50 Years Ago

April 25, 1957 The Navy sends its Sixth Fleet to the eastern Mediterranean to support King Hussein of Jordan against an uprising by pro-Egyptian army officers.

May 2, 1957 Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, one of the few non-Presidents to have a historical era named after him, dies at the age of 48 at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. He will be replaced by William Proxmire.

75 Years Ago

May 29, 1932 Veterans arrive in Washington, demanding immediate payment of a promised future bonus for their military service. By mid-June 17,000 will be camped out.

125 Years Ago

May 6, 1882 The Chinese Exclusion Act, which bars any new Chinese laborers from entering the country for 10 years and excludes all Chinese immigrants from citizenship, is passed by Congress over the veto of President Chester A. Arthur.

400 Years Ago

May 14, 1607 A group of 105 colonists lands at Jamestown, Virginia. After a harrowing start, the colony will flourish and become the oldest permanent British settlement in America.

500 Years Ago

April 25, 1507 The geographer Martin Waldseemüller, of Germany, becomes the first person to use the term America. In his book Cosmographiae Introductio, he names the landmass across the Atlantic after Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian navigator who was the first to identify the newly explored region as a separate continent.