Once Upon A Time – May 6 – 1840 – World’s First Adhesive Postage Stamp, The “Penny Black”, Is First Used In Great Britain

1626 Dutch colonist Peter Minuit organizes the purchase of Manhattan Island from Native Americans for 60 guilders worth of goods, believed to have been Canarsee Indians of the Lenape

1840 World’s first adhesive postage stamp, the “Penny Black”, is first used in Great Britain

1889 Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) in Paris opens with the recently completed Eiffel Tower serving as the entrance arch

1937 German airship Hindenburg explodes in flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 35 of the 97 on board and 1 on the ground

1941 Joseph Stalin becomes Premier of the Soviet Union, replacing his foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov

Historical Events Today

Today in Film & TV

2004 TV sitcom “Friends” airs season finale in 10th and final season in US (52.5 million viewers)

Today in Music

1966 The Rolling Stones release “Paint it Black” in the US

Today in Sport

1954 English athlete Roger Bannister becomes first to run a sub-4 minute mile, recording 3:59:4 at Iffley Road Track, Oxford

FACTS

2001 During a trip to Syria, Pope John Paul II becomes the first pope to enter a mosque

1896 Samuel Pierpont Langley flies his unpiloted Number 5 aircraft using a catapult launch from a boat on the Potomac River, USA. The aircraft travels almost 3/4 of a mile – ten times further than any previous heavier-than-air flying machine.