1786 – Opening night of the opera The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in Vienna, Austria. Here’s the overture.

1840 – The Penny Black, the first official adhesive postage stamp, is issued in the United Kingdom. Our postal service had to ditch plans for a Barack Obama stamp because people were having trouble deciding which side to spit on.

1862 – American Civil War: The Union Army completes its capture of New Orleans. Back then New Orleans was NOT happy about this. Today New Orleans LOVES it some feddle gummint!

1898 – Spanish-American War: The Battle of Manila Bay – the United States Navy destroys the Spanish Pacific fleet in the first battle of the war. “You may fire when ready, Gridley” pretty much puts an end to the Spanish Pacific Fleet.

1925 – The first Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer was held at the University of Toronto, Canada. I’ve experienced the Gulf Coast version of the Ritual Calling. It goes like “Cajun! The plant’s in the DARK! How soon can you get out here?”

1931 – The Empire State Building is dedicated in New York City. Bite it, Eiffel Tower… Of course the Empire State Building doesn’t have that neat arched base for the German Army to march under.

1945 – World War II: A German newsreader officially announces that Adolf Hitler has “fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancellery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and for Germany”. The mainstream media in America similarly covers any dimmocrat’s tracks.

1945 – World War II: Up to 2,500 people die in a mass suicide in Demmin following the advance of the Red Army. Death is preferable to rape, torture and enslavement by our ‘ally’.

1948 – The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) is established, with Kim Il-sung as president. Any time you hear a politician talk about ‘democratic’ or ‘people’, you can bet it WON’T be democratic and the PEOPLE are going to be soundly screwed. And we’re on our third Kim, maybe the fourth…

1956 – The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk is made available to the public. Most people today don’t even know what polio is, but when I was a kid, it was just about the scariest thing around. This vaccine stopped it dead.

1960 – Cold War: U-2 incident – Francis Gary Powers, in a Lockheed U-2 spyplane, is shot down over the Soviet Union, sparking a diplomatic crisis.

1961 – The Prime Minister of Cuba, Fidel Castro, proclaims Cuba a socialist nation and abolishes elections. Why waste energy on all the ‘election’ nonsense. We know what’s best for you. (And US)

1971 – Amtrak (the National Railroad Passenger Corporation) is formed to take over U.S. passenger rail service, marking the day that American passenger rail transport became the envy of the world, right?

1982 – Operation Black Buck begins. The RAF attack on the Argentine Air Force during Falklands War. Back when Britain (Under the leadership of Lady Margaret Thatcher) had guts enough to make England stand tall in the world. The raids, at almost 6,800 nautical miles (12,600 km) and 16 hours for the return journey, were the longest-ranged bombing raids in history at that time (surpassed in the Gulf War of 1991 by USAF Boeing B-52G Stratofortresses flying from the continental United States but using forward-positioned tankers).

1989 – Disney-MGM Studios opens at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida, United States. Centrifugal bumblepuppy. Are you not entertained?

1992 – On the third day of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, African-American activist, criminal, and victim of police beating Rodney King appears in public before television news cameras to appeal for calm and plead for peace, asking, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”. The answer, of course, is “NO!” as long as we are forced to subsidize laziness, ignore crime and pour billions upon billions of dollars into neighborhoods that never produce a single thing besides bad music, crime, and dimmocrat voters with a huge sense of entitlement. Attacks are carried out on anybody and everybody by the FSA (Free Sh*t Army) and Korean store owners take to their rooftops with rifles to protect their businesses while the police department avoids the riot areas.

2002 – OpenOffice.org released version 1.0, the first stable version of the software. It’s free, open-source, and a very capable alternative to Micro$oft.

2006 – The Puerto Rican government closes the Department of Education and 42 other government agencies due to significant shortages in cash flow. I’ve got a GREAT idea! Let’s make ‘em a STATE!

2011 – Barack Obama announces that Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks is killed by United States special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Due to the time difference between the United States and Pakistan, bin Laden was killed on May 2 in Pakistan. This is announced in a typical Obama “I – My – Me” speech.

And of course, May 1 is May Day, International Workers’ Day, Day of the International Solidarity of Workers, widely celebrated by oligarchs who run “democratic people’s republics”. That’s worked out real well for the Soviet Union and North Korea and Cuba and all that, and for the hundreds of millions of people who died as the Communists break few eggs to make the socialist omelet.