Following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 1:
1931 – The 102-storey Empire State Building in New York, at the time the world’s tallest building, was officially opened.
1937 – The Spanish painter Pablo Picasso produced the first sketch of his masterpiece “Guernica”, five days after the Basque town had been bombed by the Germans in the Spanish Civil War.
1945 – Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels committed suicide in his Berlin bunker.
1960 – The Soviet Union shot down an American U-2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers. He was jailed for spying before being exchanged in an East-West spy swap in February 1962.
1993 – Former French Socialist prime minister Pierre Beregovoy died after shooting himself.
1994 – The Brazilian Ayrton Senna, three times world Formula 1 motor racing champion, died after a high-speed crash in the San Marino Grand Prix.
1999 – The body of the British climber George Mallory was found on Mount Everest, almost 75 years after he disappeared with Andrew Irvine while trying to make the first ascent of the mountain.
2001 – U.S. President George W. Bush called for the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty with Moscow to be replaced to make way for the United States’ new missile defence plan.
2004 – The flags of 10 new members of the European Union were ceremonially raised in Brussels to mark the bloc’s historic expansion to the east.
2006 – President Evo Morales ordered the military to occupy Bolivia’s natural gas fields after nationalising the industry and threatening to expel foreign companies that did not recognise state control.
2011 – Pope John Paul II is beatified by his successor Pope Benedict XVI.
