.
1992
Former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev delivered a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, where Winston Churchill had spoken of the “Iron Curtain”; Gorbachev said the world was still divided, between North and South, rich and poor.
1992
Actress Marlene Dietrich died at her Paris home at age 90.
1994
Former Arkansas state worker Paula Jones filed suit against President Bill Clinton, alleging he’d sexually harassed her in 1991. (Jones reached a settlement with Clinton in November 1998.)
1994
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and French President Francois Mitterrand formally opened the Channel Tunnel between their countries.
2004
The final episode of the sitcom “Friends” aired on NBC.
2013
Kidnap-rape victims Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, who went missing separately about a decade earlier while in their teens or early 20s, were rescued from a house just south of downtown Cleveland. (Their captor, Ariel Castro, hanged himself in prison in September 2013 at the beginning of a life sentence plus 1,000 years.)
2014
The Vatican disclosed that over the past decade, it had defrocked 848 priests who raped or molested children and sanctioned another 2,572 with lesser penalties.
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