1051 – Henry I of France is married to Anne of Kiev.
1499 – Catherine of Aragon is married by proxy to Arthur, Prince of Wales. Catherine is 13 and Arthur is 12.
1535 – French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail on his second voyage to North America with three ships, 110 men, and Chief Donnacona’s two sons (whom Cartier had kidnapped during his first voyage).
1536 – Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England, is beheaded for adultery, treason, and incest.
1743 – Jean-Pierre Christin developed the centigrade temperature scale.
1780 – New England’s Dark Day: A combination of thick smoke and heavy cloud cover causes complete darkness to fall on Eastern Canada and the New England area of the United States at 10:30 A.M.
1943 – World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set Monday, May 1, 1944 as the date for the Normandy landings (“D-Day”). It would later be delayed over a month due to bad weather.
1959 – The North Vietnamese Army establishes Group 559, whose responsibility is to determine how to maintain supply lines to South Vietnam; the resulting route is the Ho Chi Minh trail.
1962 – A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy takes place at Madison Square Garden, New York City. The highlight is Marilyn Monroe’s rendition of “Happy Birthday”.
1963 – The New York Post Sunday Magazine publishes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Births
1795 – Johns Hopkins, American businessman and philanthropist (d. 1873
1890 – Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese politician, first President of Vietnam
1928 – Colin Chapman, engineer and businessman, founded Lotus Cars
1941 – Nora Ephron, American director, producer, and screenwriter
1945 – Pete Townshend, English singer-songwriter and guitarist The Who
Deaths
1526 – Emperor Go-Kashiwabara of Japan (b. 1464)
1536 – Anne Boleyn, English wife of Henry VIII of England (b. 1501)
1935 – T. E. Lawrence, Welsh-English colonel and archaeologist (b. 1888)
1994 – Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, 37th First Lady of the United States (b. 1929)
2014 – Jack Brabham, Australian race car driver (b. 1926)
Edited from various sources including historyorb.com, the NYTimes.com Wikipedia and other internet searches