Today in History - 1st of May

                                
Thursday May 1, 2014 the 120th day and 17th week of 2014, there 245 days and 35 weeks left in the year.  Highlights of today in world history...
 
1886 International Workers (Labour) Day
International Workers' Dayis a celebration of labourand theworking classesthat is promoted by internationallabour movementand that occurs on May 1 every year. That day, May 1, is also the traditional European Spring holiday of May Day. Therefore, May 1 is a nationalpublic holidayin more than 80 countries, but in only some of those countries is the public holiday officially known as Labor Day or some similar variant. In the other countries, the public holiday marks the Spring festival of May Day.

May 1 was chosen by the Socialistsand Communists of the Second Internationalas the date to commemorate the Haymarket affairin Chicagothat occurred on May 1, 1886 .The Haymarket affair (also known as the Haymarket massacre or Haymarket riot) refers to the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on Tuesday May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago. It began as a peaceful rally in support of workers strikingfor an eight-hour day. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at policeas they acted to disperse the public meeting. The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; scores of others were wounded.
In the internationally publicized legal proceedings that followed, eight anarchistswere convicted ofconspiracy.The evidence was that one of the defendants may have built the bomb, but none of those on trial had thrown it. Seven were sentenced to death and one to a term of 15 years in prison. The death sentences of two of the defendants were commutedby Illinois governor Richard J. Oglesbyto terms of life in prison, and another committed suicide in jail rather than face the gallows. The other four were hanged on November 11, 1887. In 1893, Illinois' new governor John Peter Altgeldpardoned the remaining defendants and criticized the trial.
The Haymarket affair is generally considered significant as the origin of international May Dayobservances for workers The site of the incident was designated a Chicago Landmarkin 1992, and a public sculpture was dedicated there in 2004. In addition, the Haymarket Martyrs' Monumentat the defendants' burial site in nearby Forest Park was designated a National Historic Landmarkin 1997.
 "No single event has influenced the history of labor in Illinois, the United States, and even the world, more than the Chicago Haymarket Affair. It began with a rally on May 4, 1886, but the consequences are still being felt today. Although the rally is included in American history textbooks, very few present the event accurately or point out its significance," according to labor studies Professor William J. Adelman.
 
1915 International Congress of Women adopts resolutions
On this day in 1915 in The Hague, Netherlands, the International Congress of Women adopted its resolutions on peace and women's suffrage.
The congress, also referred to as the Women's Peace Conference, was the result of an invitation by a Dutch women's suffrage organization to women's rights activists around the world to gather in peaceful assemblage during one of the most divisive and intense international conflicts in history:World War I. It included more than 1,200 delegates from 12 countries—including Britain, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Poland, Belgium and the United States.
Starting with two basic assertions—that international disputes should be handled by pacific means and that women should have the right to exercise their own vote in government—the International Congress of Women called for a process of continuous mediation to be implemented, without armistice, until peace could be restored among the warring nations. By continuous mediation, the delegates meant that a conference of neutral nations should be convened that would invite suggestions for settlement from each of the belligerent nations and submit to all of them simultaneously, reasonable proposals as a basis of peace. Their resolutions, announced at the close of the congress on May 1, endorsed measures designed for international cooperation, including an international court and a so-called Society of Nations, general disarmament and national self-determination. The delegates included a specific call for women to be given the vote: Since the combined influence of the women of all countries is one of the strongest forces for the prevention of war, and since women can only have full responsibility and effective influence when they have equal political rights with men, this International Congress of Women demands their political enfranchisement.
The congress founded the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), an organization that still exists today. The first president of the WILPF was Jane Addams, the leader of the American delegation to the congress and the co-founder of the Chicagosocial service organization Hull House. Addams and other delegates met with U.S. President Woodrow Wilsonduring the summer of 1915, knowing that the success of their plan depended to a great extent on the president's agreement to initiate and lead mediation between the hostile nations of Europe. Though Wilson was sympathetic to the proposals of the congress, he eventually moved away from the principles of mediation and towards military preparedness (and eventual U.S. entrance into the war in April 1917).
Printed in English, French and German, the resolutions of the International Congress of Women were distributed to European heads of state in early May 1915. The congress also determined that a delegation of women would be sent to meet with representatives of the belligerent governments to plead the cause of continuous mediation. To that end, 30 delegates toured Europe between May and June 1915; though its arguments did little to sway the leaders of the warring nations, the proposals introduced by the congress are still used today as guidelines for many diplomatic negotiations between hostile nations
1926 Ford factory workers get 40-hour week
On this day in 1926, Ford Motor Company became one of the first companies in America to adopt a five-day, 40-hour week for workers in its automotive factories. The policy would be extended to Ford's office workers the following August. 
Henry Ford's Detroit-based automobile company had broken ground in its labour policies before. In early 1914, against a backdrop of widespread unemployment and increasing labour unrest, Ford announced that it would pay its male factory workers a minimum wage of $5 per eight-hour day, upped from a previous rate of $2.34 for nine hours (the policy was adopted for female workers in 1916). The news shocked many in the industry--at the time, $5 per day was nearly double what the average auto worker made--but turned out to be a stroke of brilliance, immediately boosting productivity along the assembly line and building a sense of company loyalty and pride among Ford's workers.
The decision to reduce the workweek from six to five days had originally been made in 1922. According to an article published in The New YorkTimes that March, Edsel Ford, Henry's son and the company's president, explained that "Every man needs more than one day a week for rest and recreation....The Ford Company always has sought to promote [an] ideal home life for its employees. We believe that in order to live properly every man should have more time to spend with his family."
Henry Ford said of the decision: "It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either 'lost time' or a class privilege." At Ford's own admission, however, the five-day workweek was also instituted in order to increase productivity: Though workers' time on the job had decreased, they were expected to expend more effort while they were there. Manufacturers all over the country, and the world, soon followed Ford's lead, and the Monday-to-Friday workweek became standard practice.
 
1931 Empire State Building dedicated
On this day in 1931, President Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York City's Empire State Building, pressing a button from the White House that turns on the building's lights. Hoover's gesture, of course, was symbolic; while the president remained in Washington, D.C., someone else flicked the switches in New York.
The idea for the Empire State Building is said to have been born of a competition between Walter Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation and John Jacob Raskob of General Motors, to see who could erect the taller building. Chrysler had already begun work on the famous Chrysler Building, the gleaming 1,046-foot skyscraper in midtown Manhattan. Not to be bested, Raskob assembled a group of well-known investors, including former New York Governor Alfred E. Smith. The group chose the architecture firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Associates to design the building. The Art-Deco plans, said to have been based in large part on the look of a pencil, were also builder-friendly: The entire building went up in just over a year, under budget (at $40 million) and well ahead of schedule. During certain periods of building, the frame grew an astonishing four-and-a-half stories a week.
At the time of its completion, the Empire State Building, at 102 stories and 1,250 feet high (1,454 feet to the top of the lightning rod), was the world's tallest skyscraper. The Depression-era construction employed as many as 3,400 workers on any single day, most of whom received an excellent pay rate, especially given the economic conditions of the time. The new building imbued New York City with a deep sense of pride, desperately needed in the depths of the Great Depression, when many city residents were unemployed and prospects looked bleak. The grip of the Depression on New York's economy was still evident a year later, however, when only 25 percent of the Empire State's offices had been rented.
In 1972, the Empire State Building lost its title as world's tallest building to New York's World Trade Centre, which itself was the tallest skyscraper for but a year. Today the honour belongs to Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower, which soars 2,717 feet into the sky.
1958 President Eisenhower proclaims Law Day
On this day in 1958, President Eisenhower proclaimed Law Day to honour the role of law in the creation of the United Statesof America. Three years later, Congress followed suit by passing a joint resolution establishing May 1 as Law Day.
The idea of a Law Day had first been proposed by the American Bar Association in 1957. The desire to suppress the celebration of May 1, or May Day, as International Workers' Day aided in Law Day's creation. May Day had communist overtones in the minds of many Americans, because of its celebration of working people as a governing class in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.
The American Bar Association defines Law Day as: "A national day set aside to celebrate the rule of law. Law Day underscores how law and the legal process have contributed to the freedoms that all Americans share." The language of the statute ordaining May 1 calls it "a special day of celebration by the American people in appreciation of their liberties and? rededication to the ideals of equality and justice under law."
On a day that, in many parts of the world, inspires devotion to the rights of the working classes to participate in government, Law Day asks Americans to focus upon every American's rights as laid out in the fundamental documents of American democracy: the Declaration of Independenceand the federal Constitution. The declaration insists that Americans "find these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and guarantees the rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The Bill of Rightsamended to the Constitution codifies the rights of free speech, free press and fair trial.
Law Day celebrates the legal construct for the determination of rights that the revolutionary leaders of the 1770s, hoping to prevent the sort of class warfare that went on to rack Europe from 1789 to 1917, were so eager to create.
1960 American U-2 spy plane shot down
An American U-2 spy plane was shot down while conducting espionage over the Soviet Union. The incident derailed an important summit meeting between President Dwight D. Eisenhowerand Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that was scheduled for later that month.
The U-2 spy plane was the brainchild of the Central Intelligence Agency, and it was a sophisticated technological marvel. Traveling at altitudes of up to 70,000 feet, the aircraft was equipped with state-of-the-art photography equipment that could, the CIA boasted, take high-resolution pictures of headlines in Russian newspapers as it flew overhead. Flights over the Soviet Union began in mid-1956. The CIA assured President Eisenhower that the Soviets did not possess anti-aircraft weapons sophisticated enough to shoot down the high-altitude planes.
On May 1, 1960, a U-2 flight piloted by Francis Gary Powers disappeared while on a flight over Russia. The CIA reassured the president that, even if the plane had been shot down, it was equipped with self-destruct mechanisms that would render any wreckage unrecognizable and the pilot was instructed to kill himself in such a situation. Based on this information, the U.S. government issued a cover statement indicating that a weather plane had veered off course and supposedly crashed somewhere in the Soviet Union. With no small degree of pleasure, Khrushchev pulled off one of the most dramatic moments of the Cold Warby producing not only the mostly-intact wreckage of the U-2, but also the captured pilot-very much alive. A chagrined Eisenhower had to publicly admit that it was indeed a U.S. spy plane.
On May 16, a major summit between the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France began in Paris. Issues to be discussed included the status of Berlin and nuclear arms control. As the meeting opened, Khrushchev launched into a tirade against the United States and Eisenhower and then stormed out of the summit. The meeting collapsed immediately and the summit was called off. Eisenhower considered the "stupid U-2 mess" one of the worst debacles of his presidency. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was released in 1962 in exchange for a captured Soviet spy.
2003 Record-breaking tornado wave begins
A record-breaking wave of tornadoes began across the southern and Midwestern United Stateson this day in 2003. By the time the wave is over, more than 500 tornadoes are recorded for the month, shattering the previous record by more than 100.
The amazing spate of twisters followed an unusually quiet month of April, when tornadoes are usually most frequent. March and April also saw a lack of significant thunderstorms, another highly unusual situation. But the residents of the South and Midwest were not in the clear. In 2003, the moist, warm air necessary for the formation of tornadoes did not arrive from the Gulf ofMexicountil May and, when it did, weather conditions in these regions changed suddenly. The first 10 days of May brought an incredible amount of destructive weather to the central United States, including more than 300 tornadoes.
The best available records regarding tornadoes in the second half of the 20th century show that the previous high for tornadoes in a month was 399 in June 1992. May 2003 had a remarkable 516 recorded twisters. However, the 38 people killed in May 2003 were far fewer than the record 163 dead in May 1953. The death toll was lower because 2003 saw no F5 tornadoes (the highest intensity with winds in excess of 260 mph) and very few measured as high as F4 (with winds in excess of 207 mph).
Illinoisalone had 74 recorded tornadoes in May 2003, almost 50 percent more than its previous monthly high. Missourisuffered through 71 twisters in the month, which dwarfed the previous high of 29 in December 1982.
The worst stretch of tornadoes over a small stretch of time was recorded April 3-4, 1974, when 148 individual tornadoes touched down across the Midwest in an 18-hour period. During a single hour in the middle of this vast storm, 20 tornadoes were recorded at the same time. More than 300 people died in this single storm.