On This Day in History - May 3 Niccolo Machiavelli Born

Once again, it should be reiterated, that this does not pretend to be a very extensive history of what happened on this day (nor is it the most original - the links can be found down below). If you know something that I am missing, by all means, shoot me an email or leave a comment, and let me know!


http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history

May 3, 1469: Niccolo Machiavelli born

On this day in 1469, the Italian philosopher and writer Niccolo Machiavelli is born. A lifelong patriot and diehard proponent of a unified Italy, Machiavelli became one of the fathers of modern political theory.  

Machiavelli entered the political service of his native Florence by the time he was 29. As defense secretary, he distinguished himself by executing policies that strengthened Florence politically. He soon found himself assigned diplomatic missions for his principality, through which he met such luminaries as Louis XII of France, Pope Julius II, the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I, and perhaps most importantly for Machiavelli, a prince of the Papal States named Cesare Borgia. The shrewd and cunning Borgia later inspired the title character in Machiavelli's famous and influential political treatise The Prince (1532).  

Machiavelli's political life took a downward turn after 1512, when he fell out of favor with the powerful Medici family. He was accused of conspiracy, imprisoned, tortured and temporarily exiled. It was an attempt to regain a political post and the Medici family's good favor that Machiavelli penned The Prince, which was to become his most well-known work.  

Though released in book form posthumously in 1532, The Prince was first published as a pamphlet in 1513. In it, Machiavelli outlined his vision of an ideal leader: an amoral, calculating tyrant for whom the end justifies the means. The Prince not only failed to win the Medici family's favor, it also alienated him from the Florentine people. Machiavelli was never truly welcomed back into politics, and when the Florentine Republic was reestablished in 1527, Machiavelli was an object of great suspicion. He died later that year, embittered and shut out from the Florentine society to which he had devoted his life.  

Though Machiavelli has long been associated with the practice of diabolical expediency in the realm of politics that was made famous in The Prince, his actual views were not so extreme. In fact, in such longer and more detailed writings as Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy (1517) and History of Florence (1525), he shows himself to be a more principled political moralist. Still, even today, the term "Machiavellian" is used to describe an action undertaken for gain without regard for right or wrong.














May 3, 1946: Japanese war crimes trial begins   

In Tokyo, Japan, the International Military Tribunals for the Far East begins hearing the case against 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II.  

On November 4, 1948, the trial ended with 25 of 28 Japanese defendants being found guilty. Of the three other defendants, two had died during the lengthy trial, and one was declared insane. On November 12, the war crimes tribunal passed death sentences on seven of the men, including General Hideki Tojo, who served as Japanese premier during the war, and other principals, such as Iwane Matsui, who organized the Rape of Nanking, and Heitaro Kimura, who brutalized Allied prisoners of war. Sixteen others were sentenced to life imprisonment, and two were sentenced to lesser terms in prison. On December 23, 1948, Tojo and the six others were executed in Tokyo.  

Unlike the Nuremberg trial of Nazi war criminals, where there were four chief prosecutors, to represent Great Britain, France, the United States, and the USSR, the Tokyo trial featured only one chief prosecutor--American Joseph B. Keenan, a former assistant to the U.S. attorney general. However, other nations, especially China, contributed to the proceedings, and Australian judge William Flood Webb presided. In addition to the central Tokyo trial, various tribunals sitting outside Japan judged some 5,000 Japanese guilty of war crimes, of whom more than 900 were executed. Some observers thought that Emperor Hirohito should have been tried for his tacit approval of Japanese policy during the war, but he was protected by U.S. authorities who saw him as a symbol of Japanese unity and conservatism, both favorable traits in the postwar U.S. view.


1294 - John II becomes duke of Brabant/Limburg

1342 - Count Hartmann II becomes ruler of Vaduz (Liechtenstein)

1382 - Battle on Beverhoutsfield near Brugge

1455 - Jews flee Spain 1491 - Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga is baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I.

1494 - Jamaica discovered by Columbus; he names it "St Iago"

1512 - Pope Julius II opens 5th Council of Lateran at St. John Lateran Basilica in Rome

1515 - Persian Gulf: Portugese fleet occupies Ormuz

1568 - French forces in Florida slaughtered hundreds of Spanish.

1616 - Treaty of Loudun kills French civil war

1621 - Francis Bacon accused of bribery

1624 - Spanish silver fleet sails to Panama

1629 - French huguenot leader duke De Rohan signs accord with Spain

1640 - English Upper house accept Act of Attainder

1654 - Bridge at Rowley Mass begins charging tolls for animals

1660 - Sweden, Poland, Brandenburg & Austria sign Peace of Oliva

1661 - Johannes Hevelius observes 3rd transit of Mercury ever to be seen

1662 - Royal charter granted Connecticut

1678 - French conquering fleet at Curacao, 1200 die

1715 - Edmund Halley observes total eclipse phenomenon "Baily's Beads"

1722 - Pierre de Marivaux' "La Double Inconstance," premieres in Paris

1747 - Willem IV appointed viceroy of Holland/Utrecht

1765 - 1st US medical college opens in Philadelphia

1791 - The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitution in Europe) is proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

1802 - Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city

1808 - Goya's "Executions of 3rd of May"

1808 - Finnish War: Sweden loses the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia.

1808 - Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels who rose up on May 2 are fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill.

1810 - Lord Byron swims Hellespont

1815 - Battle at Tolentino: Austria beats king Joachim of Naples

1822 - Society for Propagation of Faith starts (Lyon, France)

1830 - 1st regular steam train passenger service starts

1837 - The University of Athens is founded.

1845 - 1st black lawyer (Macon B Allen) admitted to bar (Mass)

1845 - Fire kills 1,600 in popular theater in Canton China

1846 - Mexican army surrounds fort in Texas

1849 - The May Uprising in Dresden begins - the last of the German revolutions of 1848.

1851 - Most of SF destroyed by fire; 30 die

1855 - Antwerp-Rotterdam railway opens

1855 - Macon B. Allen became the first African American to be admitted to the Bar in Massachusetts.

1859 - France declared war on Austria.

1860 - Charles XV of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Sweden.

1861 - Gen Winfield Scott presents his Anaconda Plan for the North against the South in US Civil War

1861 - Lincoln asks for 42,000 Army Volunteers & another 18,000 seamen

1863 - Battle of Fredricksburg, Virginia (Marye's Heights)

1863 - Battle of Salem Church, VA

1864 - Third day in Battle at Alexandria Louisiana: Confederate assault

1867 - The Hudson's Bay Company gives up all claims to Vancouver Island.

1886 - M A Maclean elected 1st mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia

1888 - Thomas Edison organized the Edison Phonograph Works.

1898 - Camp Merriman forms at Presidio (SF) (see 0517)

1900 - 26th Kentucky Derby: Jimmy Boland aboard Lieut Gibson wins in 2:06.25

1901 - Fire destroyed 1,700 buildings in Jacksonville, Florida

1902 - 28th Kentucky Derby: Jimmy Winkfield on Alan-a-Dale wins in 2:08.75

1903 - AVC Heracles (SC Heracles '74) soccer team forms in Almelo

1906 - British-controlled Egypt takes Sinai peninsula from Turkey

1909 - 35th Kentucky Derby: Vincent Powers on Wintergreen wins in 2:08.2

1916 - Irish nationalist leaders Padraic Pearse and two others were executed in Dublin by the British for their roles in the Easter Rising.

1917 - First performance of Ernest Bloch's symphony "Israel"

1919 - Afghanistan Emir Amanoellah begins war against Great Britain

1919 - America's first passenger flight (NY-Atlantic City)

1921 - West Virginia imposed the first state sales tax.

1922 - Mayor Hylan closes streets for building of Yankee Stadium

1922 - Salt layer find at Winterswijk

1923 - First nonstop transcontinental flight (NY-San Diego) completed

1924 - Aleph Zadik Aleph is formed in Omaha, Nebraska by Sam Beber.

1926 - The revival of Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" opened in New York.

1926 - British trade unions began a general strike-3 million workers support miners

1926 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Sinclair Lewis (Arrowsmith)

1926 - US marines landed in Nicaragua (9-mo after leaving), and stayed until 1933

1927 - Francis E.J. Wilde of Meadowmere Park, NY, patented the electric sign flasher.

1928 - Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China.

1929 - Prussia bans anti-fascists

1932 - 24 tourists begin 1st air-charter holiday (London-Basle, Switz)

1933 - The U.S. Mint was under the direction of a woman for the first time when Nellie Ross took the position.

1936 - French People's Front wins elections

1936 - NY Yankee Joe DiMaggio makes his major-league debut, gets 3 hits

1937 - Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction for "Gone With the Wind"

1938 - Concentration camp at Flossenburg went into use

1938 - Lefty Grove defeats Tigers 4-3 for 1st of record 20 consecutive wins at his home field Fenway Park; he doesn't lose there until May 12 1941

1938 - Vatican recognizes Franco-Spain

1939 - The All India Forward Bloc is formed by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

1941 - -4] German air raid on Liverpool

1941 - 67th Kentucky Derby: Eddie Arcaro aboard Whirlaway wins in 2:01.4

1942 - Japanese troop attack Tulagi, Gavutu & Tanambogo, Solomon Islands

1942 - Luftwaffe bombs Exeter 1942 - Nazi's execute 72 OD'ers in reprisial in Sachsenhausen, Netherlands

1942 - Nazi's require Dutch Jews to wear a Jewish star

1943 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Upton Sinclair (Dragon's Teeth)

1943 - Strike against obligatory labor camps ends, after 200 killed

1943 - US 1st armour division occupies Mateur Tunisia

1944 - "Meet Me in St Louis" opens on Broadway

1944 - Wartime rationing of most grades of meats ended in the United States.

1944 - Dr. Robert Woodward and Dr. William Doering produced the first synthetic quinine at Harvard University.

1945 - First Polish armour brigade occupies Wilhelmshafen

1945 - Allies arrests German nuclear physics Werner Heisenberg

1945 - Indian forces captured Rangoon, Burma, from the Japanese.

1945 - German ship "Cap Arcona" sinks in East Sea, 5,800 killed

1946 - International military tribunal in Tokyo begins

1947 - 73rd Kentucky Derby: Eric Guerin aboard Jet Pilot wins in 2:06.8

1947 - Japan forms a constitutional democracy

1947 - New post-war Japanese constitution goes into effect.

1948 - Pulitzer prize awarded to James Michener & Tennessee Williams

1948 - The US Supreme Court, in Shelley v. Kraemer, stated that it is unconstitutional for a court to enforce a restrictive covenant which prevents people of a certain race from owning or occupying property, and that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities were legally unenforceable.

1949 - First firing of a US Viking rocket; reached 80 km

1951 - Gil McDougald ties major league record with 6 RBIs in 1 inning

1951 - NY Yankee Gil McDougald is 5th to get 6 RBIs in an inning (9th)

1951 - London's Royal Festival Hall opens.

1951 - The Festival of Britain opens.

1952 - "Call Me Madam" closes at Imperial Theater NYC after 644 performances

1952 - First landing by an airplane at geographic North Pole

1952 - 78th Kentucky Derby: Eddie Arcaro aboard Hill Gail wins in 2:01.6

1953 - WTVO TV channel 17 in Rockford, IL (NBC) begins broadcasting

1953 - Westchester conference of American Library Association proclaims "Freedom to Read"

1954 - KTEN TV channel 10 in Ada-Ardmore, OK (ABC) begins broadcasting

1954 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Charles A Lindbergh & John Patrick

1954 - WHA TV channel 21 in Madison, WI (PBS) begins broadcasting

1956 - "Most Happy Fella" opens at Imperial Theater NYC for 678 performances

1956 - A new range of mountains discovered in Antarctica (2 over 13,000')

1956 - Frank Loesser's musical "Most Happy Fella," premieres in NYC

1958 - 84th Kentucky Derby: Ismael Valenzuela aboard Tim Tam wins in 2:05

1958 - WINS suspends Alan Freed for causing a riot in Boston, he quits

1959 - The Detroit Tiger's Charlie Maxwell hits 4 consecutive HRs in a doubleheader

1960 - Harvey Schmidt/Tom Jones' musical "Fantasticks," premieres in NYC

1960 - The Anne Frank House opens in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

1961 - Warren Spahn pitches a 2 hitter after pitching a no hitter

1962 - Express train crashed into wreckage of a commuter train & a freight, killing 163, injuring 400 (Tokyo, Japan)

1965 - First use of satellite TV, Today Show on Early Bird Satellite

1965 - Third Mayor's Trophy Game, Mets beat Yanks 2-1 in 10

1965 - Cambodia drops diplomatic relations with the US

1965 - Don Steele, begins a 40+ year radio career at KRTH (LA California)

1965 - KTCI TV channel 17 in St. Paul-Minneapolis, MN (PBS) 1st broadcast

1965 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Irwin Unger (Greenback Era)

1966 - The game "Twister" was featured on the "Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson.

1966 - WDHO (now WNWO) TV channel 24 in Toledo, OH (ABC) begins broadcasting

1967 - Black students seize finance building at Northwestern University

1968 - After three days of battle, the U.S. Marines retook Dai Do complex in Vietnam. They found that the North Vietnamese had evacuated the area.

1968 - Holland Pirate Radio Station VRON becomes Radio Veronica Intl

1970 - 24th NBA Championship: NY Knicks beat LA Lakers, 4 games to 3

1970 - Sandra Haynie wins LPGA Shreveport Kiwanis Golf Invitational

1971 - National Public Radio broadcast for the first time.  "All Things Considered" premieres on 112 National Public Radio stations

1971 - Erich Honecker succeeds Walter Ulbricht as East German party leader

1971 - National Public Radio begins programming

1971 - Anti-war protesters began four days of demonstrations in Washington, DC.

1971 - Nixon administration arrests 13,000 anti-war protesters in 3 days

1971 - James Earl Ray, Martin Luther King's assassin, was caught in a jailbreak attempt.

1971 - Pulitzer prize awarded to John Toland (Rising Sun)

1973 - Chicago's Sears Tower, world's tallest building (443 m), topped out

1973 - KC Royals' George Brett gets his 1st major league hit

1975 - 101st Kentucky Derby: Jacinto Vasquez on Foolish Pleasure wins 2:02

1975 - Christa Vahlensieck runs female world record marathon (2:40:15.8)

1976 - Panama 747SP lands after record flight around world (46:26)

1976 - Pulitzer prize awarded to Saul Bellow (Humboldt's Gift) 1978 - "Sun Day" - solar energy events are held in US

1978 - Anderlecht wins 18th Europe Cup II 1978 - Last cricket test match appearance for Bobby Simpson, at Kingston

1978 - WI all set to lose cricket test v Aust at Kingston till riots end game

1978 - The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (which would later become known as "spam") is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.

1979 - Margaret Thatcher became the first woman elected prime minister of England.

1979 - Bobby Bonds hits his 300th HR (2nd to have 300 HRs & 300 stolen bases)

1979 - Martin Sherman's "Bent," premieres in London

1980 - 106th Kentucky Derby: Jacinto Vasquez on Genuine Risk wins in 2:02

1980 - Giants first baseman Willie McCovey hits his 521st & final HR

1980 - Texas Ranger Ferguson Jenkins becomes 4th to win 100 games in AL & NL

1981 - "Can-Can" closes at Minskoff Theater NYC after 5 performances

1981 - "Moony, Shapiro Songbook" opens & closes at Morosco Theater NYC

1981 - Sally Little wins LPGA CPC Women's Golf International

1982 - ABC's All Talk network begins on radio (2 west coast stations)

1982 - NY Times reports that military will get 25% of NASA's budget

1982 - Pres Reagan begins 5 minute weekly radio broadcasts

1983 - Bruins 3-Isles 8-Wales Conference Championship-Isles hold 3-1 lead

1983 - Soviet leader Andropov decreases nuclear weapons in Europe

1983 - US bishops condemn nuclear weapons

1985 - Date of $5 million check in "View to a Kill"

1986 - 112th Kentucky Derby - At the age of 54, legendary horse jockey Bill Shoemaker became the oldest person to win the Kentucky Derby, riding Ferdinand to victory in 2:02.8

1986 - In NASA's first post-Challenger launch, an unmanned Delta rocket lost power in its main engine shortly after liftoff. Safety officers destroyed it by remote control.

1986 - Air Lanka crashes, killing 22

1986 - Cubs 3rd baseman Ron Cey hits his 300th & 301st HR

1986 - NASA launches Goes-G, it failed to achieve orbit

1986 - NY Yankee Don Mattingly is 6th to hit 3 sacrifice flies in a game

1987 - "Mikado" closes at Virginia Theater NYC after 46 performances

1987 - Miami Herald reports a woman spent Friday & Saturday with Gary Hart

1988 - The White House acknowledged that first lady Nancy Reagan had used astrological advice to help schedule her husband's activities.

1988 - 4,200 kg Colombian cocaine in seized at Tarpon Springs Florida

1988 - Jasper Johns' "Diver" sold for $4,200,000

1991 - 356th & final episode of CBS 2nd longest running series Dallas, 2nd only to Gunsmoke

1991 - The Declaration of Windhoek is signed.

1992 - Five days of rioting and looting ended in Los Angeles, CA. The riots, that killed 53 people, began after the acquittal of police officers in the beating of Rodney King.  

1992 - Baltimore's Gregg Olson, 25, is youngest to record 100 saves

1992 - NY Met Eddie Murray is 24th to hit 400 HRS

1992 - Ohio Glory wins first WLAF game (after 6 loses), beat Frankfurt 20-17

1993 - "Kiss of the Spider Woman" opens at Broadhurst NYC for 906 perfs

1994 - 29th Academy of Country Music Awards: Garth Brooks wins

1994 - D66/Dutch Liberal Party win Dutch 2nd Parliamentary election

1994 - US space probe Clementine launched

1995 - "My Thing of Love" opens at Beck Theater NYC for 16 performances

1995 - Australia beat West Indies to regain the Frank Worrell Cricket Trophy

1995 - David Bell debuts for the Indians (3rd generation player, Gus & Buddy)

1996 - Martin Moxon & Michael Vaughan make 362 1st wkt Yorks v Glam

1997 - 123rd Kentucky Derby: Gary Stevens aboard Silver Charm wins in 2:02.3

1997 - ABC Bud Light Masters Bowling Tournament won by Jason Queen

1997 - Garry Kasparov begins chess match with IBM supercomputer Deep Blue

1997 - The "Republic of Texas" surrendered to authorities ending an armed standoff where two people were held hostage. The group asserts the independence of Texas from the U.S.

1998 - "The Sevres Road," by 18-century landscape painter Camille Corot, stolen from the Louvre in France.

1999 - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is slammed by an F5 tornado killing forty-two people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. The tornado was one of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak. Kansas and Oklahoma were hit by an outbreak of more than 55 tornadoes, including one measured at F5 on the Fujita scale.

1999 - Mark Manes, at age 22, was arrested for supplying a gun to Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold, who later killed 13 people at Columbine High School in Colorado.

1999 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 11,000 for the first time in its history at 11,014.70.

1999 - Hasbro released the first collection of toys for the Star Wars movie "Episode I: The Phantom Menace."

1999 - Stephen Hendry defeats Mark Williams 18-11 to win the World Snooker Championship for a record seventh time.

2000 - The sport of geocaching begins, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.

2000 - The trial of two Libyans accused of killing 270 people in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 (over Lockerbie) opened.

2001 - The United States, a member of the UN Human Rights Commission since its inception, lost its seat. It would be restored the following year.  It has been a member since the commission was formed in 1947.

2002 - A military MiG-21 aircraft crashes into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight.

2003 - New Hampshire’s symbol, the granite Old Man of the Mountain, collapsed in the state’s Franconia Mountains.

2006 - Armavia Flight 967 crashes into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.

2006 -In Alexandria, Virginia.  Al-Quaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui was given a sentence of life in prison for his role in the terrorist attack on the U.S. on September 11, 2001.

2007 - British girl Madeleine McCann disappears from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal.


These were the sources that I used for completing this blog entry:

http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history

http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/may03.htm

http://www.historyorb.com/today/events.php