MAY 5 1992: Remains of the victims of the NAF plane crash were buried in Abuja.
MAY 5 1992: The 1999 Constitution was passed into law by the Provisional Ruling Council.
MAY 5 1961: Alan Shepard Became The First American In Space
NASA was established in 1958 to keep U.S. space efforts abreast of recent Soviet achievements, such as the launching of the world’s first artificial satellite–Sputnik 1–in 1957. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the two superpowers raced to become the first country to put a man in space and return him to Earth. On April 12, 1961, the Soviet space program won the race when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into space, put in orbit around the planet, and safely returned to Earth. One month later, Shepard’s suborbital flight restored faith in the U.S. space program.
MAY 5 2002: Spider Man Was The First Movie To Top Hundred Million Dollars In Opening Weekend
Directed by Sam Raimi and starring Tobey Maguire in the title role, the eagerly awaited comic book adaptation Spider-Man was released on Friday, May 3, 2002, and quickly became the fastest movie ever to earn more than $100 million at the box office, raking in a staggering $114.8 million by Sunday, May 5.
fter a genetically altered spider bites the teenager Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) during his class field trip to a university laboratory, he discovers that the bite has given him supernatural powers. Though his principal goal is pursuing his longtime crush, Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), Parker soon transforms himself into Spider-Man in order to combat evil, in the form of the Green Goblin, the villainous result of an experiment that the scientist Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) has performed on himself.
By the time the film was released, four decades had passed since Stan Lee and Steve Ditko created Spider-Man for Marvel in 1962. The comic’s enduring popularity, as well as a massive marketing campaign by Columbia Pictures and Marvel, seemed to predict commercial success for Spider-Man, which opened in more than 3,600 theaters nationwide.
MAY 5 1944: Driving Pioneer Bertha Benz Died
Bertha Benz, the wife of inventor Karl Benz and the first person to drive an automobile over a long distance, died on this day in 1944, in Ladenburg, Germany.
Born Bertha Ringer, she married Karl Benz around 1870. Karl Benz received a patent for his horseless carriage, called the Motorwagen, in January 1886. The wooden vehicle had two wheels in the back, one in the front, and a handle-like contraption as a steering wheel. Powered by a single-cylinder, 2.5-horsepower engine, it could reach speeds of up to 25 miles per hour. Benz was having trouble selling the Motorwagen, however: Early press reports were not altogether positive, and customers were reluctant to take a chance on a vehicle that had so far only been tested over short distances.
In early August 1888, Bertha and her two teenage sons, Richard and Eugen, hatched a plan to take the car on a surprise visit to her mother in Pforzheim, Germany. Knowing that Karl would never allow it, they left early in the morning, while he was still sleeping. The trio drove from their home in Mannheim to Pforzheim and back, a total distance of 106 kilometers (65 miles). Though big streets in the cities were often paved, there were no real roads outside urban areas yet, and Bertha had to drive along railway lines in order to find her way. To refuel the car, she bought Ligroin, a detergent then used as fuel, at local pharmacies. When the car’s fuel line clogged, she unclogged it using one of her hairpins. She also used the garter on her stocking to fix a broken ignition.
Source: history.com
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