On This Day: 4 May

The Augustinian monastic order is constituted at the Lecceto Monastery, in Tuscany, when Pope Alexander IV issues a papal bull Licet ecclesiae catholicae		1256
John Wycliffe and Jan Hus are condemned as heretics at the Council of Constance		1415
Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales (son of Henry VI) is murdered at the Battle of Tewkesbury, which is won by the Yorkists		1471
Pope Alexander VI (a Spaniard) decrees that all new lands discovered west of the Azores are Spanish, when he divides the New World between Spain and Portugal along the so–called Line of Demarcation		1493
Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrives in New Netherland (present day Manhattan) aboard the See Meeuw		1626
Rhode Island becomes the first American colony to renounce allegiance to King George III		1776
The first Epsom Derby is won by Diomed		1780
Tipu Sahib, Sultan of Mysore, fights to the death as British troops overwhelm the city of Seringapatam after a 29–day siege		1799
Napoleon Bonaparte begins his exile on the island of Elba		1814
Cunard Line founded by Sir Samuel Cunard in Halifax, Nova Scotia		1839
Natal is proclaimed a British colony		1843
The Cornwall Railway opens across the Royal Albert Bridge, linking Devon and Cornwall across the River Tamar		1859
Maoris rebel against the British in New Zealand		1863
Colonial and Indian Exhibition opened in Kensington		1886
Alfred Harmsworth launches the Daily Mail – "a penny newspaper for a halfpenny"		1896
Work begins on the excavation of the Panama Canal		1904
Charles Rolls and Henry Royce sign a provisional agreement to collaborate in car production		1904
413 lives are lost when the British transport Transylvania is torpedoed in the Mediterranean		1917
General Strike begins		1926
Al Capone begins an eleven–year prison sentence for tax evasion		1932
Dr. Douglas Hyde – Protestant and Gaelic scholar – elected first President of the Irish Republic		1938
Carl von Ossietsky, pacifist journalist and Nobel prizewinner, dies in a Nazi concentration camp		1938
The Battle of the Coral Sea begins with an attack by aircraft from the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown on Japanese naval forces at Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands (who invaded the day before)		1942
The entire Torino football team is killed in a plane crash on the outskirts of Turin, after a friendly game in Lisbon		1949
Ernest Hemingway wins the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea		1953
The first annual Grammy Awards are held		1959
US balloonists Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather attain a new altitude record for manned balloon flight ascending in the Strato–Lab V open gondola to 113,740 feet (34.67 km)		1961
Prime Minister Harold Wilson announces a pay rise of up to 30% for British doctors and dentists		1966
Four students are killed when the Ohio National Guard, sent to the city of Kent to end disturbances at Kent State University, opens fire at an anti–war demo		1970
Seymour Hirsch wins the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting of the My Lai massacre		1970
The Don't Make A Wave Committee, founded in Canada in 1971, officially changes its name to Greenpeace Foundation		1972
Australia adopts Waltzing Matilda as its National Anthem		1976
The South African Defence Force attacks a SWAPO base at Cassinga in southern Angola, killing about 600 people		1978
Margaret Thatcher becomes Prime Minister		1979
Twenty sailors are killed when the British Type 42 destroyer HMS Sheffield is hit by an Exocet missile		1982
President Reagan announces his backing for the Nicaraguan contras against the Sandinistas		1983
Colonel Oliver North is found guilty of supplying arms to Iran Contras		1989
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat sign a peace accord, granting self–rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho		1994
Over 100 Rwandan Hutu refugees, returning to Rwanda, are trampled to death at Kisangani railway station, Zaire		1997
Theodore Kaczynski, USA's Unabomber, jailed for life without chance of parole, after escaping a death sentence by virtue of a plea agreement		1998
At least 45 killed and thousands left homeless by a tornado in Oklahoma and Kansas		1999
The 'love bug' virus paralyses computer systems around the world		2000
Ken Livingstone becomes London's first elected mayor		2000
Steve McLaren announced as the successor to Sven–Goran Eriksson as England football coach		2006
The 'city' of Greensburg, Kansas (population 1,544) is almost completely destroyed by a 1.7–mile–wide EF5 tornado – the first to be rated as such on the new Enhanced Fujita scale		2007
Three people lose their lives, and 62 are injured, in a pair of bombings on buses in Nairobi		2014

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On This Day: 4 May