These historical events took place on May 4th:
1780: American Academy of Arts & Science founded in Boston, James Bowdoin, John, and Samuel Sanders were the founding members.
1862: Mcclellan halted his troop before town as it is full of armed torpedoes left by CS Brigadier General Gabrial Rains in Yorktown, Virginia.
1864: General Ulysses S. Grant’s Union Army at Potomac attacks Robert E. Lee’s Confederates at Rappahannock River.
1944: “Gaslight”, starring an 18-year-old Angela Lansbury in her film debut, is released.
1953: Pulitzer Prize for Literature awarded to Ernest Hemingway for “The Old Man & The Sea.”
1976: Leonard Bernstein and Alan Jay Lerner’s musical “1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” opens at Mark Hellinger, New York City that ran for only seven performances.
1977: United States Catholic bishops rescind automatic excommunications for divorced and remarried Catholics, receiving communion still outlawed if the previous marriages were not annulled by Church tribunals.
1988: PEPCON chemical plant in Henderson, Nevada explodes killing 2 and injuring 372 causing damage within 10-mile (16 km) radius.
1992: United States Army and Marine Corps forces arrive in Los Angeles to end rioting following the acquittal of four police officers over the beating of Rodney King.
1998: A federal judge in Sacramento, California, gives “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski four life sentences plus 30 years after Kaczynski accepts a plea agreement sparing him from the death penalty.
2008: Seth McFarlane reaches an agreement worth $100 million with Fox to keep “Family Guy” and “American Dad” on television until 2012, making MacFarlane the world’s highest paid television writer.