May 18
In what may have been baseball’s first labor strike, the Detroit Tigers refuse to play after team leader Ty Cobb is suspended: He went into the stands and beat a fan who had been heckling him. Cobb was reinstated and the Tigers went back to work after the team manager’s failed attempt to replace the players with a local college team. – 1912.
A crowd of protesters, estimated to number more than one million, marches through the streets of Beijing, China to call for a more democratic political system. Just a few weeks later, the Chinese government moved to crush the protests when thousands were killed and more than 10,000 were arrested in what came to be known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre. – 1989.
Mount St. Helens in Washington erupts, and causes a massive avalanche and kills 57. Ash from the volcanic eruption fell as far away as Minnesota. – 1980.
May 19
Explosion in Coal Creek, Tenn. kills 184 miners. – 1902.
Shootout in Matewan, W. Va. between striking union miners, led by police chief Sid Hatfield, and coal company agents. Ten died, including seven agents. – 1920.
British prime minister Winston Churchill and U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt set a date for the cross-Channel landing that would become D-Day, May 1, 1944. That date will prove a bit premature, because bad weather becomes a factor. – 1943.
Thirty-one dockworkers are killed, 350 workers and others are injured, when four barges carrying 467 tons of ammunition blow up at South Amboy, N.J.. They were transporting mines that had been deemed unsafe by the Army and were being shipped to the Asian market for sale. – 1950.
May 20
The U.S. Congress passes the Homestead Act which allows adults over the age of 21, male and female, to claim 160 acres of land from the public domain. Eligible persons had to cultivate the land and improve it by building a barn or house, and live on the claim for five years, at which time the land became theirs with a $10. filing fee. – 1862.
San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nev., tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, which marks the birth of one of the world’s most famous garments: Blue jeans. – 1873.
The Railway Labor Act took effect today. It was the first federal legislation protecting workers’ rights to form unions. – 1926.
May 21
In Washington, D.C., humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons found the American National Red Cross, an organization established to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and natural disasters. – 1881.
American pilot Charles A. Lindbergh lands at Le Bourget Field in Paris, to successfully complete the first solo, nonstop transatlantic flight and the first nonstop flight between New York to Paris, which took 33½ hours. – 1927.
May 22
A massive wagon train, made up of 1,000 settlers and 1,000 head of cattle, sets off down the Oregon Trail from Independence, Mo., known as the “Great Emigration.” -1843.
May 23
An estimated 100,000 textile workers, including more than 10,000 children, strike in the Philadelphia area. Among the issues: 60-hour work weeks, including night hours, for the children. – 1903.
Famed fugitives, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, are killed in a police ambush near Sailes, La.. A contingent of officers from Texas and Louisiana set up along the highway, waiting for Bonnie and Clyde to appear, and then unload a two-minute fusillade of 167 bullets at their car, to kill the criminal couple. – 1934.
Ten thousand strikers at Toledo, Ohio’s Auto-Lite plant repel police who have come to break up their strike for union recognition. The next day, two strikers are killed and 15 wounded when National Guard machine gun units open fire. Two weeks later the company recognized the union and agreed to a five percent raise. – 1934.
May 24
After 14 years of construction and the deaths of 27 workers, the Brooklyn Bridge over New York’s East River opens. Newspapers call it “the eighth wonder of the world.” – 1883.
A referee’s call disallowed an apparent goal for Peru in a soccer match between Peru and Argentina, a qualifying game for the 1964 Olympics. The stadium crowd went wild and the resulting panic and crowd-control measures taken causes a stampede in which more than 300 fans were killed and another 500 were injured in the violent melee that followed at National Stadium in Lima, Peru. – 1964.
Nearly 2,300 members of the United Rubber Workers, on strike for 10 months against five Bridgestone-Firestone plants, agree to return to work without a contract. They had been fighting demands for 12-hour shifts and wage increases tied to productivity gains – 1995.