Today

1937 - Margaret Mitchell's novel "Gone With the Wind" wins the Pulitzer Prize.

1947 - Japan's post-World War II constitution goes into effect.

1952 - A ski-modified U.S. Air Force C-47 piloted by Lt. Col. Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma and Lt. Col. William P. Benedict of California becomes the first aircraft to land on the North Pole.

Tomorrow

1948 - Twenty-five-year-old Norman Mailer's first novel, "The Naked and the Dead," is published.

1970 - At Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, 100 National Guardsmen fire their rifles at a group of students, killing four and wounding 11.

1979 - Margaret Thatcher, Oxford-educated chemist, lawyer and leader of the Conservative Party, is sworn in as Britain's first female prime minister.

Wednesday

1862 - During the French-Mexican War, a poorly supplied and outnumbered Mexican army under Gen. Ignacio Zaragoza defeats a French army attempting to capture Puebla de Los Angeles, later renamed Puebla de Zaragoza. Thus, we celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

1955 - The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) becomes a sovereign state when the United States, France and Great Britain end their military occupation, which began in 1945.

1961 - From Cape Canaveral, Fla., Navy Cmdr. Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. is launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to travel into space.

Thursday

1937 - The airship Hindenburg, the largest dirigible ever built and the pride of Nazi Germany, bursts into flames upon touching its mooring mast in Lakehurt, N.J., killing 36 passengers and crew members.

1954 - In Oxford, England, 25-year-old medical student Roger Bannister cracks track and field's most notorious barrier: the 4-minute mile. His time was 3:59.4.

1955 - Actress Grace Kelly meets her future husband, Prince Rainier of Monaco, while on a photo shoot for a French fashion magazine.

Friday

1915 - Lusitania is torpedoed without warning by a German submarine off the south coast of Ireland. Of 1,959 passengers and crew, 1,198 people drowned, including 128 Americans.

1945 - The German High Command signs the unconditional surrender of all German forces, East and West, at Reims, France.

1947 - "Kraft Television Theater," an early and influential anthology series, debuts on NBC with a play called "Double Doors." The show ran for 11 years.