Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/May 1

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This is a list of selected May 1 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.

To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.

← April 30	May 2 →

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Images

Use only ONE image at a time

Carl Linnaeus
Overture to The Marriage of Figaro
Scene from Citizen Kane
Orson Welles in 1937
Penny Black postage stamp
Stephen Báthory
Anna Jagiellon
Carol Ann Duffy
Moses Fleetwood Walker

Ineligible

Blurb	Reason
May Day	refimprove
Law Day in the United States	refimprove
1169 – Norman mercenaries landed at Bannow Bay in Leinster, beginning the Norman invasion of Ireland.	neutrality issues
1753 – Carl Linnaeus published his Species Plantarum, which, with his earlier work Systema Naturae, is considered the beginning of modern botanical nomenclature.	Use on different dates. 1 May was chosen arbitrarily (per the article)
1840 – The United Kingdom issued the Penny Black, the world's first official adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system.	refimprove
1851 – The Great Exhibition, the first world's fair, opened in London's Hyde Park.	refimprove section
1865 – Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina signed a treaty creating an alliance against Paraguay in the War of the Triple Alliance.	refimprove section
1893 – The World's Columbian Exposition, a world's fair to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World, opened in Chicago.	unreferenced section, refimprove section
1897 – The Ramakrishna Mission was founded by Swami Vivekananda to serve as the humanitarian counterpart to the Hindu monastic order Ramakrishna Math.	refimprove section
1898 – The American Asiatic Squadron under Commodore George Dewey defeated the Spanish Pacific Squadron under Admiral Patricio Montojo at the Battle of Manila Bay, the first engagement of the Spanish–American War.	refimprove
1925 – The All-China Federation of Trade Unions, the world's largest trade union, was founded in Guangzhou, China.	unreferenced section
1956 – A doctor in Japan reported an "epidemic of an unknown disease of the central nervous system", marking the official discovery of Minamata disease.	unreferenced section
1960 – Bombay State in India was partitioned into Gujarat and Maharashtra along linguistic lines.	Gujarat: section needs to be rewritten
1985 – Labor groups in the Philippines established the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, a political coalition and communist front, in order to challenge the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.	refimprove sections, outdated
2001 – Rioters led by Miriam Defensor Santiago, Gregorio Honasan, Panfilo Lacson and Tito Sotto launched a siege against the Philippine presidential palace.	refimprove
2003 – Invasion of Iraq: Aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner, U.S. president George W. Bush declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended".	refimprove section
2009 – Carol Ann Duffy was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, the first woman, the first Scot, and the first openly bisexual person to hold the position, as well as the first laureate to be chosen in the 21st century.	refimprove section
International Workers' Day;	Tagged for referencing
* 1994 – Brazilian racing driver Ayrton Senna, a three-time Formula One World Champion, was killed in a crash during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.	Missing at least 9 citations

Eligible

880 – The Nea Ekklesia church in Constantinople, on which many later cross-in-square Orthodox churches were based, was consecrated.
1576 – Stephen Báthory and Anna Jagiellon were crowned as the elected rulers of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1625 – Dutch–Portuguese War: Portuguese and Spanish forces recaptured the Brazilian city of Bahia, which had previously been captured by the Dutch Republic.
1707 – Under the terms of the Acts of Union, the Kingdoms of England and Scotland merged to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, with a single parliament and government based in Westminster.
1776 – The secret society known as the Order of Illuminati was founded by Adam Weishaupt and Adolph Freiherr Knigge in Ingolstadt, Bavaria, Germany.
1786 – The Marriage of Figaro (audio featured), an opera buffa by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna.
1884 – Moses Fleetwood Walker (pictured), the last African American in Major League Baseball until Jackie Robinson, played his first game for the Toledo Blue Stockings.
1885 – The original Chicago Board of Trade Building opened for business.
1900 – A dust explosion at a coal mine near Scofield, Utah, U.S., killed at least 200 miners.
1941 – Citizen Kane, a widely acclaimed film by actor and director Orson Welles, premiered.
1945 – Second World War: British and Indian forces conducted a successful airborne assault on a Japanese artillery battery during the advance to liberate Rangoon, Burma.
1947 – Sicilian separatist Salvatore Giuliano and his gang fired into a crowd of May Day marchers near Piana degli Albanesi, Sicily, killing 11 and wounding 33.
1950 – Gwendolyn Brooks became the first African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.
1991 – In Major League Baseball, Rickey Henderson broke the record for stolen bases on the same night that Nolan Ryan broke his own record for no-hitters.
2016 – The evacuation of nearly 88,000 people began when a wildfire swept through Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, and burned for another 14 months, becoming the costliest disaster in Canadian history.

Born/died this day: | Paul I Šubić of Bribir |d|1312| Franciscus Junius the Elder |b|1545| François de Troy |d|1730| Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington |b|1769| Honora Sneyd |d|1780| Adelsteen Normann |b|1848| Marie-Aimée Roger-Miclos |b|1860| Ralph Stackpole |b|1885| Henry DeWolf Smyth |b|1898| Ulric Cross |b|1917| Magda Goebbels |d|1945| Ranasinghe Premadasa |d|1993| Aram Khachaturian |d|1978

Notes

Woolworth Building appears on April 24, so Empire State Building should not appear in the same year
Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago) appears on April 28, so Chicago Board of Trade Building should not appear in the same year

May 1: Beltane and Samhain in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, respectively; Maharashtra Day in Maharashtra, India (1960); International Workers' Day, Law Day, Loyalty Day and National Day of Prayer (2025) in the United States

Empire State Building

305 – Diocletian and Maximian retired as co-rulers of the Roman Empire, being succeeded by Galerius and Constantius Chlorus.
1794 – War of the Pyrenees: France regained nearly all the land it lost to Spain the previous year with its victory in the Second Battle of Boulou.
1931 – New York City's Empire State Building (pictured), at the time the tallest building in the world, opened.
1974 – Argentine president Juan Perón expelled Montoneros from a demonstration in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires, forcing the group to become a clandestine organization.

Alexander William Williamson (b. 1824)
Anna Jarvis (b. 1864)
Eldridge Cleaver (d. 1998)

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