Saturday, 2nd May 2026 in Lisbon

Welcome to your daily snapshot of Lissabon! It's World Tuna Day. Explore 48 historical events, birthdays, deaths, and milestones that shaped this day in Lissabon. From remarkable moments in local and world history to the people who left their mark — find out what makes today special. Today's weather in Lissabon brings drizzly with temperatures between 14°C and 19°C. Tonight's moon is in its waning crescent phase, and the zodiac sign of the day is Taurus. If you're curious about the history of a day — this page brings together everything worth knowing about this Saturday, 2nd May in Lissabon, PT.

Lisbon
Vitor Oliveira from Torres Vedras, PORTUGAL – CC BY-SA 2.0Wikimedia Commons

Lisbon, Portugal's capital and largest city, sits on the Tagus estuary in the country's southwest, known for its historic neighbourhoods and Atlantic coastal position. On Saturday, 2 May 2026, the city experiences drizzly conditions. Astrologically, this date falls under Taurus, the earth sign associated with stability and practicality, whilst the moon appears as a waning crescent, a phase following the full moon as it diminishes towards the new moon.

On this day

On 2 May 1945, General Helmuth Weidling, the German commander of Berlin, surrendered to Soviet forces led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, formally ending the Battle of Berlin. This surrender marked a decisive conclusion to one of World War II's bloodiest urban campaigns and signalled the imminent collapse of Nazi Germany, with Hitler having taken his own life two days earlier.

Thirty-six years prior, on 2 May 1982, the Falklands War saw HMS Conqueror sink the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, a significant naval engagement in which the British nuclear submarine became the only such vessel to deliberately sink a warship in combat. The loss of the General Belgrano, which killed 323 Argentine sailors, represented a turning point in the ten-week conflict over sovereignty of the South Atlantic islands.

World Tuna Day

World Tuna Day, observed on 2 May annually, highlights the importance of tuna as a source of food security and economic livelihood for millions of people worldwide. The United Nations established the day in 2016 to raise awareness of the conservation and sustainable management of tuna stocks, which face significant pressure from overfishing. Tuna species generate billions of dollars in global trade annually and sustain communities across Africa, Asia, the Pacific and beyond. The date commemorates the biological and economic significance of these highly migratory fish.

DayAtlas provides detailed information for any date and location worldwide, offering weather conditions, significant historical events, and notable births and deaths associated with that day.

Find out what's happening today in Lissabon.

What the Weather Had in Store for Lissabon on 2nd May 2026

Drizzle

Sunrise 06:37
Sunset 20:29
Sunshine duration 10:23 hours
Daylight duration 13:51 hours

Maximum temperature 19.9°C
Minimum temperature 14.2°C

Wind speed 16.6km/h from SW
Precipitation 2.8mm

What feeds the body rarely feeds the mind with equal measure.

Fortune of the Day

2nd May in the Stars – Star Sign Taurus

Today, the zodiac sign Taurus celebrates its birthday.

Personality Profile

Personality People born on 2 May embody classic Taurus nature with refined sensory perception. Under Venus's influence, they display natural elegance and love for beauty, paired with admirable patience and reliability. Numerology 7 grants them deeper reflective capacity.

Strengths & Weaknesses These individuals shine through endurance, practical thinking, and emotional stability. Their strength lies in loyalty and artistic sensibility. However, they tend toward stubbornness and can become rigid under resistance, limiting adaptability.

Love Those born on 2 May are passionate yet measured partners seeking deep emotional bonds. Sensuality and faithfulness characterize their relationships strongly. They require security and value long-term commitment.

Caree & Finance Practical skill makes these people reliable professionals in stable fields like craftsmanship, finance, or arts. Financial security matters greatly; they save conscientiously and make prudent money decisions.

Health These natives benefit from regular, gentle physical activity like hiking or yoga. Their inclination toward pleasure requires dietary mindfulness. Mental rest and nature connection sustainably support their wellbeing.


That night, the moon was in its waning crescent phase.


Chinese year of the Horse (Fire).

Fun Facts About 2nd May

Name Days in Your Language: Bing, Zoe, Zoey, Zolita


Someone born on this day would be just 31 days old today — roughly 745 hours, 44,707 minutes, or 2,682,475 seconds spent on Earth so far.


It's the 122. day of the year. In 2026, 2nd May falls on a Saturday.


There are 243 days still to come.


We’re currently in Week 18 — the year marches on.

Famous Birthdays on 2nd May

On this day, 180 notable people were born on 2nd May — spanning from 1360 to 2015. From world leaders to artists and scientists, discover who shares this birthday.

02/05/2015

Princess Charlotte of Wales, British royal, and third in line to the British throne

Princess Charlotte of Wales is a member of the British royal family. She is the second child and only daughter of William, Prince of Wales, and Catherine, Princess of Wales, and a granddaughter of King Charles III and Diana, Princess of Wales. She is third in the line of succession to the British throne. Charlotte was born at St Mary's Hospital, London, during the reign of her paternal great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, and was fourth in line before her great-grandmother's death.


02/05/1997

BamBam, Thai singer

Kunpimook Bhuwakul, known professionally as BamBam, is a Thai rapper and singer based in South Korea, and a member of the South Korean boy band Got7.


02/05/1996

Cherprang Areekul, Thai singer

Cherprang Areekul is a former member of the Thai idol girl group BNK48, an international sister group of the Japanese idol girl group AKB48. She is one of the first-generation members of the group, and is also the group's first captain. She had developed her role from captain to general manager (Shihainin) during her late time as an idol and continued such role even after her graduation. In June 2025, she decided to pass on her managing role, after which she moved on to full-time acting. In August 2025, she temporarily moved to Tokyo, Japan, to pursue her one-year MBA program with Globlis University while still traveling back and forth to work in Bangkok.


Julian Brandt, German footballer

Julian Brandt is a German professional footballer who plays as a left midfielder or attacking midfielder for the Germany national team.


Schuyler Bailar, American swimmer

Schuyler Miwon Hong Bailar is an American swimmer, author, educator, and advocate for LGBTQ rights. He is the first openly transgender NCAA Division I swimmer, and also the first publicly documented NCAA D1 transgender man to compete as a man in any sport.


02/05/1995

Lucy Dacus, American singer-songwriter

Lucy Elizabeth Dacus is an American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and record producer. Originally from Richmond, Virginia, Dacus first gained fame following the release of her debut album, No Burden (2016), which led to a deal with Matador Records. Historian, her second album, was released in 2018 to critical acclaim. Home Video, her third studio album, was released in 2021. Forever Is a Feeling, her fourth album, was released in 2025.


02/05/1993

Owain Doull, Welsh track cyclist

Owain Daniel Doull is a Welsh road and track cyclist, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Visma–Lease a Bike. Doull specialises in the team pursuit on the track, and won a gold medal in the discipline at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro; as a result, he became the first Welsh-speaking athlete to win Olympic gold.


Isyana Sarasvati, Indonesian singer

Isyana Sarasvati is an Indonesian singer-songwriter and the founder of Redrose Records. She is a graduate of Singapore's Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and London's Royal College of Music. Known for her original compositions, she wrote all of the songs on her 2015 debut pop album, Explore!, and on her three subsequent albums, Paradox (2017), Lexicon (2019) and ISYANA (2023). She has also performed as an opera singer in Singapore. She is the recipient of numerous Indonesian and international awards.


Huang Zitao, Chinese singer and rapper

Huang Zitao, also known by his stage name Tao (Korean: 타오), is a Chinese rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer and actor. He is a former member of the South Korean-Chinese boy band Exo and its Chinese sub-unit, Exo-M. After leaving Exo, he made his solo debut in China in 2015 with the mini-album TAO, under the stage name Z.Tao. Huang made his acting debut in the romantic movie You Are My Sunshine, followed by TV series Negotiator and The Brightest Star in the Sky.


02/05/1992

Sunmi, South Korean singer

Lee Sun-mi, known mononymously as Sunmi, is a South Korean singer, dancer, songwriter and record producer. She debuted in 2007 as a member of South Korean girl group Wonder Girls and left the group in 2010 to pursue her studies. After a three-year hiatus, Sunmi resumed her career as a soloist with her 2013 debut extended play, Full Moon, spawning the number two singles "24 Hours" and "Full Moon" on the national Gaon Digital Chart.


María Teresa Torró Flor, Spanish tennis player

María Teresa Torró Flor is a Spanish former professional tennis player.


02/05/1991

Jeong Jinwoon, South Korean actor and singer

Jeong Jin-woon (Korean: 정진운), most often credited as Jinwoon, is a South Korean singer and actor. Debuting as a member of the group 2AM in July 2008, he began his acting career in 2012 with the KBS series Dream High 2, playing Jin Yoo-jin.


Jonathan Villar, Dominican baseball player

Jonathan Rafael Villar Roque is a Dominican professional baseball second baseman for the Caliente de Durango of the Mexican League. He has previously played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, Baltimore Orioles, Miami Marlins, Toronto Blue Jays, New York Mets, Chicago Cubs, and Los Angeles Angels. Prior to 2017, Villar was primarily a shortstop.


02/05/1990

Kay Panabaker, American actress

Stephanie Kay Panabaker is an American zookeeper and former actress. She is best known for her work with the Disney Channel, starring in popular productions like Phil of the Future (2004–2006) and Read It and Weep (2006), and her role on the teen drama Summerland (2004–2005).


Paul George, American basketball player

Paul Clifton Anthony George Sr. is an American professional basketball player for the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Nicknamed "PG-13", he is a nine-time NBA All-Star and six-time member of the All-NBA Team, as well as a four-time member of the NBA All-Defensive Team.


02/05/1988

Neftalí Feliz, Dominican baseball player

Neftalí Feliz Antonio is a Dominican professional baseball pitcher who is a free agent. He has previously played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Texas Rangers, Detroit Tigers, Pittsburgh Pirates, Milwaukee Brewers, Kansas City Royals, Philadelphia Phillies, and Los Angeles Dodgers. Feliz won the American League Rookie of the Year Award in 2010.


02/05/1987

Saara Aalto, Finnish singer and actress

Saara Sofia Aalto is a Finnish singer, songwriter and voice actress. In 2012, she came second in the first season of The Voice of Finland.


Nana Kitade, Japanese singer-songwriter and actress

Nana Kitade is a Japanese singer-songwriter and musician. In addition to being the lead singer of the rock band The Teenage Kissers, she has success as a solo artist, model, actress, and fashion designer. Kitade is particularly known for her songs appearing in various anime, TV shows, doramas and movie opening and endings. Kitade was featured on the cover of the Gothic & Lolita Bible, as well as featured in Neo and Kera magazines. She has toured Asia, Europe, and North America.


Pat McAfee, American sports analyst and football player

Patrick Justin McAfee is an American sports analyst, color commentator, former professional wrestler, and former professional football punter and kickoff specialist. He is an analyst on College GameDay and the host of the sports talk show The Pat McAfee Show on ESPN. In professional wrestling, he is best known for his tenure in WWE, as a color commentator and an occasional wrestler.


Kris Russell, Canadian ice hockey player

Kris Russell is a Canadian professional ice hockey defenceman who is currently an unrestricted free agent. He most recently played in the 2021–22 season, for the Edmonton Oilers of the National Hockey League (NHL). He was originally drafted in the third round, 67th overall, by the Columbus Blue Jackets in the 2005 NHL entry draft and played four seasons with the team before moving on to the St. Louis Blues, Calgary Flames and Dallas Stars. He has also played for TPS and Oulun Kärpät in the Finnish Liiga.


02/05/1986

Yasir Shah, Pakistani cricketer

Yasir Shah SI is an international cricketer from Pakistan. He plays as a bowler, and is the joint-second fastest bowler in the history of Test cricket to take 100 wickets, as well as the fastest to pick up 200 wickets, having broken the previous record held by Australian bowler Clarrie Grimmett.


02/05/1985

Lily Allen, English singer-songwriter and actress

Lily Rose Beatrice Allen is an English singer, songwriter, and actress. Her accolades include a Brit Award as well as nominations for a Grammy Award and a Laurence Olivier Award.


Kyle Busch, American race car driver (died 2026)

Kyle Thomas Busch was an American professional stock car racing driver and racing team owner who competed from 2001 until his death in 2026. Throughout his career, Busch raced under several car numbers, though he was most prominently identified with the No. 18 Toyota for Joe Gibbs Racing between 2008 and 2022 in the NASCAR Cup Series. Known for his dominance across NASCAR's top three divisions series, Busch is widely regarded as one of the most accomplished and talented drivers in motorsports history.


Ashley Harkleroad, American tennis player

Ashley Harkleroad Adams is an American former professional tennis player. She reached a career-high ranking in singles of 39 in June 2003.


Sarah Hughes, American figure skater

Sarah Elizabeth Hughes is an American former competitive figure skater. She is the 2002 Olympic Champion and the 2001 World bronze medalist in ladies' singles.


02/05/1984

Saulius Mikoliūnas, Lithuanian footballer

Saulius Mikoliūnas is a Lithuanian former professional footballer who played as a right winger. He has previously played for Scottish Premier League side Heart of Midlothian and Ukrainian Premier League club Arsenal Kyiv, among others. With 101 caps, Mikoliūnas is the Lithuania national team's second-most capped player.


Thabo Sefolosha, Swiss basketball player

Thabo Patrick Sefolosha is a Swiss former professional basketball player. He played in the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Turkish Basketball League, LNB Pro A, and Lega Basket Serie A. In 2006, Sefolosha became the first player from Switzerland to play in the NBA, and in 2013, he was labelled the best Swiss basketball player of all time by Swiss newspaper Freiburger Nachrichten.


02/05/1983

Alessandro Diamanti, Italian footballer

Alessandro Diamanti is an Italian professional football coach and former midfielder who is the manager for Melbourne City Youth.


Maynor Figueroa, Honduran footballer

Maynor Alexis Figueroa Róchez is a Honduran former professional footballer who played as a left-back or centre-back. He is best known for his time at Wigan Athletic, where he made 179 Premier League appearances and won the 2013 FA Cup. Figueroa made 181 international appearances between 2003 and 2022, including appearances at seven CONCACAF Gold Cups, two FIFA World Cups and the 2012 Summer Olympics.


Tina Maze, Slovenian skier

Tina Maze is a retired Slovenian World Cup alpine ski racer. She is the most successful Slovenian ski racer in history with a career that culminated with two gold medals at the 2014 Winter Olympics. Maze was awarded the title of the Slovenian Sportswoman of the Year in 2005, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2015, and with her four medals she is the most decorated Slovenian athlete at the Winter Olympics.


Daniel Sordo, Spanish race car driver

Daniel "Dani" Sordo Castillo is a Spanish rally driver. He competes in the World Rally Championship for Hyundai Motorsport. He achieved his first WRC victory at the 2013 Rallye Deutschland.


02/05/1982

Johan Botha, South African cricketer

Johan Botha is a South African-Australian cricket coach, cricketer, and long-distance runner who played for the South African national team between 2005 and 2012. He moved to Australia in 2012 to play in the country's domestic leagues, and in 2016 became an Australian citizen. In January 2019, he retired from all forms of the game. However, in December 2020, he made a comeback as a replacement player for the Hobart Hurricanes in the 2020–21 Big Bash League.


02/05/1981

Robert Buckley, American actor

Robert Earl Buckley is an American actor, known for his roles as Kirby Atwood on the NBC dramedy series Lipstick Jungle, Clay Evans on The CW drama series One Tree Hill, Brian Leonard on the ABC horror-drama series 666 Park Avenue, Major Lilywhite on The CW dramedy series iZombie, and Evan Kincaid on the Hallmark Channel drama series Chesapeake Shores.


Chris Kirkland, English footballer

Christopher Edmund Kirkland is an English football coach and former professional goalkeeper. As a player, he made 321 league and cup appearances in an 18-year professional career from 1998 to 2016 and won one cap for the England national team in 2006.


Tiago Mendes, Portuguese footballer

Tiago Cardoso Mendes, known simply as Tiago, is a Portuguese professional football manager and former player who played as a midfielder.


02/05/1980

Tim Borowski, German footballer

Tim Borowski is a German football manager and former player.


Ellie Kemper, American actress, comedian and writer

Elizabeth Claire Kemper is an American actress and comedian, best known for her roles of Erin Hannon in the sitcom The Office (2009–2013) and Kimmy Schmidt in the sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015–2019). She has also appeared in films, notably Bridesmaids (2011), 21 Jump Street (2012), Sex Tape (2014), and Home Sweet Home Alone (2021). In 2018, she released her debut book, My Squirrel Days.


Zat Knight, English footballer

Zatyiah Knight is an English former professional footballer who played as a centre back.


Troy Murphy, American basketball player

Troy Brandon Murphy is an American former professional basketball player who played twelve seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Murphy was born in Morristown, New Jersey but grew up in Sparta Township. He attended the Delbarton School and the University of Notre Dame, both of which are Roman Catholic schools. During his time at Notre Dame, he was a two-time consensus All-American before declaring himself for the 2001 NBA draft, where he was selected by the Golden State Warriors with the 14th overall pick. Murphy has since graduated from Columbia University.


Brad Richards, Canadian ice hockey player

Bradley Ray Richards is a Canadian former professional ice hockey centre. Richards was drafted in the third round, 64th overall, by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the 1998 NHL entry draft and played for the Lightning, New York Rangers, Dallas Stars, Chicago Blackhawks, and Detroit Red Wings during his National Hockey League (NHL) career.


02/05/1979

Roman Lyashenko, Russian ice hockey player (died 2003)

Roman Yurievich Lyashenko was a Russian ice hockey player. He played professionally in North America for the Dallas Stars and New York Rangers of the National Hockey League (NHL) from 1999 to 2002, and also spent time with affiliate teams in the American Hockey League and the now-defunct International Hockey League. Lyashenko also played professionally in Russia for Torpedo Yaroslavl before joining the Stars. He was drafted by the Stars in the second round of the 1997 NHL entry draft.


02/05/1978

Kumail Nanjiani, Pakistani-American actor, stand-up comedian, and screenwriter

Kumail Ali Nanjiani is a Pakistani and American stand-up comedian, actor, producer, and screenwriter. His accolades include a Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, and two Emmy Awards. In 2018, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.


02/05/1976

Jeff Gutt, American singer-songwriter

Jeffrey Adam Gutt is an American singer and songwriter who has been the lead vocalist for Stone Temple Pilots since November 2017. He is also the former lead vocalist for the nu metal band Dry Cell.


02/05/1975

David Beckham, English footballer, coach, and model

Sir David Robert Joseph Beckham is an English former professional footballer, the president and co-owner of Inter Miami CF and co-owner of Salford City F.C.. Primarily a right midfielder and known for his range of passing, crossing ability and set-piece taking, Beckham is considered one of the best players of his generation and one of the greatest set-piece specialists of all time. He won 19 major trophies in his career, and is the only English player to win league titles in four different countries: England, France, Spain, and the United States.


Joe Wilkinson, English comedian, actor and writer

Joseph Roland Wilkinson is an English comedian, actor, and screenwriter. He began his comedy career in 2004 and has supported Alan Carr and Russell Howard on tour. In 2006, Wilkinson won the Hackney Empire New Act of the Year.


02/05/1973

Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, German director and screenwriter

Florian Maria Georg Christian Graf Henckel von Donnersmarck is a German-Austrian film director. He is best known for writing and directing the 2006 dramatic thriller Das Leben der Anderen , which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He also wrote and directed the 2010 romantic thriller The Tourist starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, and the 2018 epic drama Never Look Away.


02/05/1972

Dwayne Johnson, American actor and wrestler

Dwayne Douglas Johnson, also known by his ring name "The Rock", is an American actor and professional wrestler. He is signed to WWE, where he performs on a part-time basis. Widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, Johnson was integral to the development and success of the World Wrestling Federation during the Attitude Era. He wrestled for the WWF full-time for eight years before pursuing an acting career. His films have grossed over $11.4 billion worldwide, making him one of the world's highest-grossing actors of all time. He is a co-owner of the United Football League, a member of the board of directors of TKO Group Holdings—the parent company of UFC and WWE—and co-founder of Seven Bucks Productions.


02/05/1971

Musashimaru Kōyō, Samoan-American sumo wrestler, the 67th Yokozuna

Musashimaru Kōyō is an American-born Japanese-naturalized former professional sumo wrestler. He was born in American Samoa, before moving to Hawaii at the age of 10. At 18 he moved to Japan and made his professional sumo debut in 1989, reaching the top makuuchi division in 1991. After reaching the rank of ōzeki in 1994 his progress seemed to stall, but in 1999 he became only the second foreign-born wrestler in history to reach the sport's highest rank of yokozuna. Musashimaru won over 700 top division bouts and took twelve top division tournament championships during his career. His sheer 235 kg (518 lb) bulk combined with 1.92 m of height made him a formidable opponent, and he was remarkably consistent and injury-free for most of his career. An amiable personality, his fan base was helped by a surprising facial resemblance to Japanese warrior hero Saigō Takamori. After becoming a Japanese national in 1996 and retiring in 2003, he became an elder of the Japan Sumo Association and founded the Musashigawa stable in 2013.


02/05/1969

Brian Lara, Trinidadian cricketer

Brian Charles Lara is a Trinidadian former international cricketer, widely renowned as one of the greatest batsmen of all time. He holds several cricketing records, including the record for the highest individual score in first-class cricket, with 501 not out for Warwickshire against Durham at Edgbaston in 1994, and the record for the highest individual score in an international Test innings, after scoring 400 not out at Antigua during the 4th test against England in 2004. He is nicknamed "The Prince of Port of Spain" or simply "The Prince".


02/05/1968

Jeff Agoos, American footballer

Jeffrey Alan Agoos is an American former professional soccer player who played as a defender. He is one of the all-time appearance leaders for the United States national team. Agoos won a record five MLS championships: three with D.C. United and two with the San Jose Earthquakes. He also won the 1996 U.S. Open Cup and was the 2001 MLS Defender of the Year. He was inducted into the National Soccer Hall of Fame in 2009.


Ziana Zain, Malaysian singer-songwriter and actress

Siti Roziana Zain is a Malaysian pop singer and actress. Her music career began in the early '90s with her signature single, "Madah Berhelah" followed by hits like "Terlerai Kasih", "Setia Ku Di Sini" and "Puncak Kasih". In 1995, she was crowned Voice of Asia in Kazakhstan.


02/05/1967

Mika Brzezinski, American journalist and author

Mika Emilie Leonia Brzezinski Scarborough is an American talk show host who co-hosts MS NOW's weekday morning broadcast show Morning Joe alongside her husband Joe Scarborough. She was formerly a CBS News correspondent, and was their principal "Ground Zero" reporter during the morning of the September 11 attacks. In 2007, she joined MSNBC as an occasional anchor, and was subsequently chosen as co-host of Morning Joe.


David Rocastle, English footballer (died 2001)

David Carlyle Rocastle was an English professional footballer who played as a midfielder in the roles of a playmaker and a winger.


02/05/1966

Belinda Stronach, Canadian businesswoman, philanthropist, and politician

Belinda Caroline Stronach is a Canadian businesswoman and former politician. She served as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 2004 to 2008, initially as a Conservative and later as a Liberal. During her political career, Stronach served as the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development from May 17, 2005, to February 6, 2006, and Minister responsible for Democratic Renewal from May 17, 2005, to February 6, 2006, both in Paul Martin's Cabinet.


02/05/1963

Gina Yoginda, Indonesian army general and diplomat

Gina Yoginda is an Indonesian military officer and diplomat who is currently serving as ambassador of Indonesia to North Korea since 2025. Prior to his ambassadorship, Gina served within intelligence units at the Indonesian armed forces, with his last position as deputy chief of the armed forces intelligence agency.


02/05/1962

Michael Grandage, English director and producer

Michael Grandage CBE is a British theatre director and producer. He is currently artistic director of the Michael Grandage Company. From 2002 to 2012 he was artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse in London and from 2000 to 2005 he was artistic director of Sheffield Theatres.


Jimmy White, English snooker player

James Warren White is an English professional snooker player, commentator and pundit. Nicknamed "The Whirlwind" because of his swift and attacking style of play, he has won ten ranking titles, placing him twelfth on the all-time list of ranking event winners. He has won two of snooker's Triple Crown events, the Masters in 1984 and the UK Championship in 1992, but has lost all six of the World Snooker Championship finals he contested. He finished runner-up to Steve Davis in 1984, to Stephen Hendry in 1990, 1992, 1993, and 1994, and to John Parrott in 1991. He is widely regarded as one of the best players never to have won the World Championship.


02/05/1960

Stephen Daldry, English director and producer

Stephen David Daldry CBE is an English director and producer of film, theatre, and television. He has won three Tony Awards for his work on Broadway and an Olivier Award for his work in the West End. He has received three Academy Awards nominations for Best Director, for the films Billy Elliot (2000), The Hours (2002), and The Reader (2008).


Royce Simmons, Australian rugby league player and coach

Royce Michael Simmons is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer and coach. A one-club man, he played as a hooker for the Penrith Panthers in the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) from 1980 to 1991, winning a premiership in his final season. He later coached the Panthers from 1994 to 2001, in between coaching English sides Hull F.C. (1992–94) and St Helens (2011–12).


02/05/1959

Tony Wakeford, English singer-songwriter and guitarist

Anthony Charles Wakeford is a British neofolk musician, who primarily records under the name Sol Invictus. He is also a member of the punk rock band Crisis and a co-founder of Death in June.


02/05/1958

Yasushi Akimoto, Japanese songwriter and producer

Yasushi Akimoto is a Japanese record producer, lyricist, and television writer, best known for creating and producing some of Japan's top idol groups, Onyanko Club and the AKB48 franchise. Total sales of the singles he has written exceed 100 million copies, making him the best-selling lyricist in Japan.


David O'Leary, English-Irish footballer and manager

David Anthony O'Leary is a football manager and former player. The majority of his 20-year playing career was spent as a central defender at Arsenal, where his tally of 722 appearances stands as a club record. He played 68 times for the Republic of Ireland from 1976 to 1993, and was part of the squad that reached the quarter-finals of the 1990 FIFA World Cup.


02/05/1956

Régis Labeaume, Canadian businessman and politician, 41st Mayor of Quebec City

Régis Labeaume is a Canadian businessman, writer and politician. He served as mayor of Quebec City from 2007 to 2021. He was first elected on December 2, 2007, after the death of former mayor Andrée Boucher. He was reelected in 2009, 2013, and 2017.


02/05/1955

Willie Miller, Scottish footballer

William Ferguson Miller MBE is a Scottish former professional football player and manager, who made a club record 560 league appearances for Aberdeen. Sir Alex Ferguson described Miller as "the best penalty box defender in the world".


Donatella Versace, Italian fashion designer

Donatella Francesca Versace is an Italian fashion designer, businesswoman, socialite, and model. She is the sister of Gianni Versace, founder of the luxury fashion company Versace, with whom she worked closely on the development of the brand and in particular its combining of Italian luxury with pop culture and celebrity.


02/05/1954

Elliot Goldenthal, American composer and conductor

Elliot Goldenthal is an American composer of contemporary classical music and film and theatrical scores. A student of Aaron Copland and John Corigliano, he is best known for his distinctive style and ability to blend various musical styles and techniques in original and inventive ways. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Score in 2002 for his score to the motion picture Frida, directed by his longtime partner Julie Taymor.


Dawn Primarolo, English politician

Dawn Primarolo, Baroness Primarolo, is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for Bristol South from 1987 until 2015, when she stood down. She was Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families at the Department for Children, Schools and Families from June 2009 to May 2010 and a Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons from 2010 to 2015. She was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2014 Birthday Honours for political service. She was nominated for a life peerage in the 2015 Dissolution Honours.


02/05/1953

Valery Gergiev, Russian conductor and director

Valery Abisalovich Gergiev is a Russian conductor and opera company director. He is general director and artistic director of the Mariinsky Theatre and of the Bolshoi Theatre and artistic director of the White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg. He was formerly chief conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and of the Munich Philharmonic.


Jamaal Wilkes, American basketball player

Jamaal Abdul-Lateef, better known as Jamaal Wilkes, is an American former basketball player who was a small forward in the National Basketball Association (NBA). A three-time NBA All-Star, he won four NBA championships with the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Lakers. Nicknamed "Silk", he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.


02/05/1952

Chris Anderson, Australian rugby league player and coach

Christopher Anderson is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who played in the 1970s and 1980s, and coached in the 1990s and 2000s. An Australian Kangaroos and New South Wales Blues representative winger, he featured in Canterbury-Bankstown's third grand final win and captained Halifax to both League and Cup success.


Christine Baranski, American actress and singer

Christine Jane Baranski is an American actress. She received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Maryann Thorpe in the sitcom Cybill (1995–1998). Baranski is also known for her roles as Diane Lockhart in the legal drama series The Good Wife (2009–2016) and its spin-off series The Good Fight (2017–2022), and as Agnes van Rhijn in the period drama series The Gilded Age (2022–present); both roles earned her Primetime Emmy Award nominations.


02/05/1951

John Glascock, English singer and bass player (died 1979)

John Glascock was a British musician. He was the bassist and occasional lead vocalist of the rock band Carmen from 1972 to 1975; and the bass guitarist for progressive rock band Jethro Tull from 1976 until his death in 1979. Glascock died at the age of 28 as a result of a congenital heart valve defect, which was worsened by an infection caused by an abscessed tooth.


02/05/1950

Frank Curry, Australian rugby league player and coach (died 2022)

Frank Curry Jr. was an Australian rugby league player and coach of the South Sydney Rabbitohs club.


Duncan Gay, Australian businessman and politician

Duncan John Gay is a former Australian politician who served as the Vice-President of the Executive Council of New South Wales and the Leader of the Government in the Legislative Council from May 2014 to January 2017; and the Minister for Roads, Maritime and Freight from April 2015 to January 2017. Gay served as the Leader of the Nationals in the Legislative Council until January 2017 and was a member of the Council from 1988 to 2017, representing the Nationals.


Lou Gramm, American singer-songwriter

Louis Andrew Grammatico, known professionally as Lou Gramm, is an American singer and songwriter. He is best known as co-founder and original frontman of the rock band Foreigner from 1976 to 1990 and again from 1992 to 2003, during which time the band had numerous successful albums and singles.


02/05/1949

Alan Titchmarsh, English gardener and author

Alan Fred Titchmarsh is an English gardener, author and broadcaster. After working as a professional gardener and a horticultural journalist, he became a radio and television presenter and a novelist.


Alfons Schuhbeck, German celebrity chef, author and businessman

Alfons Schuhbeck is one of Germany's top chefs, as well as being a restaurateur, celebrity chef, author and businessman.


02/05/1948

Larry Gatlin, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor

Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers are an American country music vocal group. The group consists of lead singer Larry Gatlin and his brothers, Rudy and Steve Gatlin. The group achieved considerable success within the country music genre, performing on 33 top 40 country singles.


02/05/1947

James Dyson, English businessman, founded the Dyson Company

Sir James Dyson is an English inventor, industrial designer, farmer, and business magnate who founded the Dyson company. He is best known as the inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner, which works on the principle of cyclonic separation. In the Sunday Times Rich List 2023, he was the fifth-richest person in the United Kingdom, with an estimated family net worth of £23 billion. As of March 2025, Forbes lists Dyson's net worth as $13.3 billion.


02/05/1946

Lesley Gore, American singer-songwriter (died 2015)

Lesley Gore was an American singer, songwriter, and actress. At the age of 16, she recorded her first hit song "It's My Party", a U.S. number one in 1963. She followed it up with ten further U.S. Billboard top 40 hits including "Judy's Turn to Cry" and "You Don't Own Me". Gore said she considered "You Don't Own Me" her signature song.


David Suchet, English actor

Sir David Courtney Suchet is an English actor. He is known for his work on stage and in television. He portrayed Edward Teller in the television serial Oppenheimer (1980) and received the RTS and BPG awards for his performance as Augustus Melmotte in the British serial The Way We Live Now (2001). International acclaim and recognition followed his performance as Agatha Christie's detective Hercule Poirot in Agatha Christie's Poirot (1989–2013), for which he received a 1991 British Academy Television Award for Best Actor nomination.


02/05/1945

Judge Dread, English singer-songwriter (died 1998)

Alexander Minto Hughes, better known as Judge Dread, was an English reggae and ska musician. He was the first white recording artist to have a reggae hit in Jamaica, and the BBC has banned more of his songs from radio and television than those of any other recording artist, because of his frequent use of sexual innuendo and double entendres. Following his death, Rolling Stone reported, "He sold several million albums throughout his 25-plus year career and was second only to Bob Marley in U.K. reggae sales during the 1970s".


Bianca Jagger, Nicaraguan-American model, actress, and activist

Bianca Jagger is a Nicaraguan social activist, human rights advocate, and a former actress. She gained international prominence in the 1970s through her marriage to Mick Jagger, the frontman of the Rolling Stones. Renowned for her influential style, Jagger was inducted into the International Best Dressed Hall of Fame in 1976.


02/05/1944

Robert G. W. Anderson, English chemist, historian, and curator

Robert Geoffrey William Anderson, is a British museum curator and historian of chemistry. He has interests in the history of chemistry, including the history of scientific instrumentation, the work of Joseph Black and Joseph Priestley, the history of museums, and the involvement of the working class in material culture. He has been Keeper at the Science Museum, London, and Director of the National Museums of Scotland, and the British Museum, London, and president and CEO of the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia.


02/05/1943

Mustafa Nadarević, Bosnian actor and film director (died 2020)

Mustafa Nadarević was a Bosnian and Croatian actor. Widely considered one of the greatest actors from the former Yugoslavia, he starred in over 70 films, including The Smell of Quinces (1982), When Father Was Away on Business (1985), Reflections (1987), The Glembays (1988), Kuduz (1989), Silent Gunpowder (1990), The Perfect Circle (1997), Days and Hours (2004), Mirage (2004) and Halima's Path (2012).


02/05/1942

Jacques Rogge, Belgian businessman (died 2021)

Jacques Jean Marie, Count Rogge was a Belgian sports administrator, former athlete, and physician, who served as the eighth president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from 2001 to 2013. In 2013, Rogge became the IOC's honorary president, a lifetime position, which he held until his death from Parkinson's disease in August 2021.


02/05/1941

Clay Carroll, American baseball player

Clay Palmer Carroll is an American former professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a right-handed pitcher from 1964 through 1978, most notably as a member of the Cincinnati Reds dynasty that won three division titles, one National League pennant and the 1975 World Series title. He also played for the Milwaukee / Atlanta Braves, Chicago White Sox, St. Louis Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Pirates.


02/05/1938

Moshoeshoe II of Lesotho (died 1996)

Moshoeshoe II, previously known as Constantine Bereng Seeiso, was the Paramount Chief of Basutoland, succeeding paramount chief Seeiso from 1960 until the country gained full independence from Britain in 1966. He was King of Lesotho from 1966 until his exile in 1990, and from 1995 until his death in 1996.


02/05/1937

Lorenzo Music, American actor, producer, and screenwriter (died 2001)

Gerald David "Lorenzo" Music was an American actor, composer, musician, performer, writer and producer. Music began his career in the 1960s with his wife, Henrietta, forming the comedy duo Gerald and His Hen. He then became a writer and a regular performer on the controversial CBS variety show The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. In the 1970s, Music co-created the sitcom The Bob Newhart Show with David Davis and composed its theme music with his wife. He also wrote episodes for The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda, and got a major voiceover role for playing the unseen, but often heard, Carlton the Doorman in Rhoda. Music gained fame in the 1980s for voicing Jim Davis' comic strip character Garfield in twelve animated specials, and later an animated series, video games, and commercials. His distinctive drawling voice of Garfield was emulated by later actors following his death in 2001.


02/05/1936

Norma Aleandro, Argentinian actress, director, and screenwriter

Norma Aleandro is an Argentine actress. She is considered one of the most celebrated and prolific Argentine actresses of all time and is recognized as a cultural icon in her home country.


Engelbert Humperdinck, English singer and pianist

Arnold George Dorsey, MBE, known professionally as Engelbert Humperdinck, is a British singer. He achieved international success in 1967 with his recording of "Release Me".


02/05/1935

Luis Suárez Miramontes, Spanish footballer and manager (died 2023)

Luis Suárez Miramontes was a Spanish professional footballer and manager. He played as a midfielder for Deportivo de La Coruña, España Industrial, Barcelona, Inter Milan, Sampdoria; he also represented the Spain national team between 1957 and 1972. Widely regarded as one of the greatest Spanish football players of all time, Suárez was noted for his elegant and fluid style of play and also regarded to be one of the greatest midfielders in the history of the sport.


Faisal II of Iraq, the last King of Iraq (died 1958)

Faisal II was the last King of Iraq. He reigned from 4 April 1939 until July 1958, when he was killed during the 14 July Revolution. This regicide marked the end of the thirty-seven-year-old Hashemite monarchy in Iraq, which then became a republic.


02/05/1933

Harry Woolf, Baron Woolf, English lawyer and judge, Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales

Harry Kenneth Woolf, Baron Woolf is a British life peer and retired barrister and judge. He was Master of the Rolls from 1996 until 2000 and Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales from 2000 until 2005. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 made him the first Lord Chief Justice to be President of the Courts of England and Wales. He was a Non-Permanent Judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong from 2003 to 2012. He sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher.


02/05/1931

Phil Bruns, American actor and stuntman (died 2012)

Philip Bruns was an American television and movie actor and writer. He portrayed George Shumway, the father of Mary Hartman on the 1970s comedic series Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, and Morty Seinfeld, the father of Jerry Seinfeld, in the 1990 second episode of Seinfeld.


Pulak Bandyopadhyay, Indian lyricist (died 1999)

Pulak Bandyopadhyay was a Bengali Indian lyricist and songwriter of Bengali cinema.


02/05/1930

Yoram Kaniuk, Israeli painter and critic (died 2013)

Yoram Kaniuk was an Israeli writer, painter, journalist, and theatre critic.


Marco Pannella, Italian journalist and politician (died 2016)

Marco Pannella was an Italian politician, journalist and activist. He was well known in his country for his nonviolence and civil rights' campaigns, like the right to divorce, the right to abortion, the legalization of cannabis and the abolition of nuclear power. Internationally, he supported human rights and self-determination causes, like the Tibetan independence and campaign against persecution of Montagnard in Vietnam.


02/05/1929

Édouard Balladur, Turkish-French economist and politician, 162nd Prime Minister of France

Édouard Balladur is a French politician who served as Prime Minister of France under François Mitterrand from 29 March 1993 to 17 May 1995. He unsuccessfully ran for president in the 1995 French presidential election, coming in third place.


Link Wray, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (died 2005)

Fred Lincoln "Link" Wray Jr. was an American guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist who became popular in the late 1950s. His 1958 instrumental single "Rumble" reached the top 20 in the United States, and was one of the earliest songs in rock music to use distortion and tremolo.


Jigme Dorji Wangchuck, Druk Gyalpo of Bhutan (died 1972)

Jigme Dorji Wangchuck was King of Bhutan from 30 March 1952 until his death in 1972.


02/05/1927

Ray Barrett, Australian actor and singer (died 2009)

Raymond Charles Barrett was an Australian actor. During the 1960s, he was a leading actor on British television, where he was best known for his appearances in The Troubleshooters (1965–1971). From the 1970s, he appeared in lead and character roles in Australian films and television series.


Michael Broadbent, British wine critic and writer (died 2020)

John Michael Broadbent, MW, was a British wine critic, writer and auctioneer in a capacity as a Master of Wine. He was an authority on wine tasting and old wines.


02/05/1925

John Neville, English-Canadian actor (died 2011)

John Reginald Neville CM OBE was an English actor and theatre director whose career spanned more than sixty years. He was renowned for his roles on both stage and screen in genres ranging from classical theatre to fantasy and science fiction.


02/05/1924

Theodore Bikel, Austrian-American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (died 2015)

Theodore Meir Bikel was an Austrian-American actor, singer, and political activist.


Hugh Cortazzi, English soldier, historian, and diplomat, British Ambassador to Japan (died 2018)

Sir Arthur Henry Hugh Cortazzi, was a British diplomat. He was also a distinguished international businessman, academic, author and prominent Japanologist. He was Ambassador from the United Kingdom to Japan (1980–84), President of the Asiatic Society of Japan (1982–1983) and Chairman of the Japan Society of London (1985–95).


02/05/1923

Patrick Hillery, Irish physician and politician, 6th President of Ireland (died 2008)

Patrick John Hillery was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician who served as the president of Ireland from December 1976 to December 1990. He also served as vice-president of the European Commission and European Commissioner for Social Affairs from 1973 to 1976, Minister for External Affairs from 1969 to 1973, Minister for Labour from 1966 to 1969, Minister for Industry and Commerce from 1965 to 1969 and Minister for Education from 1959 to 1965. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Clare constituency from 1951 to 1973.


02/05/1922

Roscoe Lee Browne, American actor and director (died 2007)

Roscoe Lee Browne was an American actor and director. He is perhaps best known for his many guest appearances on TV series from the 1970s and 1980s, as well as movies like The Cowboys (1972) with John Wayne, and The World's Greatest Athlete (1973) with John Amos and Jan-Michael Vincent, but his biggest roles were as narrator in Babe and Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties, which grossed $400 million combined.


A. M. Rosenthal, Canadian-born American journalist and author (died 2006)

Abraham Michael "Abe" Rosenthal was a Canadian-born American journalist who served as The New York Times executive editor from 1977 to 1986. Previously he was the newspaper's metropolitan editor and managing editor. Following his tenure as executive editor, he became a columnist (1987–1999). Later, he had a column for the New York Daily News (1999–2004).


02/05/1921

B. B. Lal, Indian archaeologist (died 2022)

Braj Basi Lal was an Indian writer and archaeologist. He was the Director General of the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) from 1968 to 1972 and has served as Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. Lal also served on various UNESCO committees.


Satyajit Ray, Indian director, producer, and screenwriter (died 1992)

Satyajit Ray was an Indian film director, screenwriter, author, lyricist, magazine editor, illustrator, calligrapher, and composer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential film directors in the history of cinema. He is celebrated for works including The Apu Trilogy (1955–1959), The Music Room (1958), The Big City (1963), Charulata (1964), and the Goopy–Bagha trilogy (1969–1992).[a]


02/05/1920

Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson, Scottish pianist and composer (died 1980)

Joseph Turner Henderson, known as Joe "Mr Piano" Henderson, was a Scottish pianist, composer and recording artist who became well-known in Britain in the 1950s, with his entertainment career continuing into the 1960s and 1970s.


02/05/1917

Văn Tiến Dũng, Vietnamese general and politician, 6th Minister of Defence for Vietnam (died 2002)

Văn Tiến Dũng was a Vietnamese general in the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), PAVN chief of staff (1954–1974); PAVN commander in chief (1975–1980); member of the Central Military–Party Committee (CMPC) (1984–1986) and Socialist Republic of Vietnam defense minister (1980–1987).


02/05/1915

Doris Fisher, American singer-songwriter (died 2003)

Doris Fisher was an American singer and songwriter, collaborating both as lyricist and composer. She co-wrote many popular songs in the 1940s, including "Whispering Grass", "You Always Hurt the One You Love", "Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall", "That Ole Devil Called Love", and "Put the Blame on Mame." Her songs were recorded by the Ink Spots, Louis Prima, Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, Pearl Bailey, the Mills Brothers and Ella Fitzgerald amongst others.


Peggy Mount, English actress (died 2001)

Margaret Rose Mount was an English actress. As a child, she found acting an escape from an unhappy home life. After playing in amateur productions, she was taken on by a repertory company and spent nine years in various British towns, learning her craft. In 1955, she got her big break in the comic play Sailor Beware!: she created the leading role in a repertory production and, though unknown to London audiences, was given the part when the play was presented in the West End. She became known for playing domineering middle-aged women in plays, films and television shows.


02/05/1912

Axel Springer, German journalist and publisher, founded Axel Springer AG (died 1985)

Axel Cäsar Springer was a German publisher and founder of what is now Axel Springer SE, the largest media publishing firm in Europe. By the early 1960s his print titles dominated the West German daily press market. His Bild Zeitung became the nation's tabloid.


Marten Toonder, Dutch comic strip creator (died 2005)

Marten Toonder was a Dutch comic strip creator. He was probably the most successful comic artist in the Netherlands and had a great influence on the Dutch language by introducing new words and expressions. He is most famous for his series Tom Puss and Panda.


Nigel Patrick, English actor and director (died 1981)

Nigel Dennis Patrick Wemyss-Gorman was an English actor and stage director born into a theatrical family.


02/05/1910

Alexander Bonnyman Jr., American lieutenant, Medal of Honor recipient (died 1943)

Alexander "Sandy" Bonnyman Jr. was a United States Marine Corps officer who was killed in action on Betio Atoll in the Gilbert Islands during World War II.


Edmund Bacon, American urban planner, architect, educator, and author (died 2005)

Edmund Norwood Bacon was an American urban planner, architect, educator, and author. During his tenure as the executive director of the Philadelphia City Planning Commission from 1949 to 1970, his visions shaped today's Philadelphia, the city of his birth, to the extent that he is sometimes described as "The Father of Modern Philadelphia". He authored the seminal urban planning book Design of Cities. He was the father of actor Kevin Bacon.


02/05/1907

Pinky Lee, American comedian and television host (died 1993)

Pinky Lee was an American actor of stage, screen, radio, and television. He is best known as a children's-TV personality of the 1950s.


02/05/1905

Charlotte Armstrong, American author (died 1969)

Charlotte Armstrong Lewi was an American writer. Under the names Charlotte Armstrong and Jo Valentine she wrote 29 novels, as well as short stories, plays, and screenplays. She also worked for The New York Times' advertising department, as a fashion reporter for Breath of the Avenue, and in an accounting firm. Additionally, she worked for the New Yorker magazine, publishing only three poems for them.


02/05/1903

Benjamin Spock, American pediatrician, activist, and author (died 1998)

Benjamin McLane Spock, widely known as Dr. Spock, was an American pediatrician, Olympic athlete, and left-wing political activist. His book Baby and Child Care (1946) is one of the best-selling books of the 20th century, selling 500,000 copies in the six months after its initial publication and 50 million by the time of Spock's death in 1998. The book's premise told mothers, "You know more than you think you do." Spock was widely regarded as a trusted source for parenting advice in his generation.


02/05/1902

Brian Aherne, English actor (died 1986)

William Brian de Lacy Aherne was an English actor of stage, screen, radio and television, who enjoyed a long and varied career in Britain and the United States.


02/05/1898

Henry Hall, English bandleader, composer, and actor (died 1989)

Henry Robert Hall was an English bandleader who performed regularly on BBC Radio during the British dance band era of the 1920s and 1930s, through to the 1960s.


02/05/1897

John Frederick Coots, American songwriter (died 1985)

John Frederick Coots, better known as J. Fred Coots or Fred Coots, was an American songwriter. He composed more than 700 popular songs and more than a dozen Broadway shows. In 1934, Coots wrote the melody with his then chief collaborator, lyricist Haven Gillespie, for the biggest success of either man's career, "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town." The song became one of the biggest sellers in American history.


02/05/1895

Lorenz Hart, American playwright and lyricist (died 1943)

Lorenz Milton Hart was an American lyricist and half of the Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart. Some of his more famous lyrics include "Blue Moon"; "The Lady Is a Tramp"; "Manhattan"; "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered"; and "My Funny Valentine".


02/05/1894

Norma Talmadge, American actress of the silent era (died 1957)

Norma Marie Talmadge was an American actress and film producer of the silent era. A major box-office draw for more than a decade, her career reached a peak in the early 1920s, when she ranked among the most popular idols of the American screen.


Joseph Henry Woodger, English biologist, philosopher, and academic (died 1981)

Joseph Henry Woodger was a British theoretical biologist and philosopher of biology whose attempts to make biological sciences more rigorous and empirical was significantly influential to the philosophy of biology in the twentieth century. Karl Popper, the prominent philosopher of science, claimed "Woodger... influenced and stimulated the evolution of the philosophy of science in Britain and in the United States as hardly anybody else".


02/05/1892

Manfred von Richthofen, German captain and pilot (died 1918)

Rittmeister Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, known in English as Baron von Richthofen or the Red Baron, was a German fighter pilot with the German Air Force during World War I. He is considered the ace-of-aces of the war, being officially credited with 80 air combat victories.


02/05/1890

E. E. Smith, American engineer and author (died 1965)

Edward Elmer Smith was an American food engineer and science-fiction author, best known for the Lensman and Skylark series. He is sometimes called the father of space opera.


02/05/1889

Ki Hajar Dewantara, Indonesian philosopher, academic, and politician (died 1959)

Raden Mas Soewardi Soerjaningrat, better known by the name Ki Hajar Dewantara since 1922, was a leading Indonesian independence movement activist, writer, columnist, politician, and pioneer of education for native Indonesians in Dutch colonial times. He founded the Taman Siswa school, an institution that provided education for indigenous commoners, which otherwise was limited to the Javanese aristocracy and the Dutch colonials.


02/05/1887

Vernon Castle, English-American dancer (died 1918)

Vernon and Irene Castle were a husband-and-wife team of ballroom dancers and dance teachers who appeared on Broadway and in silent films in the early 20th century. They are credited with reviving the popularity of modern dancing. Castle was a stage name: Vernon was born William Vernon Blyth in England. Irene was born Irene Foote in the United States.


Eddie Collins, American baseball player and manager (died 1951)

Edward Trowbridge Collins Sr., nicknamed "Cocky", was an American professional baseball player, manager and executive. He played as a second baseman in Major League Baseball from 1906 to 1930 for the Philadelphia Athletics and Chicago White Sox. A graduate of Columbia University, Collins holds major league career records in several categories and is among the top few players in several other categories. In 1925, Collins became just the sixth person to join the 3,000 hit club – and the last for the next 17 seasons. His 47 career home runs are the fewest of any player with 3,000 hits. Collins is the only non-Yankee to win five or more World Series titles with the same club as a player. He is also the only player to have been a member of all five World Series championships won by the Athletics during the franchise's time in Philadelphia.


02/05/1886

Gottfried Benn, German author and poet (died 1956)

Gottfried Benn was a German poet, essayist, and physician. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times. He was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize in 1951.


02/05/1885

Hedda Hopper, American actress and gossip columnist (died 1966)

Elda Furry, known professionally as Hedda Hopper, was an American gossip columnist and actress. At the height of her influence in the 1940s, more than 35 million people read her columns. A strong supporter of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearings, Hopper named suspected Communists and was a major proponent of the Hollywood blacklist. Hopper continued to write her gossip column until her death in 1966. Her work appeared in many magazines and later on radio. She had an extended public feud with Louella Parsons, an arch-rival and fellow gossip columnist.


02/05/1884

John Boland, American politician (died 1958)

John Abram Boland Sr. was an American politician and businessman from South Dakota. He was an early supporter of Mount Rushmore and served as treasurer for its construction costs between 1929 and 1938. He served as mayor of Rapid City, South Dakota, between 1924 and 1925, and as a member of the South Dakota Senate between 1929 and 1936. Boland also owned a number of stores and businesses in the area and helped oversee South Dakota's financial support for World War I. He was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 1978.


02/05/1882

Isabel González, Puerto Rican activist who helped pave the way for Puerto Ricans' American citizenship (died 1971)

Isabel González was a Puerto Rican activist who helped pave the way for Puerto Ricans to be given United States citizenship. As a young unwed pregnant woman, González had her plans to find and marry the father of her unborn child derailed by the United States Treasury Department when she was excluded as an alien "likely to become a public charge" upon her arrival in New York City. González challenged the Government of the United States in the groundbreaking case Gonzales v. Williams. Officially the case was known as Isabella Gonzales, Appellant, v. William Williams, United States Commissioner of Immigration at the Port of New York No. 225, argued December 4, 7, 1903, and decided January 4, 1904. Her case was an appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, filed February 27, 1903, after also having her writ of habeas corpus dismissed. Her Supreme Court case is the first time that the Court confronted the citizenship status of inhabitants of territories acquired by the United States. González actively pursued the cause of U.S. citizenship for all Puerto Ricans by writing letters published in The New York Times.


02/05/1881

Harry J. Capehart, American lawyer, politician, and businessperson (died 1955)

Harry Jheopart Capehart Sr. was an American lawyer, politician, and businessperson in the U.S. state of West Virginia. Capehart served as a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, representing McDowell County for three consecutive terms, from 1919 to 1925. He also served as an assessor, city councilperson, and city attorney for Keystone, West Virginia.


02/05/1880

Bill Horr, American football player, discus thrower, and coach (died 1955)

Marquis Franklin "Bill" Horr was an American college football player and coach and Olympic track and field athlete.


02/05/1879

James F. Byrnes, American stenographer and politician, 49th United States Secretary of State (died 1972)

James Francis Byrnes was an American judge and politician from South Carolina. A member of the Democratic Party, he served in the U.S. Congress and on the U.S. Supreme Court, as well as in the executive branch, most prominently as the 49th U.S. Secretary of State under President Harry S. Truman. Byrnes was also the 104th governor of South Carolina.


02/05/1873

Jurgis Baltrušaitis, Lithuanian poet, critic, and translator (died 1944)

Jurgis Baltrušaitis was a Lithuanian Symbolist poet and translator who wrote in Lithuanian and Russian, and was an exponent of iconology. He was the father of art historian and critic Jurgis Baltrušaitis Jr.


02/05/1872

Ichiyō Higuchi, Japanese writer (died 1896)

Natsuko Higuchi , known by her pen name Higuchi Ichiyō , was a Japanese writer during the Meiji era. She was Japan's first professional woman writer of modern literature, specializing in short stories and poetry, and was also an extensive diarist. Her portrait was used on the 5000 yen banknote in Japan.


02/05/1867

Giuseppe Morello, Italian-American mobster (died 1930)

Giuseppe "the Clutch Hand" Morello, also known as "the Old Fox", was the first boss of the Morello crime family and later top adviser to Giuseppe "Joe the Boss" Masseria. He was known as Piddu and his rivals the Castellammarese knew him as Peter Morello. He had a deformed right hand with only one finger, resembling a claw.


02/05/1865

Clyde Fitch, American playwright (died 1909)

William Clyde Fitch was an American dramatist, the most popular writer for the Broadway stage of his time.


02/05/1860

John Scott Haldane, Scottish physiologist, physician, and academic (died 1936)

John Scott Haldane was a Scottish physician physiologist and philosopher famous for his often-dangerous self-experimentation that led to many important discoveries about the human body and the nature of gases. He also experimented on his son, the celebrated and polymathic biologist J. B. S. Haldane, even when he was quite young. Haldane locked himself in sealed chambers breathing potentially lethal cocktails of gases while recording their effect on his mind and body.


Theodor Herzl, Austro-Hungarian Zionist philosopher, journalist and author (died 1904)

Theodor Herzl was a Hungarian Jewish journalist and lawyer who was the father of modern political Zionism. Herzl formed the Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish immigration to Palestine, which, in the late 19th century was part of the Ottoman Empire, in an effort to form a Jewish state. Due to his Zionist work, he is known in Hebrew as Chozeh HaMedinah, lit. 'Visionary of the State'. He is specifically mentioned in the Israeli Declaration of Independence and is officially referred to as "the spiritual father of the Jewish State".


02/05/1859

Jerome K. Jerome, English author and playwright (died 1927)

Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humorist, best known for the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat (1889). Other works include the essay collections Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886) and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow; Three Men on the Bummel, a sequel to Three Men in a Boat; and several other novels.


02/05/1844

Elijah McCoy, Canadian-American engineer (died 1929)

Elijah J. McCoy was a Canadian-American engineer of African-American descent who invented lubrication systems for steam engines. Born free on the Ontario shore of Lake Erie to parents who fled enslavement in Kentucky, he traveled to the United States as a young child when his family returned in 1847, becoming a U.S. resident and citizen. His inventions and accomplishments were honored in 2012 when the United States Patent and Trademark Office named its first regional office, in Detroit, Michigan, the "Elijah J. McCoy Midwest Regional Patent Office".


02/05/1830

Otto Staudinger, German entomologist and author (died 1900)

Otto Staudinger was a German entomologist and a natural history dealer considered one of the largest in the world specialising in the collection and sale of insects to museums, scientific institutions, and individuals.


02/05/1828

Désiré Charnay, French archaeologist and photographer (died 1915)

Claude-Joseph Désiré Charnay was a French traveller and archaeologist notable both for his explorations of Mexico and Central America, and for the pioneering use of photography to document his discoveries.


02/05/1822

Jane Miller Thengberg, Scottish-Swedish governess and educator (died 1902)

Jane Miller Thengberg was a Swedish-Scottish teacher. She founded and managed the girls' school Klosterskolan in Uppsala from 1855 to 1863 and was the principal of the Högre lärarinneseminariet in Stockholm from 1863 to 1868. She organized the rules of the newly founded Högre lärarinneseminariet, was an active participant in the contemporary debate about the educational system in Sweden, and is regarded as a pioneer of the education of girls and women in Sweden.


02/05/1815

William Buell Richards, Canadian lawyer and judge, 1st Chief Justice of Canada (died 1889)

Sir William Buell Richards was a Canadian lawyer, politician, and judge, and served as the first Chief Justice of Canada.


02/05/1813

Caroline Leigh Gascoigne, English novelist and poet (died 1883)

Caroline Leigh Gascoigne was a 19th-century English poet and novelist from London. The daughter of a wealthy banker, she began writing at an early age and went on to publish several works in both prose and verse, including Temptation and Evelyn Harcourt. She was married to a Member of Parliament (MP) and had three children.


02/05/1810

Hans Christian Lumbye, Danish composer and conductor (died 1874)

Hans Christian Lumbye was a Danish composer of waltzes, polkas, mazurkas and galops, among other things.


02/05/1806

Catherine Labouré, French nun and saint (died 1876)

Catherine Labouré, DC was a French member of the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul and a Marian visionary. She is believed to have relayed the request from the Blessed Virgin Mary to create the Miraculous Medal, now worn by millions of people around the world. Labouré spent forty years caring for the aged and infirm. For this, she is called the patroness of seniors.


02/05/1802

Heinrich Gustav Magnus, German chemist and physicist (died 1870)

Heinrich Gustav Magnus was a German experimental scientist. His training was mostly in chemistry but his later research was mostly in physics. He spent the great bulk of his career at the University of Berlin, where he is remembered for his laboratory teaching as much as for his original research. He did not use his first given name, and was known throughout his life as Gustav Magnus.


02/05/1797

Abraham Pineo Gesner, Canadian physician and geologist (died 1864)

Abraham Pineo Gesner was a Nova Scotian and New Brunswickan medical doctor and geologist who invented kerosene. Gesner was born in Cornwallis, Nova Scotia and lived much of his life in Saint John, New Brunswick. He died in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He was an influential figure in the development of the study of Canadian geology and natural history.


02/05/1773

Henrik Steffens, Norwegian philosopher and poet (died 1845)

Henrik Steffens, was a Norwegian philosopher, scientist, and poet.


02/05/1772

Novalis, German author and poet (died 1801)

Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, better known by his pen name Novalis, was a German aristocrat and polymath, who was a poet, novelist, philosopher and mystic. He is regarded as an influential figure of Jena Romanticism.


02/05/1754

Vicente Martín y Soler, Spanish composer (died 1806)

Anastasio Martín Ignacio Vicente Tadeo Francisco Pellegrin Martín y Soler was a Spanish composer of opera and ballet. Although relatively obscure now, in his own day he was compared favorably with his contemporary and admirer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as a composer of opera buffa. In his time he was called "Martini lo spagnuolo" ; in modern times, he has been called "the Valencian Mozart". He was known primarily for his melodious Italian comic operas and his work with Lorenzo Da Ponte in the late 18th century, as well as the melody from Una cosa rara quoted in the dining scene of Mozart's Don Giovanni.


02/05/1752

Ludwig August Lebrun, German oboe player and composer (died 1790)

Ludwig August Lebrun was a German oboist and composer.


02/05/1750

John André, English soldier and spy (died 1780)

Major John André was a British Army officer who served as the head of Britain's intelligence operations during the American War for Independence. In September 1780, André negotiated with Continental Army general Benedict Arnold, who secretly offered to turn over control of the American fort at West Point, New York, to the British. Due to a series of mishaps and unforeseen events, André was forced to try to return to British lines from a meeting with Arnold through American-controlled territory while wearing civilian clothes.


02/05/1740

Elias Boudinot, American lawyer and politician, 10th President of the Continental Congress (died 1821)

Elias Boudinot was an American Founding Father, lawyer, statesman, and early abolitionist and women's rights advocate. During the Revolutionary War, Boudinot was an intelligence officer and prisoner-of-war commissary under general George Washington, working to improve conditions for prisoners on both the American and British sides. In 1779, he was elected to the Continental Congress and then to its successor, the Congress of the Confederation, serving as President of Congress in 1782–1783, the final years of the war.


02/05/1737

William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne, Irish-English politician, Prime Minister of Great Britain (died 1805)

William Petty Fitzmaurice, 1st Marquess of Lansdowne, known as the Earl of Shelburne between 1761 and 1784, by which title he is generally known to history, was an Anglo-Irish Whig statesman who was the first home secretary in 1782 and then prime minister in 1782–83 during the final months of the American War of Independence. He succeeded in securing peace with America and this feat remains his most notable legacy.


02/05/1729

Catherine the Great of Russia (died 1796)

Catherine II, commonly known as Catherine the Great, was the Empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after a coup d'etat against her husband, Peter III. Her long reign helped Russia thrive under a golden age during the Enlightenment. This renaissance led to the founding of many new cities, universities, and theatres, along with large-scale immigration from the rest of Europe and the recognition of Russia as one of the great powers of Europe.


02/05/1707

Jean-Baptiste Barrière, French cellist and composer (died 1747)

Jean-Baptiste Barrière was a French cellist and composer. He was born in Bordeaux, Gascony and died in Paris, at 40 years of age.


02/05/1702

Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, German theologian and theosopher (died 1782)

Friedrich Christoph Oetinger was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, and theosopher.


02/05/1695

Giovanni Niccolò Servandoni, Italian-French painter and architect (died 1766)

Jean-Nicolas Servan, also known as Giovanni Niccolò Servandoni, was an Italian decorator, architect, painter, firework designer and trompe-l'œil specialist.


02/05/1660

Alessandro Scarlatti, Italian composer (died 1725)

Pietro Alessandro Gaspare Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer, known especially for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the most important representative of the Neapolitan School of opera.


02/05/1601

Athanasius Kircher, German priest and scholar (died 1680)

Athanasius Kircher was a German Jesuit scholar and polymath who published around 40 major works of comparative religion, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fellow Jesuit Roger Joseph Boscovich and to Leonardo da Vinci for his vast range of interests, and has been honoured with the title "Master of a Hundred Arts". He taught for more than 40 years at the Roman College, where he set up a wunderkammer or cabinet of curiosities that would become the Kircherian Museum. A resurgence of interest in Kircher has occurred within the scholarly community in recent decades.


02/05/1579

Tokugawa Hidetada, Japanese shōgun (died 1632)

Tokugawa Hidetada was a Japanese samurai, daimyo and the second shōgun of the Tokugawa dynasty, who ruled from 1605 until his abdication in 1623. He was the third son of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Through his daughter Tokugawa Masako, he was also the maternal grandfather of Empress Meishō.


02/05/1567

Sebald de Weert, Dutch captain, vice-admiral of the Dutch East India Company (died 1603)

Sebald or Sebald de Weert was a Flemish captain and vice-admiral of the Dutch East India Company. He is most widely remembered for accurately plotting the Falkland Islands in 1600.


02/05/1551

William Camden, English historian and topographer (died 1623)

William Camden was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and herald, best known as author of Britannia, the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland that relates landscape, geography, antiquarianism, and history, and the Annales, the first detailed historical account of the reign of Elizabeth I.


02/05/1533

Philip II, Duke of Brunswick-Grubenhagen (died 1596)

Philip II, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, a member of the House of Welf, was the last ruler of the Principality of Grubenhagen from 1595 until his death. When he died in 1596, the Grubenhagen branch of the Welfs became extinct, whereafter the principality was occupied by Duke Henry Julius of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel.


02/05/1476

Charles I, Duke of Münsterberg-Oels, Count of Kladsko, Governor of Bohemia and Silesia (died 1536)

Charles I, Duke of Münsterberg-Oels was a member of the House of Poděbrady. He was Duke of Münsterberg and Duke of Oels as well as Count of Kladsko. From 1519 to 1523 he held the office of the bailiff of Upper Lusatia, in 1523 he was made Obersthauptmann of Bohemia and in 1524 Landeshauptmann of Silesia.


02/05/1458

Eleanor of Viseu (died 1525)

Dona Eleanor of Avis, also known as Leonor de Lencastre or Eleanor of Viseu, was a Portuguese infanta (princess) and queen consort of Portugal. She was the wife of King John II of Portugal and the sister of King Manuel I of Portugal. Eleanor is one of Portugal's more famous queen consorts and is best known as the founder of the Santa Casa da Misericórdia, a charitable organization operating since 1498.


02/05/1451

René II, Duke of Lorraine (died 1508)

René II was Count of Vaudémont from 1470, Duke of Lorraine from 1473, and Duke of Bar from 1483 to 1508. He claimed the crown of the Kingdom of Naples and the County of Provence as the Duke of Calabria 1480–1493 and as King of Naples and Jerusalem 1493–1508. He succeeded his uncle John of Vaudémont as Count of Harcourt in 1473, exchanging it for the county of Aumale in 1495. He succeeded as Count of Guise in 1504.


02/05/1402

Eleanor of Aragon, Queen of Portugal (died 1445)

Eleanor of Aragon was Queen of Portugal from 1433 to 1438 as the spouse of King Edward. After Edward's death, she served as regent in 1438-1440 for her son Afonso V. She was the daughter of Ferdinand I of Aragon and Eleanor of Alburquerque.


02/05/1360

Yongle Emperor of China (died 1424)

The Yongle Emperor, personal name Zhu Di, was the third emperor of the Ming dynasty, reigning from 1402 to 1424. He was the fourth son of the Hongwu Emperor, the founder of the dynasty.


Lives Remembered on 2nd May

On 2nd May, 116 remarkable people passed away — from -1203 to 2025. Remember the lives and legacies of those we lost on this day.

02/05/2025

Ricky Davao, Filipino actor and director (born 1961)

Frederick Charles Abiera Davao was a Filipino actor and television director.


George Ryan, American politician, 39th Governor of Illinois (born 1934)

George Homer Ryan was an American politician who served as the 39th Governor of Illinois from 1999 to 2003. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as Secretary of State of Illinois from 1991 to 1999 and as lieutenant governor from 1983 to 1991. He was later convicted of federal racketeering, bribery, extortion, money laundering, and tax fraud stemming from his time in office.


02/05/2024

Sjoukje Dijkstra, Dutch figure skater (born 1942)

Sjoukje Rosalinde Dijkstra was a Dutch competitive figure skater. She was the 1964 Olympic champion in ladies' singles, the 1960 Olympic silver medalist, a three-time World champion (1962–1964), five-time European champion (1960–1964), and the six-time Dutch national champion (1959–1964). She was the first Dutch athlete to win a Winter Olympics gold medal.


Darius Morris, American basketball player (born 1991)

Darius Aaron Morris was an American professional basketball player. Morris was selected as the 41st pick in the 2011 NBA draft by the Los Angeles Lakers and played the point guard position. He also played for the Brooklyn Nets, Philadelphia 76ers, Los Angeles Clippers and Memphis Grizzlies of the NBA as well as the Los Angeles D-Fenders and Rio Grande Valley Vipers of the NBA D-League. He also played overseas in China, Russia and France.


Peter Oosterhuis, English golfer and broadcaster (born 1948)

Peter Arthur Oosterhuis was an English professional golfer and broadcaster. He played on the European circuit from 1969 to 1974, winning 10 tournaments and taking the Harry Vardon Trophy for heading the Order of Merit for four consecutive seasons from 1971 to 1974. From 1975 he played on the PGA Tour, winning the Canadian Open in 1981. Oosterhuis was twice runner-up in the Open Championship, in 1974 and 1982. Later he became a golf analyst on TV, initially in Europe and then in the United States. In 2015, he announced that he had Alzheimer's disease.


02/05/2021

Marcel Stellman, Belgian record producer and lyricist (born 1925)

Marcel Leopold Stellman was a Belgian born British record producer and lyricist. Among the many artists who recorded Stellman’s songs are Cilla Black, Petula Clark, Charles Aznavour, the Shadows, Kathy Kirby, and Tony Bennett. In the UK he is best known as the man who brought the French show Des chiffres et des lettres to the UK as Countdown. His pseudonyms as a lyricist include Gene Martyn and Leo Johns.


02/05/2020

Arif Wazir, Pakistani politician, leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (born 1982)

Arif Wazir was a Pakistani politician, activist, and a leader of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM). He was a member of the Pashtunkhwa Milli Awami Party (PMAP) and its president for the South Waziristan chapter. He also headed the FATA Political Alliance South Waziristan, which campaigned for the rights of the people of former Federally Administered Tribal Areas.


02/05/2016

Afeni Shakur, American music businesswoman, activist, and Black Panther (born 1947)

Afeni Shakur Davis was an American political activist and member of the Black Panther Party. Shakur was the mother of rapper Tupac Shakur and the executor of his estate. She founded the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation and was the CEO of Amaru Entertainment, Inc., a record and film production company she founded.


02/05/2015

Stuart Archer, English colonel and architect (born 1915)

Colonel Bertram Stuart Trevelyan Archer,, known as Stuart Archer, was a recipient of the George Cross, the highest British and Commonwealth award for gallantry not in the face of the enemy. On 3 February 2015 Archer became the first recipient of the Victoria Cross or the George Cross to reach 100 years of age.


Michael Blake, American author and screenwriter (born 1945)

Michael Lennox Blake was an American author, best known for the film adaptation of his novel Dances With Wolves, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.


Guy Carawan, American singer and musicologist (born 1927)

Guy Hughes Carawan Jr. was an American folk musician and musicologist. He served as music director and song leader for the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.


Maya Plisetskaya, Russian-Lithuanian ballerina, choreographer, actress, and director (born 1925)

Maya Mikhailovna Plisetskaya was a Soviet and Russian ballet dancer, choreographer, ballet director, and actress. In post-Soviet times, she held both Lithuanian and Spanish citizenship. She danced during the Soviet era at the Bolshoi Theatre under the directorships of Leonid Lavrovsky, then of Yury Grigorovich; later she moved into direct confrontation with him. In 1960, when famed Russian ballerina Galina Ulanova retired, Plisetskaya became prima ballerina assoluta of the company.


Ruth Rendell, English author (born 1930)

Ruth Barbara Rendell, Baroness Rendell of Babergh, was an English author of thrillers and psychological murder mysteries.


02/05/2014

Tomás Balduino, Brazilian bishop (born 1922)

Tomás Balduíno, O.P. was a diocesan bishop of the Catholic Church in Brazil.


Žarko Petan, Slovenian director, playwright, and screenwriter (born 1929)

Žarko Petan was a Slovenian writer, essayist, screenwriter, and theatre and film director. He is best known as a writer of aphorisms.


Efrem Zimbalist Jr., American actor (born 1918)

Efrem Zimbalist Jr. was an American actor and theatre producer. Known for his "mellifluous voice and air of sophistication," he was known to television audiences for his starring roles on the crime drama series 77 Sunset Strip (1958–64) and The F.B.I. (1965–74), his recurring role as "Dandy Jim" Buckley on Maverick (1957–58), and as the voice of Alfred Pennyworth in the DC Animated Universe. He also appeared in numerous films and on the Broadway stage. He was a Golden Globe Award winner and a two-time Primetime Emmy Award nominee.


02/05/2013

Ernie Field, English boxer (born 1943)

Ernest "Ernie" Field was an English Amateur Boxing Association of England amateur middleweight and professional light heavy/cruiserweight boxer and rugby league footballer who played in the 1960s. He played at club level for Stanley Rangers ARLFC, Wakefield Trinity (A-Team) and Bramley, as a centre, or loose forward.


Jeff Hanneman, American guitarist and songwriter (born 1964)

Jeffrey John Hanneman was an American musician, best known as a founding member and co-lead guitarist of the thrash metal band Slayer. Hanneman wrote both music and lyrics for every Slayer album until his death in 2013.


Joseph P. McFadden, American bishop (born 1947)

Joseph Patrick McFadden was an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. Formerly an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, he was installed as bishop of Harrisburg in Pennsylvania on August 18, 2010. He served in that position until his death in 2013.


Dvora Omer, Israeli author and educator (born 1932)

Dvora Omer was an Israeli children's author. She is considered one of Israel’s greatest children’s book writers.


Ivan Turina, Croatian footballer (born 1980)

Ivan Turina was a Croatian professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. He made one appearance for the Croatia national team.


Charles Banks Wilson, American painter and illustrator (born 1918)

Charles Banks Wilson was an American artist. Wilson was born in Springdale, Arkansas in 1918; his family eventually moved to Miami, Oklahoma, where he spent his childhood. A painter, printmaker, teacher, lecturer, historian, magazine and book illustrator, Wilson's work has been shown in over 200 exhibitions in the United States and across the globe.


02/05/2012

Fernando Lopes, Portuguese director and screenwriter (born 1935)

Fernando Lopes, GCIH was a Portuguese film director. He was a Film teacher at the Portuguese National Conservatory, nowadays the Lisbon Theatre and Film School. He died, aged 76, in Lisbon due to throat cancer.


Zenaida Manfugás, Cuban-born American-naturalized pianist (born 1932)

Zenaida Elvira González Manfugás was a Cuban-born American-naturalized pianist, considered to be one of the best Cuban pianists in history.


Tufan Miñnullin, Russian playwright and politician (born 1936)

Miñnullin Tufan Ğabdulla ulı aka Tufan Miñnullin was a famous Tatar writer, playwright, publicist, Tatarstan State Council deputy and honorary citizen of Kazan. He was a permanent member of State Council of the Republic of Tatarstan since 1990. International PEN club member.


Endang Rahayu Sedyaningsih, Indonesian physician and politician, Indonesian Minister of Health (born 1955)

Endang Rahayu Sedyaningsih was an Indonesian physician, researcher, and author. She served as Minister of Health of the Republic of Indonesia from 22 October 2009 until 30 April 2012.


Akira Tonomura, Japanese physicist, author, and academic (born 1942)

Akira Tonomura was a Japanese physicist, best known for his development of electron holography and his experimental verification of the Aharonov–Bohm effect.


Lourdes Valera, Venezuelan actress (born 1963)

Lourdes del Valle Valera Galvis was a Venezuelan actress who took part in over twenty film and television productions during her career, particularly known for her acting in many telenovelas.


02/05/2011

Osama bin Laden, Saudi Arabian terrorist, founder of Al-Qaeda (born 1957)

Osama bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Laden was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda from 1988 until his death in 2011. A Salafi jihadist, bin Laden worked to establish a pan-Islamist caliphate by using al-Qaeda to organize and fund jihadist militants and terrorists worldwide. Al-Qaeda's terrorist attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001 directly killed 2,977 victims, and caused the global war on terror.


02/05/2010

Lynn Redgrave, English-American actress and singer (born 1943)

Lynn Rachel Redgrave was a British and American actress. During a career that spanned five decades, she won two Golden Globe Awards and was nominated for two Academy Awards, four British Academy Film Awards, two Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, three Tony Awards, and a Grammy Award.


02/05/2009

Marilyn French, American author and academic (born 1929)

Marilyn French was an American radical feminist author, most widely known for her second book and first novel, the 1977 work The Women's Room.


Kiyoshiro Imawano, Japanese singer-songwriter, producer, and actor (born 1951)

Kiyoshiro Imawano , born Kiyoshi Kurihara , was a Japanese rock musician, lyricist, composer, musical producer, and actor from Tokyo, Japan. He was dubbed "Japan's King of Rock". He formed and led the influential rock band RC Succession. He wrote many anti-nuclear songs following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. He was known for pioneering the adoption of linguistic characteristics of the Japanese language into his songs.


Jack Kemp, American football player and politician, 9th United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (born 1935)

Jack French Kemp was an American politician, professional football player, and U.S. Army veteran who served as the ninth U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President George H. W. Bush from 1989 to 1993. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served nine terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1971 to 1989. He was the party's vice presidential nominee in the 1996 U.S. presidential election, running alongside with presidential nominee Bob Dole; they lost to Democratic incumbents Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Kemp had previously contended for the presidential nomination in the 1988 Republican primaries.


02/05/2008

Beverlee McKinsey, American actress (born 1940)

Beverlee McKinsey was an American actress. She is best known for her roles on daytime serials, including Iris Cory Carrington on Another World and the spin-off series Texas from 1972 to 1981 and Alexandra Spaulding on Guiding Light from 1984 to 1992.


Izold Pustõlnik, Ukrainian-Estonian astronomer and academic (born 1938)

Izold Pustõlnik was an eminent Estonian astronomer who authored numerous scientific publications and served as editor of the Central European Journal of Physics and vice-chairman of the non-profit organization Euroscience Estonia.


02/05/2007

Brad McGann, New Zealand director and screenwriter (born 1964)

Brad McGann MNZM, was a New Zealand film director and screenwriter.


02/05/2006

Louis Rukeyser, American journalist and author (born 1933)

Louis Richard Rukeyser was an American financial journalist, columnist, and commentator, through print, radio, and television.


02/05/2005

Wee Kim Wee, Singaporean journalist and politician, 4th President of Singapore (born 1915)

Wee Kim Wee was a Singaporean journalist, diplomat and politician who served as the fourth president of Singapore between 1985 and 1993.


02/05/2002

W. T. Tutte, English-Canadian mathematician and academic (born 1917)

William Thomas Tutte was an English and Canadian code breaker and mathematician. During the Second World War, he made a fundamental advance in cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher, a major Nazi German cipher system which was used for top-secret communications within the Wehrmacht High Command.


02/05/2000

Sundar Popo, Indo-Trinidadian musician (born 1943)

Sundar Popo HBM, born Sundarlal Popo Bahora, was a Trinidadian and Tobagonian musician. He is credited as being the father of chutney music, beginning with his 1969 hit Nana and Nani.


02/05/1999

Douglas Harkness, Canadian politician (born 1903)

Douglas Scott Harkness was a Canadian politician.


Oliver Reed, English actor (born 1938)

Robert Oliver Reed was an English actor, known for his upper-middle class, masculine image and his heavy-drinking, "hellraiser" lifestyle. His screen career spanned over 40 years, between 1955 and 1999. At the peak of his career, in 1971, British exhibitors voted Reed fifth-most-popular star at the box office.


02/05/1998

hide, Japanese singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (born 1964)

Hideto Matsumoto , known professionally as Hide, was a Japanese musician, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the rock band X Japan from 1987 to 1997 and rose to prominence in Asia as a solo artist from 1993 to 1998, until his death. He also formed the United States–based rock supergroup Zilch in 1996.


Justin Fashanu, English footballer (born 1961)

Justinus Soni "Justin" Fashanu was an British footballer who played for a variety of clubs between 1978 and 1997. He was known by his early clubs to be gay, and came out publicly later in his career, becoming the first professional footballer to be openly gay. He was also one of the first footballers to command a £1 million transfer fee, with his transfer from Norwich City to Nottingham Forest in 1981, and had varying levels of success as a player afterwards, until he retired in 1997.


02/05/1997

John Eccles, Australian neurophysiologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1903)

Sir John Carew Eccles was an Australian neurophysiologist and philosopher who won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the synapse. He shared the prize with Andrew Huxley and Alan Lloyd Hodgkin.


Paulo Freire, Brazilian philosopher and academic (born 1921)

Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and Marxist philosopher whose work revolutionized global thought on education. He is best known for Pedagogy of the Oppressed, in which he reimagines teaching as a collaborative act of liberation rather than transmission. A founder of critical pedagogy, Freire’s influence spans literacy movements, liberation theology, postcolonial education, Marxism, and contemporary theories of social justice and learning. He is widely regarded as one of the most important educational theorists of the twentieth century, alongside figures such as John Dewey and Maria Montessori.


02/05/1995

John Bunting, Australian public servant and diplomat, (born 1918)

Sir Edward John Bunting was an Australian public servant and diplomat, whose senior career appointments included Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.


Michael Hordern, English actor (born 1911)

Sir Michael Murray Hordern was an English actor. He is best known for his Shakespearean roles, especially King Lear. He often appeared in film, rising from a bit part actor to leading roles; by the time of his death he had appeared in nearly 140 films. His later work was predominantly in television and radio.


02/05/1994

Dorothy Marie Donnelly, American poet and author (born 1903)

Dorothy Marie Donnelly was a poet and essayist, the author of six books of poetry and prose and numerous articles published in Europe and the United States.


02/05/1993

André Moynet, French race car driver, pilot, and politician (born 1921)

André Moynet was a much decorated French wartime fighter pilot who moved on to become a test pilot and an entrepreneur-businessman. He was also a politician.


02/05/1992

Wilbur Mills, American lawyer and politician (born 1909)

Wilbur Daigh Mills was an American Democratic politician and lawyer who represented Arkansas's 2nd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 1939 until his retirement in 1977. As chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee from 1958 to 1974, he was often called "the most powerful man in Washington".


02/05/1991

Gauri Shankar Rai, Indian Politician (born 1924)

Gauri Shankar Rai was a member of the 6th Lok Sabha during 1977-79 representing Ghazipur constituency of Uttar Pradesh. Earlier he had been member of the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly (1957–62) and Legislative Council (1967–76). He served as the Leader of Opposition in Uttar Pradesh Legislative Council.


Ronald McKie, Australian journalist and author (born 1909)

Ronald Cecil Hamlyn McKie was an Australian novelist. He was born on 11 May 1909 in Toowoomba, Queensland. After receiving his education at the Brisbane Grammar School and the University of Queensland, he worked as a journalist on newspapers in Melbourne, Sydney, Singapore, and China. He served in the AIF during World War II from 1942–1943, following which he served as war correspondent for several Australian and UK newspapers. After the war he worked for Sydney's Daily Telegraph. McKie died from kidney disease on 8 May 1991 in Canterbury, Melbourne, Australia.


02/05/1990

David Rappaport, English-American actor (born 1951)

David Stephen Rappaport was an English actor with achondroplasia. He appeared in the films Time Bandits and The Bride, and television series L.A. Law, The Wizard and Captain Planet and the Planeteers. He was 3 ft 11 in (1.19 m) in height.


02/05/1989

Veniamin Kaverin, Russian author (born 1902)

Veniamin Aleksandrovich Kaverin was a Soviet and Russian writer, dramatist and screenwriter associated with the early 1920s movement of the Serapion Brothers.


Giuseppe Siri, Italian cardinal (born 1906)

Giuseppe Siri was an Italian cardinal of the Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Genoa from 1946 to 1987, and was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 1953. A protégé of Pope Pius XII, he took part in the Second Vatican Council and was considered a papabile for 20 years, during the conclaves of 1958, 1963, August 1978 and October 1978.


02/05/1986

Sergio Cresto, American race car driver (born 1956)

Sergio Cresto was the American co-driver of Finnish Henri Toivonen at the Lancia Martini team for the 1986 World Rally Championship season. He was also a former co-driver for fellow Lancia employee Attilio Bettega, who died in an accident during the 1985 Tour de Corse on May 2, 1985. His co-driver Maurizio Perissinot survived the crash uninjured. This event happened exactly one year before the accident that claimed the lives of both Sergio Cresto and his then co-driver Henri Toivonen on May 2, 1986.


Henri Toivonen, Finnish race car driver (born 1956)

Henri Pauli Toivonen was a Finnish rally driver born in Jyväskylä, the home of Rally Finland. His father, Pauli, was the 1968 European Rally Champion for Porsche and his younger brother, Harri, became a professional circuit racer.


02/05/1985

Attilio Bettega, Italian race car driver (born 1951)

Attilio Luigi Antonio Bettega was an Italian rally driver.


Larry Clinton, American trumpet player and bandleader (born 1909)

Larry Clinton was an American musician, best known as a trumpeter who became a prominent American bandleader and arranger.


02/05/1984

Jack Barry, American game show host and producer, co-founded Barry & Enright Productions (born 1918)

Jack Barry was an American game show host, television personality and executive who made a name for himself in the game show field. Barry served as host of several game shows in his career, many of which he developed along with Dan Enright as part of their joint operation Barry & Enright Productions.


Bob Clampett, American animator, director, and producer (born 1913)

Robert Emerson Clampett Sr. was an American animator, director, producer and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated series from Warner Bros. Cartoons as well as the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil. He was born and raised not far from Hollywood and, early in life, showed an interest in animation and puppetry. After dropping out of high school in 1931, he joined the team at Harman-Ising Productions and began working on the studio's newest short subjects, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Clampett was promoted to a directorial position in 1937. During his 15 years at the studio, he directed 84 cartoons later deemed classic, and designed some of the studio's most famous characters, including Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and Tweety. Among his most acclaimed films are Porky in Wackyland (1938) and The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (1946). He left Warner Bros. Cartoons in 1946 and turned his attention to television, creating the puppet show Time for Beany in 1949. A later animated version of the series, Beany and Cecil, was initially broadcast on ABC in 1962 and rerun until 1967. It is considered the first fully creator-driven television series and carried the byline "a Bob Clampett Cartoon".


02/05/1983

Norm Van Brocklin, American football player and coach (born 1926)

Norman Mack Van Brocklin, was an American professional football quarterback and coach who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 12 seasons. Nicknamed "the Dutchman", he spent his first nine seasons with the Los Angeles Rams and his final three with the Philadelphia Eagles. Following his playing career, he was the inaugural head coach of the Minnesota Vikings from 1961 to 1966 and the second head coach of the Atlanta Falcons from 1968 to 1974.


02/05/1980

Clarrie Grimmett, New Zealand-Australian cricketer (born 1891)

Clarence Victor Grimmett was a New Zealand-born Australian cricketer. He was one of the finest spin bowlers of his time and usually credited as the developer of the flipper.


George Pal, Hungarian-American animator and producer (born 1908)

George Pal was a Hungarian-American animator, film director and producer. He is known for his stop motion animated film series Puppetoons and his fantasy and science-fiction films. He became an American citizen after emigrating from Europe.


02/05/1979

Giulio Natta, Italian chemist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1903)

Giulio Natta was an Italian chemical engineer and Nobel laureate. Natta's work at Politecnico di Milano led to the improvement of earlier work by Karl Ziegler and to the development of the Ziegler–Natta catalyst. The discoveries of Natta and Ziegler revolutionized polymer science by enabling the low-pressure, stereospecific polymerization of olefins, particularly propylene, into highly ordered, crystalline structures. This development allowed the production of high-strength plastics that were previously unobtainable. Natta won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1963 with Karl Ziegler for his work on high density polymers. He also received a Lomonosov Gold Medal in 1969.


02/05/1977

Nicholas Magallanes, American principal dancer and charter member of the New York City Ballet (born 1922)

Nicholas Magallanes was a Mexican-born American principal dancer and charter member of the New York City Ballet. Along with Francisco Moncion, Maria Tallchief, and Tanaquil Le Clercq, Magallanes was among the core group of dancers with which George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein formed Ballet Society, the immediate predecessor of the New York City Ballet.


02/05/1974

James O. Richardson, American admiral (born 1878)

James Otto Richardson was an admiral in the United States Navy who served from 1902 to 1947.


02/05/1972

J. Edgar Hoover, American 1st director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (born 1895)

John Edgar Hoover was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the fifth and final director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) and the first director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). President Calvin Coolidge first appointed Hoover as director of the BOI, the predecessor to the FBI, in 1924. After 11 years in the post, Hoover became instrumental in founding the FBI in June 1935, where he remained as director for an additional 37 years until his death in May 1972 – serving a total of 48 years leading both the BOI and the FBI under eight presidents.


02/05/1969

Franz von Papen, German general and politician, Chancellor of Germany (born 1879)

Franz Joseph Hermann Michael Maria von Papen, Erbsälzer zu Werl und Neuwerk was a German politician, diplomat, army officer, and Prussian nobleman. A national conservative, he served as Chancellor of Germany in 1932, and then as Vice-Chancellor under Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1934. A committed monarchist, Papen is largely remembered for his role in bringing Hitler to power.


02/05/1964

Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor, American-English politician (born 1879)

Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor, Viscountess Astor was an American-born British politician who was the first woman seated as a Member of Parliament (MP), serving from 1919 to 1945. Astor was born in Danville, Virginia, and raised in Greenwood, Virginia. Her first marriage, to socialite Robert Gould Shaw II, was unhappy and ended in divorce. She then moved to England and married American-born Englishman Waldorf Astor in 1906.


02/05/1963

Ronald Barnes, 3rd Baron Gorell, English cricketer, peer, politician, poet, author and newspaper editor (born 1884)

Ronald Gorell Barnes, 3rd Baron Gorell, was a British hereditary peer, Liberal politician, poet, author and newspaper editor.


02/05/1957

Joseph McCarthy, American captain, lawyer, judge, and politician (born 1908)

Joseph Raymond McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican senator from Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in the United States in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread communist subversion. He alleged that numerous communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers had infiltrated institutions including the United States federal government and military, universities, and the film industry. Ultimately, he was censured by the Senate in 1954 for refusing to cooperate with and abusing members of the committee established to investigate whether or not he should be censured. The term "McCarthyism", coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today, the term is used more broadly to refer to demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.


02/05/1953

Wallace Bryant, American archer (born 1863)

Wallace Bryant was an American archer who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics. He won the bronze medal in the team competition. In the Double York round he finished fourth and in the Double American round he finished eighth. Bryant was also a famous portrait artist.


02/05/1947

Dorothea Binz, German SS officer (born 1920)

Dorothea "Theodora" Binz was a Nazi German officer and supervisor at Ravensbrück concentration camp during the Holocaust. She was known as one of the most brutal, ruthless, and sadistic overseers in the Nazi system. She was executed for war crimes on 2 May 1947.


02/05/1946

Bill Denny, Australian journalist, lawyer, politician, and decorated soldier (born 1872)

William Joseph Denny was an Australian journalist, lawyer, politician and decorated soldier who held the South Australian House of Assembly seats of West Adelaide from 1900 to 1902 and then Adelaide from 1902 to 1905 and again from 1906 to 1933. After an unsuccessful candidacy as a United Labor Party (ULP) member in 1899, he was elected as an "independent liberal" in a by-election in 1900. He was re-elected in 1902, but defeated in 1905. The following year, he was elected as a ULP candidate, and retained his seat for that party until 1931. Along with the rest of the cabinet, he was ejected from the Australian Labor Party in 1931, and was a member of the Parliamentary Labor Party until his electoral defeat at the hands of a Lang Labor Party candidate in 1933.


02/05/1945

Martin Bormann, German politician (born 1900)

Martin Ludwig Bormann was a German Nazi Party official, head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, private secretary to Adolf Hitler and war criminal. Bormann gained immense power by using his position as Hitler's private secretary to control the flow of information and access to Hitler. He used his position to create an extensive bureaucracy and involve himself as much as possible in decision-making.


Joe Corbett, American baseball player and journalist (born 1875)

Joseph Aloysius Corbett was an American Major League Baseball starting pitcher who played in the National League. He was born in San Francisco, California.


02/05/1941

Penelope Delta, Greek author (born 1874)

Penelope Delta was a Greek author. She is widely celebrated for her contributions to the field of children's literature. Her historical novels have been widely read and have influenced popular modern Greek perceptions of national identity and history. Through her long-time association with Ion Dragoumis, Delta was thrust into the middle of turbulent early-20th-century Greek politics, ranging from the Macedonian Struggle to the National Schism.


02/05/1940

Ernest Joyce, English explorer (born 1875)

Ernest Edward Mills Joyce AM was a Royal Naval seaman and explorer who participated in four Antarctic expeditions during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, in the early 20th century. He served under both Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton. As a member of the Ross Sea party in Shackleton's Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, Joyce earned an Albert Medal for his actions in bringing the stricken party to safety, after a traumatic journey on the Great Ice Barrier. He was awarded the Polar Medal with four bars, one of only two men to be so honoured, the other being his contemporary, Frank Wild.


02/05/1929

Charalambos Tseroulis, Greek general and politician, Greek Minister for Military Affairs (born 1879)

Charalambos Tseroulis was a distinguished infantry officer of the Hellenic Army who rose to the rank of Lieutenant General.


02/05/1927

Ernest Starling, English physiologist and academic (born 1866)

Ernest Henry Starling was a British physiologist who contributed many fundamental ideas to this subject. These ideas were important parts of the British contribution to physiology, which at that time led the world.


02/05/1925

Antun Branko Šimić, Croatian and Bosnian-Herzegovinian poet (born 1898)

Antun Branko Šimić was a Bosnian and Croatian expressionist poet, considered to be one of the most important poets of Croatian literature of the 20th century.


Johann Palisa, Austrian astronomer (born 1848)

Johann Palisa was an Austrian astronomer, born in Troppau, Austrian Silesia, now Czech Republic. He was a prolific discoverer of asteroids, discovering 122 in all, from 136 Austria in 1874 to 1073 Gellivara in 1923. Some of his notable discoveries include 153 Hilda, 216 Kleopatra, 243 Ida, 253 Mathilde, 324 Bamberga, and the near-Earth asteroid 719 Albert. Palisa made his discoveries without the aid of photography, and he remains the most successful visual (non-photographic) asteroid discoverer of all time. He was awarded the Valz Prize from the French Academy of Sciences in 1906. The asteroid 914 Palisana, discovered by Max Wolf in 1919, and the lunar crater Palisa were named in his honour.


02/05/1918

Jüri Vilms, Estonian lawyer and politician (born 1889)

Jüri Vilms was a member of the Estonian Salvation Committee and the first Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Estonia. Empowered by Maapäev, the Salvation Committee issued the Estonian Declaration of Independence on 24 February 1918 in the middle of a political power vacuum created by the retreating Russian and advancing German troops during World War I. The German forces taking over the country did not recognize the independence of Estonia. The Salvation Committee went underground and Jüri Vilms volunteered to go to Finland to take funds and instructions to the Estonian missions working to get diplomatic recognition for the newly sovereign nation. According to an "official" version, he was captured on reaching the Finnish coast and executed by German troops in Helsinki. According to the latest research Jüri Vilms may have been executed by a unit of the Swedish Brigade in Hauho. Estonia gained its independence after the German troops were withdrawn from Estonia due to the German Revolution and the ensuing Estonian War of Independence ended with Peace Treaty of Tartu.


02/05/1915

Clara Immerwahr, German chemist (born 1870)

Clara Helene Immerwahr was a German chemist. She was the first German woman to be awarded a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Breslau, and is credited with being a pacifist as well as a "heroine of the women's rights movement". From 1901 until her death from suicide in 1915, she was married to the eventual Nobel Prize-winning chemist Fritz Haber.


02/05/1912

Homer Davenport, American political cartoonist (born 1867)

Homer Calvin Davenport was a political cartoonist and writer from the United States. He is known for drawings that satirized figures of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, most notably Ohio Senator Mark Hanna. Although Davenport had no formal art training, he became one of the highest paid political cartoonists in the world. Davenport also was one of the first major American breeders of Arabian horses and one of the founders of the Arabian Horse Club of America.


02/05/1900

Lars Oftedal, Norwegian priest, social reformer, politician, and newspaper editor (born 1838)

Lars Svendsen Oftedal was a Norwegian priest, social reformer, politician, and newspaper editor. He was the founding editor of Stavanger Aftenblad and served as a member of the Storting.


02/05/1885

Terézia Zakoucs, Hungarian-Slovene author (born 1817)

Terézia Zakoucs was a Hungarian Slovene author.


02/05/1880

Eberhard Anheuser, German-American businessman, co-founded Anheuser-Busch (born 1805)

Eberhard Anheuser was a German-American soap and candle maker, and the father-in-law of Adolphus Busch, with whom he co-founded the Anheuser-Busch Company.


Tom Wills, Australian cricketer, co-created Australian rules football (born 1835)

Thomas Wentworth Wills was an Australian sportsman who is credited with being Australia's first cricketer of significance and a founder of Australian rules football. Born in the British penal colony of New South Wales to a wealthy family descended from convicts, Wills grew up in the bush on stations owned by his father, the squatter and politician Horatio Wills, in what is now the state of Victoria. As a child, he befriended local Aboriginal people, learning their language and customs. Aged 14, Wills went to England to attend Rugby School, where he became captain of its cricket team and played an early version of rugby football. After Rugby, Wills represented Cambridge University in the annual cricket match against Oxford, and played at first-class level for Kent and the Marylebone Cricket Club. An athletic bowling all-rounder with tactical nous, he was regarded as one of the finest young cricketers in England.


02/05/1866

José Gálvez Egúsquiza, Peruvian politician (born 1819)

José Gabriel Gálvez Egúsquiza was a Peruvian lawyer, professor and liberal politician. During the presidential government of Mariano Ignacio Prado he was Secretary—i.e. Minister—of War and Navy (1865). He was killed in action during the Battle of Callao, where he died fighting the Spanish squadron, thus becoming a symbol of the independence of America.


02/05/1864

Giacomo Meyerbeer, German composer and educator (born 1791)

Giacomo Meyerbeer was a German opera composer, "the most frequently performed opera composer during the nineteenth century, linking Mozart and Wagner". With his 1831 opera Robert le diable and its successors, he gave the genre of grand opera 'decisive character'. Meyerbeer's grand opera style was achieved by his merging of German orchestra style with Italian vocal tradition. These were employed in the context of sensational and melodramatic libretti created by Eugène Scribe and were enhanced by the up-to-date theatre technology of the Paris Opéra. They set a standard that helped to maintain Paris as the opera capital of the nineteenth century.


02/05/1857

Alfred de Musset, French dramatist, poet, and novelist (born 1810)

Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay was a French dramatist, poet, and novelist. Along with his poetry, he is known for writing the autobiographical novel La Confession d'un enfant du siècle.


02/05/1856

James Gates Percival, American poet, surgeon and geologist (born 1795)

James Gates Percival was an American poet, surgeon, and geologist.


02/05/1832

Zina Hitchcock, New York politician (born 1755)

Zina Hitchcock was a New York politician. A descendant of the early American colonist Samuel Chapin, he was born on November 6, 1755, in Warren or New Milford, Connecticut. His father, John Hitchock, was a member of the Connecticut General Assembly. During the American Revolutionary War, Hitchcock served as an enlisted soldier in the Albany County militia. He moved to Sandy Hill, New York, c. 1783–1784, where he became a prominent landowner, a founding member of the local Masonic Lodge, and built the Zion church. In 1784, he became a founding member of the First Medical Society in Vermont, a predecessor to the Vermont Medical Society.


02/05/1819

Mary Moser, English painter and academic (born 1744)

Mary Moser was an English painter who was one of the most celebrated female artists in 18th-century Britain. One of only two female founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768, Moser painted portraits but is particularly noted for her depictions of flowers.


02/05/1810

Henry Jerome de Salis, English priest (born 1740)

Henry Jerome de Salis, DD, FRS, FSA, was an English churchman. He was Rector of St. Antholin in the City of London and Vicar of Wing in Buckinghamshire. He was also known as: Revd Henry Jerome de Salis, MA; the Hon. & Rev. Henry Jerome De Salis, Count of the Holy Roman Empire; Dr. de Salis; Rev. Dr. Henry Jerome de Salis, and, from 1809, Rev. Count Henry Jerome de Salis.


02/05/1802

Herman Willem Daendels, Dutch general and politician, Governor-General of the Dutch Gold Coast (born 1762)

Herman Willem Daendels was a Dutch military officer and colonial administrator who served as governor-general of the Dutch East Indies from 1808 to 1811.


02/05/1799

Juan Vicente de Güemes, 2nd Count of Revillagigedo (born 1740)

Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, 2nd Count of Revillagigedo was a Spanish military officer and viceroy of New Spain from 17 October 1789 to 11 July 1794. In his role as colonial administrator, he is known as a reformer.


02/05/1711

Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester, English politician, First Lord of the Treasury (born 1641)

Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester, was an English statesman and writer. He was originally a supporter of James II but later supported the Glorious Revolution in 1688. He held high office under Queen Anne, daughter of his sister Anne Hyde, but their frequent disagreements limited his influence.


02/05/1683

Stjepan Gradić, Croatian philosopher and mathematician (born 1613)

Stjepan Gradić, also known as Stefano Gradi was a polymath, philosopher, scientist and a patrician of the Republic of Ragusa.


02/05/1667

George Wither, English poet and author (born 1588)

George Wither was a prolific English poet, pamphleteer, satirist, and writer of hymns. Wither's life spanned one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of England, during the reigns of Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I, the Civil War, the Parliamentary period, and the Restoration period.


02/05/1627

Lodovico Grossi da Viadana, Italian composer and educator (born 1560)

Lodovico Grossi da Viadana was an Italian composer, teacher, and Franciscan friar of the Order of Friars Minor Observants. He was the first significant figure to make use of the newly developed technique of figured bass, one of the musical devices which was to define the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras in music.


02/05/1564

Rodolfo Pio da Carpi, Italian cardinal (born 1500)

Rodolfo Pio di Savoia, often referred to as Rodolfo Pio da Carpi, was an Italian cardinal, humanist and patron of the arts. The nephew of a diplomat, he himself became a diplomat by the age of thirty, and came to know both Emperor Charles V and King Francis of France, and he negotiated with both on behalf of the pope. His uncle, Alberto III Pio, was Pico della Mirandola's maternal nephew, had been educated by Aldus Manutius and had become a noted humanist scholar. These associations formed Rodolfo's background and education. He formed a notable library and participated in the humanist studies of 16th-century Rome; he also served on the Roman Inquisition. He helped to establish the Inquisition at Milan.


02/05/1519

Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, and architect (born 1452)

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested on his achievements as a painter, he has also become known for his notebooks, in which he made drawings and notes on a variety of subjects, including anatomy, astronomy, botany, cartography, painting, and palaeontology. Leonardo is widely regarded as a genius who epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal, and his collective works contributed to the development of European art to an extent rivalled only by that of his younger contemporary Michelangelo.


02/05/1450

William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, English admiral (born 1396)

William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk, nicknamed Jackanapes, was an English magnate, statesman and military commander during the Hundred Years' War. He became a favourite of Henry VI of England, and consequently a leading figure in the English government where he became associated with many of the royal government's failures of the time, particularly on the war in France. Suffolk also appears prominently in Shakespeare's Henry VI, parts 1 and 2.


02/05/1300

Blanche of Artois (born 1248)

Blanche of Artois was Queen of Navarre and Countess of Champagne and Brie during her marriage to Henry I of Navarre. After his death she became regent in the name of their infant daughter, Joan I. She passed on the regency of Navarre to Philip III of France, her cousin and her daughter's prospective father-in-law, but retained the administration of Champagne. She later shared the government of Champagne with her second husband, Edmund, until her daughter reached the age of majority.


02/05/1293

Meir of Rothenburg, German rabbi (born c.1215)

Meir of Rothenburg (c. 1215 – 2 May 1293) was a German Rabbi and poet, as well as a major contributing author of the tosafot on Rashi's commentary on the Talmud. He is also known as Meir ben Baruch, and by the Hebrew language acronym Maharam of Rothenburg. He was referred to by Rabbi Menachem Meiri as the "greatest Jewish leader of Zarfat" alive at the time.


02/05/1230

William de Braose, English son of Reginald de Braose (born 1197)

William de Braose was the son of Reginald de Braose by his first wife, Grecia Briwere. He was an ill-fated member of the House of Braose, a powerful and long-lived dynasty of Marcher Lords.


02/05/1219

Leo I, King of Armenia (born 1150)

Leo I was the tenth lord of Armenian Cilicia, ruling from 1187 to 1219, and the first king to be crowned, in 1198/9. Leo eagerly led his kingdom alongside the armies of the Third Crusade and provided the crusaders with provisions, guides, pack animals and all manner of aid.


02/05/0907

Boris I of Bulgaria

Boris I, venerated as Saint Boris I (Mihail) the Baptizer, was the ruler (knyaz) of the First Bulgarian Empire from 852 to 889. Despite a number of military setbacks, the reign of Boris I was marked with significant events that shaped Bulgarian and European history. With the Christianization of Bulgaria in 864, paganism was abolished. A skillful diplomat, Boris I successfully exploited the conflict between the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Papacy to secure an autocephalous Bulgarian Church, thus dealing with the nobility's concerns about Byzantine interference in Bulgaria's internal affairs.


02/05/0821

Liu Zong, general of the Tang dynasty

Liú Zǒng, dharma name Dàjué (大覺), formally Duke of Chǔ (楚公), was a general of the Tang dynasty. He took over control of Lúlóng Circuit in 810 after killing his father Liú Jì (劉濟) as well as his brother Liú Gǔn (劉緄), and thereafter ruled the circuit de facto independently from the imperial government. In 821, he submitted the circuit to imperial control and took tonsure to be a Buddhist monk. He died shortly after.


02/05/0649

Marutha of Tikrit, Persian theologian of the Syriac Orthodox Church (born 565)

Marutha of Tikrit was the Grand Metropolitan of the East and head of the Syriac Orthodox Church of the East from 628 or 629 until his death in 649. He is commemorated as a saint by the Syriac Orthodox Church.


02/05/0373

Athanasius of Alexandria, Egyptian bishop and saint (born 298)

Year 373 (CCCLXXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Augustus and Valens. The denomination 373 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.


02/05/-1203

Merneptah, pharaoh of Egypt

The 1200s BC is a decade that lasted from 1209 BC to 1200 BC.


Celebrations & Special Days Worldwide on 2nd May

Christian feast day: Ahudemmeh (Syriac Orthodox Church).

Ahudemmeh was the Grand Metropolitan of the East in the Syriac Orthodox Church from 559 until his execution in 575. He was known as the Apostle of the Arabs, and is commemorated as a saint by the Syriac Orthodox Church.


Christian feast day: Athanasius of Alexandria (Western Christianity)

Athanasius I of Alexandria, also called Athanasius the Great, Athanasius the Confessor, or, among Coptic Christians, Athanasius the Apostolic, was a Christian theologian and the 20th patriarch of Alexandria. His intermittent episcopacy spanned 45 years, of which over 17 encompassed five exiles, when he was replaced on the order of four different Roman emperors. Athanasius was a Church Father, the chief proponent of Trinitarianism against Arianism, and a noted Egyptian Christian leader of the fourth century.


Christian feast day: Bolesław Strzelecki (Catholic Church)

Bolesław Strzelecki (1896–1941) was a Polish and Roman Catholic priest. He was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. He is one of the 108 Blessed Polish Martyrs.


Christian feast day: Boris I of Bulgaria (Bulgarian Orthodox Church)

Boris I, venerated as Saint Boris I (Mihail) the Baptizer, was the ruler (knyaz) of the First Bulgarian Empire from 852 to 889. Despite a number of military setbacks, the reign of Boris I was marked with significant events that shaped Bulgarian and European history. With the Christianization of Bulgaria in 864, paganism was abolished. A skillful diplomat, Boris I successfully exploited the conflict between the Patriarchate of Constantinople and the Papacy to secure an autocephalous Bulgarian Church, thus dealing with the nobility's concerns about Byzantine interference in Bulgaria's internal affairs.


Christian feast day: Germanus of Normandy

Germanus of Normandy, also known as Germanus the Scot, is a Christian saint venerated especially in Normandy. He was a disciple of Germanus of Auxerre, from whom he took his baptismal name.


Christian feast day: Joseph Luu Van Nguyen (Catholic Church)

Vietnamese Martyrs, also known as the Martyrs of Tonkin and Cochinchina, collectively Martyrs of Annam or formerly Martyrs of Indochina, are saints of the Catholic Church who died between 1745 and 1862, and were canonized by Pope John Paul II. On June 19, 1988, thousands of overseas Vietnamese worldwide gathered at St. Peter's Square for the celebration of the canonization of 117 Vietnamese Martyrs, an event organized by Monsignor Trần Văn Hoài. Their memorial in the current General Roman Calendar, which refers to Saint Andrew Dũng-Lạc and Companions, is on November 24, although many of these saints have a second memorial, having been beatified and inscribed on the local calendar prior to the canonization of the group.


Christian feast day: Wiborada (Catholic Church)

Wiborada of St. Gall was a member of the Swabian nobility in what is present-day Switzerland. She was an anchoress, Benedictine nun, and martyr.


Christian feast day: William Tirry (Catholic Church)

William Tirry OSA was an Irish Roman Catholic priest of the Order of Saint Augustine following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland. He was captured by the priest hunters at Fethard, County Tipperary while continuing his priestly ministry covertly and was hanged at Clonmel, officially for high treason against the Commonwealth of England, but in reality as part of The Protectorate's systematic religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Pope John Paul II beatified Friar William Tirry as one of the 24 officially recognized Irish Catholic Martyrs in 1992.


Christian feast day: May 2 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

May 1 - Eastern Orthodox Church calendar - May 3


The last day of the Festival of Ridván (Baháʼí Faith) (this date is non-Gregorian and may change according to the March equinox, see List of observances set by the Baháʼí calendar)

Riḍván is a twelve-day festival in the Bahá'í Faith commemorating Bahá'u'lláh's declaration that he was a Manifestation of God. In the Bahá'í calendar, it begins at sunset on the 13th of Jalál, which translates to the 20th or 21 April, depending on the date of the March equinox. In 2026, it begins in the evening of 21 April. On the first, ninth and twelfth days of Ridván, work and school should be suspended.


Anniversary of the Dos de Mayo Uprising (Community of Madrid, Spain)

The Dos de Mayo or Second of May Uprising took place in Madrid, Spain, on 2–3 May 1808. The rebellion, mainly by civilians, with some isolated military action by junior officers, was against the occupation of the city by French troops, and was violently repressed by the French Imperial forces, with hundreds of public executions. These actions led to the Spanish people revolting against French occupation and outbreak of the Peninsular War, and ended the Franco-Spanish alliance in the Napoleonic Wars.


Birth Anniversary of Third Druk Gyalpo (Bhutan)

Public holidays in Bhutan consist of both national holidays and local festivals or tshechus. While national holidays are observed throughout Bhutan, tsechus are only observed in their areas. Bhutan uses its own calendar, a variant of the lunisolar Tibetan calendar. Because it is a lunisolar calendar, dates of some national holidays and most tshechus change from year to year. For example, the new year, Losar, generally falls between February and March.


Flag Day (Poland)

The Polish National Flag Day, also known as the Day of the Flag of the Republic of Poland, is a national holiday in Poland which takes place on 2 May every year. The holiday is celebrated on the day between two national holidays: 1 May and 3 May.


Indonesia National Education Day

Indonesian National Education Day or Hari Pendidikan Nasional abbreviated as HARDIKNAS is celebrated on 2 May. It was initiated in remembrance of Ki Hajar Dewantara, the founder of the Taman Siswa education system. His educational philosophy Tut Wuri Handayani means that we can help others learn by coaching and mentoring.


Teachers' Day (Iran) (this date is non-Gregorian and may change according to the March Equinox, see List of observances set by the Solar Hijri calendar)

Teachers' Day is a special day for the appreciation of teachers. It may include celebrations to honor them for their special contributions in a particular field area, or the community tone in education. This is one of the most celebrated days and the primary reason why countries celebrate this day on different dates, unlike many other International Days. For example, Argentina has commemorated Domingo Faustino Sarmiento's death on 11 September as Teachers' Day since 1915. In India, the birthday of the second president Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, 5 September, is celebrated as Teachers' Day since 1962.


International Harry Potter Day

Harry Potter is a series of seven children's fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young wizard, Harry Potter, and his friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The main story arc concerns Harry's conflict with Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard who intends to become immortal, overthrow the wizard governing body known as the Ministry of Magic, and subjugate all wizards and non-magical people, known in-universe as Muggles.


World Tuna Day


What Happened on 2nd May?

48 significant events took place on Tuesday, 2nd May — stretching from 1194 to 2014. Explore the moments that shaped history on this day.

02/05/2014

Two mudslides in Badakhshan, Afghanistan, leave up to 2,500 people missing.

On 2 May 2014, a pair of mudslides occurred in Argo District, Badakhshan Province, Afghanistan. The death toll is uncertain, the number of deaths is believed to be at least 350 and no more than 2,700. Around 300 houses were buried and over 14,000 were affected. Rescuers responding to the initial mudslide were struck by a second mudslide, which further hampered rescue efforts.


02/05/2012

A pastel version of The Scream, by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, sells for $120 million in a New York City auction, setting a new world record for a work of art at auction.

A pastel is an art medium that consists of powdered pigment and a binder. It can exist in a variety of forms, including a stick, a square, a pebble, and a pan of color, among other forms. The pigments used in pastels are similar to those used to produce some other colored visual arts media, such as oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation. The color effect of pastels is closer to the natural dry pigments than that of any other process.


02/05/2011

Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI's most wanted fugitive, is killed by the United States Navy SEALs in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Osama bin Muhammad bin 'Awad bin Laden was the founder and first general emir of al-Qaeda from 1988 until his death in 2011. A Salafi jihadist, bin Laden worked to establish a pan-Islamist caliphate by using al-Qaeda to organize and fund jihadist militants and terrorists worldwide. Al-Qaeda's terrorist attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001 directly killed 2,977 victims, and caused the global war on terror.


An E. coli outbreak strikes Europe, mostly in Germany, leaving more than 30 people dead and many others are taken ill.

A novel strain of Escherichia coli O104:H4 bacteria caused a serious outbreak of foodborne illness focused in northern Germany in May through June 2011. The illness was characterized by bloody diarrhea, with a high frequency of serious complications, including hemolytic–uremic syndrome (HUS), a condition that requires urgent treatment. The outbreak was originally thought to have been caused by an enterohemorrhagic (EHEC) strain of E. coli, but it was later shown to have been caused by an enteroaggregative E. coli (EAEC) strain that had acquired the genes to produce Shiga toxins, present in organic fenugreek sprouts.


02/05/2008

Cyclone Nargis makes landfall in Burma killing over 138,000 people and leaving millions of people homeless.

Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm Nargis was an extremely deadly and catastrophic tropical cyclone that caused the worst natural disaster in the recorded history of Myanmar during early May 2008. The cyclone made landfall in Myanmar on 2 May 2008, sending a storm surge 40 kilometres up the densely populated Irrawaddy delta, causing catastrophic destruction and at least 138,373 fatalities. The Labutta Township alone was reported to have 80,000 dead, with about 10,000 more deaths in Bogale. There were around 55,000 people missing and many other deaths were found in other towns and areas, although the Myanmar government's official death toll may have been under-reported, and there have been allegations that government officials stopped updating the death toll after 138,000 to minimise political fallout. The feared 'second wave' of fatalities from disease and lack of relief efforts never materialised. Damage was at 13 trillion kyat (US$15.3 billion), making Nargis the costliest tropical cyclone on record in the North Indian Ocean at the time, before that record was broken by Amphan in 2020.


Chaitén Volcano begins erupting in Chile, forcing the evacuation of more than 4,500 people.

Chaitén is a volcanic caldera 3 kilometres (2 mi) in diameter, 17 kilometres (11 mi) west of the elongated ice-capped Michinmahuida volcano and 10 kilometres (6 mi) northeast of the town of Chaitén, near the Gulf of Corcovado in southern Chile. The most recent eruptive phase of the volcano erupted on 2008. Originally, radiocarbon dating of older tephra from the volcano suggested that its last previous eruption was in 7420 BC ± 75 years. However, recent studies have found that the volcano is more active than thought. According to the Global Volcanism Program, its last eruption was in 2011.


02/05/2004

The Yelwa massacre concludes. It began on 4 February 2004 when armed Muslims killed 78 Christians at Yelwa, Nigeria. In response, about 630 Muslims were killed by Christians on May 2.

The Yelwa massacre was a series of related incidents of religious violence between Muslims and Christians which took place in Yelwa, Nigeria between February and May 2004. These incidents killed over 700 people. it occurred on 4 February 2004 when armed men attacked the Christians of Yelwa, killing more than 78 Christians, including at least 48 who were worshipping inside a church compound. Then on May 2 and 3, large numbers of well-armed Christians surrounded the town of Yelwa and killed around seven hundred Muslims.Yelwa and many surrounding villages suffered massive destruction, and tens of thousands of people were displaced.


02/05/2000

President Bill Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military.

William Jefferson Clinton is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979 and as the governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and again from 1983 to 1992. His centrist "Third Way" political philosophy became known as Clintonism, which dominated his presidency and the succeeding decades of Democratic Party history.


02/05/1999

Panamanian general election: Mireya Moscoso becomes the first woman to be elected President of Panama.

General elections were held in Panama on 2 May 1999, electing both a new President of the Republic and a new Legislative Assembly.


02/05/1998

The European Central Bank is founded in Brussels in order to define and execute the European Union's monetary policy.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central component of the Eurosystem and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) as well as one of seven institutions of the European Union. It is one of the world's most important central banks, heading a system with a combined balance sheet of close to €7 trillion.


02/05/1995

During the Croatian War of Independence, the Army of the Republic of Serb Krajina fires cluster bombs at Zagreb, killing seven and wounding over 175 civilians.

The Croatian War of Independence was an armed conflict fought in Croatia from 1991 to 1995 between Croat forces loyal to the Government of Croatia—which had declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY)—and the Serb-controlled Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and local Serb forces, with the JNA ending its combat operations by 1992.


02/05/1989

Cold War: Hungary begins dismantling its border fence with Austria, which allows a number of East Germans to defect.

The Cold War was a period of international geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc. It began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.


02/05/1986

Chernobyl disaster: The City of Chernobyl is evacuated six days after the disaster.

On 26 April 1986, reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located near Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, exploded. With dozens of direct casualties and thousands of health complications stemming from the disaster, it is one of only two nuclear accidents rated at the maximum severity on the International Nuclear Event Scale, the other being the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. The response involved more than 500,000 personnel and cost an estimated 18 billion rubles. It remains the worst nuclear disaster and the most expensive disaster in history, with an estimated cost of US$700 billion.


02/05/1982

Falklands War: The British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror sinks the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano.

The Falklands War was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British Overseas Territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and its territorial dependency, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The conflict began on 2 April 1982, when Argentina invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands, followed by the invasion of South Georgia the next day. On 5 April the British government dispatched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force before making an amphibious assault on the islands. The conflict lasted 74 days and ended with an Argentine surrender on 14 June, returning the islands to British control. In total, 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel and three Falkland Islanders were killed during the hostilities.


02/05/1972

In the early morning hours a fire breaks out at the Sunshine Mine located between Kellogg and Wallace, Idaho, killing 91 workers.

The Sunshine Mine is located between the cities of Kellogg and Wallace in northern Idaho. It has been one of the world's largest and most profitable silver mines, having produced over 360 million ounces of silver by 2001.


02/05/1970

ALM Flight 980 ditches in the Caribbean Sea near Saint Croix, killing 23.

ALM Flight 980 was a regularly scheduled international passenger flight that originated in John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, to Princess Juliana International Airport in St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles, on May 2, 1970. After several unsuccessful landing attempts, the aircraft's fuel was exhausted, and it made a forced water landing in the Caribbean Sea 48 km off St. Croix, with 23 fatalities and 40 survivors.


02/05/1969

The British ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 departs on her maiden voyage to New York City.

Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) is a retired British ocean liner. Built by John Brown & Company on the River Clyde in Scotland for the Cunard Line, the ship was operated as a transatlantic liner and cruise ship from 1969 to 2008. She was laid up until converted into a floating hotel in Dubai.


02/05/1964

Vietnam War: An explosion sinks the American aircraft carrier USNS Card while it is docked at Saigon. Two Viet Cong combat swimmers had placed explosives on the ship's hull. She is raised and returned to service less than seven months later.

The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and US. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until US forces were withdrawn in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian civil wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.


First ascent of Shishapangma, the fourteenth highest mountain in the world and the lowest of the Eight-thousanders.

In mountaineering and climbing, a first ascent, is the first successful documented climb to the top of a mountain peak or the top of a particular climbing route. Early 20th-century mountaineers and climbers were mainly focused on reaching the tops of notable mountain peaks and the tops of iconic climbing routes by whatever means possible, and often using considerable amounts of aid climbing and/or with large expedition style support teams allowing them to "lay siege" to the climb.


02/05/1963

Berthold Seliger launches a rocket with three stages and a maximum flight altitude of more than 100 kilometres (62 mi) near Cuxhaven. It is the only sounding rocket developed in Germany.

The Berthold Seliger Forschungs- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft mbH (BSFEGmbH) was a company founded by West German rocket technical designer Berthold Seliger in 1961. Seliger was a former assistant theoretician professor Dr. Eugen Sänger. The company developed and built prototypes of sounding rockets and launched them near Cuxhaven. The BSFEGmbH cooperated strongly with the Hermann-Oberth-Gesellschaft, of which Berthold Seliger was a member. The first rocket developed by the BSFEGmbH was an improved version of the Kumulus, which was first launched on 19 November 1962 and reached a height of 50 kilometres. On 7 February 1963 the BSFEGmbH launched a two-stage rocket with a maximum height of 80 kilometres and, on 2 May 1963, they launched a three-stage rocket with a maximum flight height of more than 100 kilometres. The latter rocket may have attained the highest flight altitude of all rockets built in post-war Germany. The signals from all these rockets were also received at the observatory in Bochum. After May 1963 the BSFEGmbH worked on the improvement of the steering system of their rockets and thought also on military usable rockets.


02/05/1952

A De Havilland Comet makes the first jetliner flight with fare-paying passengers, from London to Johannesburg.

The de Havilland DH.106 Comet is a four-engine narrow body aircraft developed and manufactured by de Havilland in the United Kingdom. The world's first commercial jet airliner, the Comet 1 prototype first flew in 1949. It features an aerodynamically clean design with four de Havilland Ghost turbojet engines located in the wing roots, a pressurised cabin, and large windows. For the era, it offered a relatively quiet, comfortable passenger cabin and was commercially promising at its debut in 1952.


02/05/1945

World War II: The Soviet Union announces the fall of Berlin.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, the largest by area, and bordered twelve countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, with the largest and most populous being the Russian SFSR. In practice, its government and economy were highly centralized. As a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, it was the flagship communist state. Its capital and largest city was Moscow.


World War II: The surrender of Caserta comes into effect, by which German troops in Italy cease fighting.

The Surrender at Caserta of 29 April 1945 was the written agreement that formalized the surrender of German and Italian Fascist forces in Italy, ending the Italian Campaign of World War II.


World War II: The US 82nd Airborne Division liberates Wöbbelin concentration camp finding 1,000 dead prisoners, most of whom starved to death.

Wöbbelin was a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp near the city of Ludwigslust. The SS had established Wöbbelin to house concentration camp prisoners whom the SS had evacuated from other camps to prevent their liberation by the Allies. At its height, Wöbbelin held some 5,000 inmates, most of whom were suffering from starvation and disease. The camp was freed on May 2, 1945.


World War II: A death march from Dachau to the Austrian border is halted by the segregated, all-Nisei 522nd Field Artillery Battalion of the U.S. Army in southern Bavaria, saving several hundred prisoners.

During the Holocaust, death marches were massive forced transfers of prisoners from one Nazi camp to other locations, which involved walking long distances resulting in numerous deaths of weakened people. Most death marches took place toward the end of World War II, mostly after the summer/autumn of 1944. Hundreds of thousands of prisoners, mostly Jews, from Nazi camps near the Eastern Front were moved to camps inside Germany away from the Allied forces. Their purpose was to continue the use of prisoners' slave labour, to remove evidence of crimes against humanity, and to keep the prisoners to bargain with the Allies.


02/05/1941

World War II: Following the coup d'état against Iraq Crown Prince 'Abd al-Ilah earlier that year, the United Kingdom launches the Anglo-Iraqi War to restore him to power.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.


02/05/1933

Germany's independent labor unions are replaced by the German Labour Front.

The German Labour Front was the national labour organization of the Nazi Party, which replaced the various independent trade unions in Germany during the process of Gleichschaltung or Nazification.


02/05/1920

The first game of the Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis.

The first Negro National League was a major professional baseball organization that laid the foundation for Black baseball in the early twentieth century. From 1920 to 1931, during the period of time when organized baseball in the United States was segregated, the league served as the highest level of competition for African American athletes. Under Rube Foster’s leadership, the NNL became one of the first Black baseball leagues to establish lasting stability and organization. The league created conditions that allowed Black teams to compete more consistently than they could in previous decades.


02/05/1906

Closing ceremony of the Intercalated Games in Athens, Greece.

The 1906 Intercalated Games or 1906 Olympic Games, held from 22 April 1906 to 2 May 1906, was an international multi-sport event that was celebrated in Athens, Greece. It was at the time considered to be part of the series of the Olympic Games, and was referred to as the "Second International Olympic Games in Athens" by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). However, the medals that were distributed to the participants during these Games were later not officially recognised by the IOC and are not displayed with the collection of Olympic medals at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland.


02/05/1889

Menelik II, Emperor of Ethiopia, signs the Treaty of Wuchale, giving Italy control over Eritrea.

Menelik II, baptised as Sahle Maryam, was king of Shewa from 1866 to 1889 and Emperor of Ethiopia from 1889 to his death in 1913. A member of the Solomonic dynasty, Menelik expanded the Ethiopian Empire to its greatest historical extent and defeated Italian colonial forces at the Battle of Adwa in 1896. He is widely regarded as the founder of the modern Ethiopian state.


02/05/1885

Cree and Assiniboine warriors win the Battle of Cut Knife, their largest victory over Canadian forces during the North-West Rebellion.

The Cree are a North American Indigenous people, numbering more than 350,000 in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations macro-communities. There are numerous Cree peoples and several nations closely related to the Cree, these being the Plains Cree, Woodland Cree, Rocky Cree, Swampy Cree, Moose Cree, and East Cree with the Atikamekw, Innu, and Naskapi being closely related. Also closely related to the Cree are the Oji-Cree and Métis, both nations of mixed heritage, the former with Ojibweg (Chippewa) and the latter with European fur traders. Cree homelands account for a majority of eastern and central Canada, from Eeyou Istchee in the east in what is now Quebec to northern Ontario, much of the Canadian Prairies, and up into British Columbia and the Northwest Territories. Although a majority of Cree live in Canada, there are small communities in the United States, living mostly in Montana where they share Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation with the Ojibwe people.


02/05/1876

The April Uprising breaks out in Ottoman Bulgaria.

The April Uprising was an insurrection organised by the Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire from April to May 1876. The rebellion was suppressed by irregular Ottoman bashi-bazouk units that engaged in indiscriminate slaughter of both rebels and non-combatants.


02/05/1867

Albert Günther publishes the first study to recognise that the New Zealand tuatara is not a lizard.

Albert Karl Ludwig Gotthilf Günther, also Albert Charles Lewis Gotthilf Günther, was a German-born British zoologist, ichthyologist, and herpetologist. Günther is ranked the second-most productive reptile taxonomist with more than 340 reptile species described and the third-most productive fish taxonomist with about 1600 fish species described.


02/05/1866

Peruvian defenders fight off the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Callao.

Peruvians are the citizens of Peru. What is now Peru has been inhabited for several millennia by cultures such as the Caral before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Peruvian population decreased from an estimated 5–9 million in the 1520s to around 600,000 in 1620 mainly because of infectious diseases carried by the Spanish. Spaniards and Africans arrived in large numbers in 1532 under colonial rule, mixing widely with each other and with Native Peruvians. During the Republic, there has been a gradual immigration of European people. Chinese and Japanese arrived in large numbers at the end of the 19th century.


02/05/1863

American Civil War: Stonewall Jackson is wounded by friendly fire while returning to camp after reconnoitering during the Battle of Chancellorsville. He succumbs to pneumonia eight days later.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.


02/05/1829

After anchoring nearby, Captain Charles Fremantle of HMS Challenger declares the Swan River Colony in Australia.

Admiral Sir Charles Howe Fremantle GCB was a British Royal Navy officer. The city of Fremantle, Western Australia, is named after him.


02/05/1812

The Siege of Cuautla during the Mexican War of Independence ends with both sides claiming victory.

The siege of Cuautla was a battle of the War of Mexican Independence that occurred from 19 February through 2 May 1812 at Cuautla, Morelos. The Spanish royalist forces loyal to the Spanish, commanded by Félix María Calleja, besieged the town of Cuautla and its Mexican rebel defenders fighting for independence from the Spanish Empire. The rebels were commanded by José María Morelos y Pavón, Hermenegildo Galeana, and Mariano Matamoros. The battle results are disputed, but it is generally agreed that the battle resulted more favorably for the Spanish whose siege was ultimately successful with the Mexican withdrawal on 2 May 1812.


02/05/1808

Outbreak of the Peninsular War: The people of Madrid rise up in rebellion against French occupation. Francisco de Goya later memorializes this event in his painting The Second of May 1808.

The Peninsular War (1808–1814) was fought in the Iberian Peninsula by the Iberian nations Spain and Portugal, along with the United Kingdom, against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain, it is considered to overlap with the Spanish War of Independence. It overlapped with the War of the Fifth Coalition (1809) and the War of the Sixth Coalition (1812–1814).


02/05/1670

King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson's Bay Company to open up the fur trade in North America.

Charles II was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651 and King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685.


02/05/1625

Afonso Mendes, appointed by Pope Gregory XV as Latin Patriarch of Ethiopia, arrives at Beilul from Goa.

Father Afonso Mendes was a Portuguese Jesuit theologian, and Patriarch of Ethiopia from 1622 to 1634. While E. A. Wallis Budge has expressed the commonly accepted opinion of this man, as being "rigid, uncompromising, narrow-minded, and intolerant", there are some who disagree with it. The writings of Mendes include Expeditionis Aethiopicae, which describes the customs and conditions of Ethiopia.


02/05/1611

The King James Version of the Bible is published for the first time in London, England, by printer Robert Barker.

The King James Version (KJV), also known as the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I. The 80 books of the KJV include 39 books of the Old Testament, 14 books of Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament.


02/05/1568

Mary, Queen of Scots, escapes from Lochleven Castle.

Mary, Queen of Scots, also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, was Queen of Scotland from 14 December 1542 until her forced abdication on 24 July 1567.


02/05/1559

John Knox returns from exile to Scotland to become the leader of the nascent Scottish Reformation.

John Knox was a Scottish minister, Reformed theologian, and writer who was a leader of the country's Reformation. He was the reformer of the Church of Scotland.


02/05/1536

Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, is arrested and imprisoned on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft.

Anne Boleyn was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536, as the second wife of King Henry VIII. The circumstances of her marriage and execution, by beheading for treason, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that marked the start of the English Reformation.


02/05/1388

The surrender of the Acropolis of Athens to Nerio Acciaioli ends the Catalan presence in the Duchy of Athens.

The Acropolis of Athens is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens, Greece, and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, the most famous being the Parthenon. The word Acropolis is from Greek ἄκρον (akron) 'highest point, extremity' and πόλις (polis) 'city'. The term acropolis is generic and there are many other acropoleis in Greece. During ancient times the Acropolis of Athens was also more properly known as Cecropia (Κεκροπία), after the legendary serpent-man Cecrops, the supposed first Athenian king.


02/05/1250

Mamluks under Baybars murder the Ayyubid sultan Turanshah for fear of losing their privileges.

Mamluk or mamaluk were non-Arab, ethnically diverse enslaved mercenaries, slave-soldiers, and freed slaves who were assigned high-ranking military and administrative duties in the Muslim world. They were purchased as military slaves, converted to Islam, and trained in martial and courtly skills. Upon completion of their training they were freed, but remained part of the ruling military caste, forming elite regiments and, in some periods and regions, rising to sovereign power.


02/05/1230

William de Braose is hanged by Prince Llywelyn the Great.

William de Braose was the son of Reginald de Braose by his first wife, Grecia Briwere. He was an ill-fated member of the House of Braose, a powerful and long-lived dynasty of Marcher Lords.


02/05/1194

King Richard I of England gives Portsmouth its first royal charter.

Richard I, known as Richard the Lionheart or Richard Cœur de Lion because of his reputation as a great military leader and warrior, was King of England from 1189 until his death in 1199. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine, and Gascony; Lord of Cyprus; Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, and Nantes; and was overlord of Brittany at various times during the same period. He was the third of five sons of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine and was therefore not expected to become king, but his two elder brothers predeceased their father.