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Cinco de Mayo
Historical events & facts — May 5
What happened on May 5?
On May 5, 1862, Mexican General Ignacio Zaragoza defeated the French army — considered the most powerful in the world — at the Battle of Puebla, preventing the city's capture. Although France eventually conquered Mexico and installed Archduke Maximilian as emperor, the battle became a symbol of Mexican resistance. Cinco de Mayo is today more celebrated in the US than in Mexico itself.
On May 5, 1818, philosopher and economist Karl Marx was born in Trier, Prussia — who together with Friedrich Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto (1848) and the monumental Capital (1867). Marx's ideas on class struggle, surplus value and historical materialism inspired the socialist revolutions of the twentieth century and remain subjects of political and intellectual debate. Engels called Marx the "Darwin of the social sciences".
On May 5, 1821, former French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile on the island of Saint Helena, in the South Atlantic, at age 51. Napoleon, exiled there since 1815 following his defeat at Waterloo, spent his final six years revising his legend and dictating his memoirs. His death was probably caused by stomach cancer. His legal legacy — the Napoleonic Code — remains in force in dozens of countries.
Notable birthdays — May 5
Famous people born on May 5
Hans Pfitzner
Hans Erich Pfitzner was a Russian-born German composer, conductor and polemicist who was a self-described anti-modernist. His best known work is the post-Romantic opera Palestrina (1917), very loosely based on the life of the sixteenth-century composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and his Missa Papae Marcelli.
Blind Willie McTell
Blind Willie McTell was an American Piedmont blues and ragtime singer, songwriter and guitarist. He played in a fluid, syncopated finger picking guitar style common among many East Coast, Piedmont blues players. Like his Atlanta contemporaries, he came to use twelve-string guitars exclusively. McTell was also adept at slide guitar, unusual among ragtime bluesmen.
Victor Garland
Sir Ransley Victor Garland KBE, usually known as Vic Garland, was an Australian politician and diplomat. He was a member of the House of Representatives from 1969 to 1981, representing the Liberal Party, and served as a minister in the McMahon and Fraser governments. He later served as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 1981 to 1983.
Delia Derbyshire
Delia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music. She worked with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s, including an electronic arrangement of the theme music to the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who.
Ignacio Ramonet
Ignacio Ramonet Miguez is a Spanish academic, journalist, and writer who has been based in Paris for much of his career. After becoming first known for writing on film and media, he became editor-in-chief of Le Monde diplomatique, serving from 1991 until March 2008. Under his leadership, LMD established editorial independence in 1996 from Le Monde, with which it had been affiliated since 1954.
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