On This Day:
Tuesday May 6, 2014 This is the 126th day of the year, with 239 days remaining in 2014. Fact of the Day: railways A railway is a form of transport in which cars run on a fixed track, usually steel rails. Railways date from the 1500s, when wagons used in mines were drawn by horses along tracks. English mining engineer Richard Trevithick built the first steam locomotive in 1804. In 1825, George Stephenson was the first to use a steam locomotive to pull a passenger train. The first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, when the Union Pacific Railroad from Nebraska met the Central Pacific Railroad from California at Utah. The United States standard railroad gauge - the distance between the rails, is 4 feet 8.5 inches.
Holidays Feast day of St. Edbert, Saints Marian and James, St. Evodius of Antioch, St. Petronax, and St. John Before the Latin Gate.
Egypt: Sham El-Nessim.
Ireland: May Day Bank Holiday.
Vatican City: swearing-in of new recruits to Swiss Guards (commemoration of Sack of Rome, 1527).
Events 1527 - German troops began sacking Rome, destroying libraries, capturing the Pope, and killing thousands.
1840 - The first postage stamps were issued, in Britain.
1861 - Arkansas seceded from the Union.
1882 - Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigrants from the United States for 10 years.
1937 - The hydrogen-filled German dirigible Hindenburg crashed in New Jersey, killing 36 of its passengers. It was the largest dirigible ever built and the pride of Nazi Germany.
1941 - Soviet dictator Josef Stalin assumed the premiership, replacing Vyacheslav M. Molotov.
1954 - Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile during a track meet in England, in 3:59.4.
1957 - Senator John Fitzgerald Kennedy of Massachusetts was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book "Profiles in Courage."
1960 - Britain's Princess Margaret married Anthony Armstrong-Jones, a commoner, at Westminster Abbey. (They divorced in 1978.)
1994 - A rail tunnel under the English Channel officially opened, connecting Britain and the European mainland for the first time since the Ice Age.
Births 1758 - Maximilian Robespierre, French revolutionary.
1856 - Sigmund Freud, Viennese founder of psychoanalysis.
1856 - Robert E. Peary, American explorer, discoverer of the North Pole, explorer of Greenland.
1895 - Rudolph Valentino (Rodolfo Pietro Filiberto Raffaello Guglielmi di Valentina), silent-film star.
1915 - Orson Welles, American actor, director, producer, writer.
1931 - Willie (Howard) Mays, American baseball great.
1953 - Tony Blair (born Anthony Charles Lynton Blair), British politician and prime minister.
1961 - George Clooney, American actor, and nephew of Rosemary Clooney.
Deaths 1862 - Henry David Thoreau, American poet and writer.
1987 - William Casey, American Central Intelligence Agency Director.
1992 - Marlene Dietrich, German film actress and singer.
2006 - Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last American survivor of the Titanic disaster.
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