Explore 5 May

Alan Shepard inside Freedom 7 during the flight, filmed by an onboard camera.

Image credit

NASA · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Freedom 7 carries the first American into space

On 5 May 1961 the astronaut Alan Shepard was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard the Mercury capsule Freedom 7, on top of a Redstone rocket. The flight lasted 15 minutes and 22 seconds, rose to about 187 kilometres and came down in the Atlantic some 486 kilometres from the launch pad.

The flight was suborbital, a single up-and-down arc rather than a trip around the Earth, and came just over three weeks after the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had orbited the planet. Even so, it showed that NASA could send a person into space and bring them back safely, and it gave the American space programme a decisive boost.

Carnegie Hall on Seventh Avenue, New York.

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Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA · CC BY 2.0Resized and cropped for display.

Carnegie Hall opens in New York

On 5 May 1891 the new Music Hall on New York’s Seventh Avenue, paid for by the industrialist Andrew Carnegie and later renamed Carnegie Hall, held its opening night. Walter Damrosch conducted the New York Symphony and the Oratorio Society in a programme that began with a hymn and a long dedication speech.

The star guest was the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who conducted his own Marche solennelle during the evening and appeared throughout the five-day opening festival. The hall soon became one of the world’s best-known concert stages.

Koinobori, carp-shaped streamers, flying for Children’s Day.

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Unknown · Public domainResized and cropped for display.

Children’s Day in Japan

Every 5 May Japan marks Kodomo no Hi, Children’s Day, a national holiday since 1948 that closes the Golden Week holidays. It grew out of the older Tango no Sekku festival for boys and now celebrates the happiness and character of all children; families fly carp-shaped streamers called koinobori, a symbol of strength and perseverance.

A butchers’ float in the Liberation Day parade in Utrecht on 5 May 1960.

Image credit

Wouter Hagens · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.

Liberation Day in the Netherlands

On 5 May the Netherlands celebrates Bevrijdingsdag, Liberation Day, marking the end of the German occupation in 1945. It follows the national Remembrance of the Dead on 4 May, and free festivals are held in cities across the country, organised since 1987 by the National Committee for 4 and 5 May.