Today:
1494 – Christopher Columbus sighted Jamaica during his second voyage to the New World.
1715 – A total solar eclipse was visible across northern Europe, famously observed by astronomer Edmond Halley.
1791 – The Constitution of May 3 was adopted in Poland, becoming Europe’s first and the world’s second modern written national constitution.
1802 – Washington, D.C. was incorporated as a city.
1915 – The poem “In Flanders Fields” was written by Canadian military doctor John McCrae during the Second Battle of Ypres.
1937 – Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel “Gone with the Wind”.
1947 – Japan’s postwar constitution, which included renouncing war, went into effect.
1979 – Margaret Thatcher became the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1999 – NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the Kosovo War, killing three journalists and causing diplomatic tensions.
2016 – A wildfire forced the evacuation of nearly 90,000 people from Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada.