Quick glance of 2 May in the pages of History

May 2: Here are the major events that occurred on 2 May….

• 2 May, 1519: Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, architect died on this day.
• 2 May, 1808: The citizens of Madrid rise up against Napoleon.
• 2 May, 1808: Emma Darwin, English wife of Charles Darwin was born
• 2 May, 1907: Riots break out in Rawalpindi and East Bengal, spreading to the Punjab.
• 2 May, 1921: Satyajit Ray, Indian film director, producer, screenwriter was born. He was awarded highest honour of France ”Legion d Honeur”.
• 2 May, 1945: More than 1,000,000 German soldiers officially surrender to the Western Allies in Italy and Austria.
• 2 May, 1945: World War II: Battle of Berlin ends as Soviet army takes Berlin and General Weidling surrenders

• 2 May, 1952: The jet age begins with the first scheduled flight of the De Havilland Comet 1. Precisely one year after the maiden flight from London to Johannesburg, a Comet 1 crashed due to structural problems, killing 43 people. A series of similar accidents soon led to the grounding of the entire Comet fleet.
• 2 May, 1953: Declaration by the PM that India was opposed to joining any power-block in the event of another big war.
• 2 May, 1968: Lok Sabha passed the Public Providend Fund Act.
• 2 May, 1974: 700 union leaders arrested in a move to avert a rail strike in New Delhi.
• 2 May, 1982: The British Royal Navy sinks the Argentinian cruiser General Belgrano. 323 lives were lost in the attack, more than half of the total number of Argentinian casualties during the Falklands War. The British Sun tabloid newspaper commented the controversial attack with one of its most notorious headlines: “Gotcha”.

• 2 May, 1989: The Iron Curtain begins to crumble as Hungary dismantles its border fence. By gradually opening its border to Austria, Hungary facilitated the escape of hundreds of East Germans in the months before the Berlin Wall fell.
• 2 May, 1996: Controversial godman Chandraswami arrested and sent to high security Tihar jail on a day’s judicial custody by a Delhi court for allegedly cheating NRI businessman Lakhubhai Pathak of $1 lakh in 1983.
• 2 May, 1997: Tony Blair becomes British Prime Minister, ending 18 years of Conservative Party reign. Blair’s Labor Party achieved a landslide victory in the general elections. Many of his early fans were bitterly disappointed when he supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

• 2 May, 2007: President Bush vetoed a proposal to withdraw troops from Iraq. The Congressional bill linked a timetable for the withdrawal of troops to funding for the war. The veto was only the second time President Bush used that power, despite rejecting the bill he indicated that a compromise should be made.
• 2 May, 2011: Osama bin Laden is killed by U.S. commando. Bin Laden was the founder of al-Qaeda, a militant group that claimed responsibility for a series of terrorist attacks on U.S. targets on September 11, 2001.