Today in History: May 1

408: Theodosius II succeeds to the throne of Constantinople.

1308: King Albert is murdered by his nephew John, because he refused his share of the Habsburg lands.

1486: Christopher Columbus convinces Queen Isabella to fund expedition to the West Indies.

1805: The state of Virginia passes a law requiring all freed slaves to leave the state, or risk either imprisonment or deportation.

1863: The Battle of Chancellorsville begins as Union Gen. Joe Hooker starts his three-pronged attack against Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

1867: Reconstruction in the South begins with black voter registration.

1877: President Ruthoford B. Hayes withdraws all Federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.

1898: The U.S. Navy under Dewey defeats the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines.

1915: The luxury liner Lusitania leaves New York Harbor for a voyage to Europe.

1927: Adolf Hitler holds his first Nazi meeting in Berlin.

1931: The Empire State Building opens in New York.

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

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

1941: The film Citizen Kane–directed and starring Orson Welles–opens in New York.

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

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

1948: North Korea is established.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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