THE DAY IN HISTORY · MAY 1
May 1 in history
What happened on May 1: 3 moments from the Maps of History atlases, in 1187, 1950 and 1960, each linked to the map that shows it.
— Battle of Cresson
1 May 1187 — a small force of Templars and Hospitallers charges a much larger Muslim army at the Springs of Cresson and is annihilated. Their recklessness costs the kingdom some of its best knights only weeks before the reckoning.
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE CRUSADES MAP → · THE FULL STORY →
— Battle of Hainan Island
16 Apr–1 May 1950 — The Fourth Field Army sails across the Qiongzhou Strait in wooden junks to attack Hainan. Communist guerrillas had held out in the island’s mountains since the late 1920s; joining the invading force, they help take the island in a fortnight. Hainan is the last large Nationalist territory off the southern coast to fall.
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC UNDER MAO MAP → · THE FULL STORY →
— U-2 incident
1 May 1960 — A missile reaches the supposedly “untouchable” spy plane over Sverdlovsk, and pilot Francis Gary Powers is paraded before cameras. Two weeks later, the Paris summit collapses on its opening morning when Khrushchev demands an apology that Eisenhower refuses to give.
READ THIS MOMENT → · SEE IT ON THE COLD WAR MAP → · THE FULL STORY →
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