May the Fourth be With You!

Yes Saturday will be Star Wars Day or, if you're feeling particularly grandiose, as a number of the Usual Suspects evidently were when they compiled their lists for May 4, Saturday will be Intergalactic Star Wars Day. The reason for the selection of the day is all too painfully obvious.

If you prefer real heroes to pretend ones, May 4 is also International Firefighters Day.

© 1970 Valley News-Dispatch

Four anti-war protesters were killed by National Guardsmen at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. That's John Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph from that terrible day on the right. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded Neil Young's song about that tragedy, "Ohio," just a couple of weeks later.

Someone lobbed a dynamite bomb at Chicago police advancing to disperse a pro-labor demonstration in Chicago on May 4, 1886. Seven policemen were killed. A number of protesters were killed, and dozens wounded, when police fired into the crowd. That tragedy is known to history as Haymarket Square Riot.

Audrey Hepburn was born in Belgium on May 4, 1929. Alice Liddell, the little girl who inspired Lewis Carrol to write Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, was born on May 4, 1852.