MAY 1

1931: From the White House, President Herbert Hoover symbolically dedicates the 1,250-foot-tall Empire State Building in New York, then the highest skyscraper in the world.

1963: James Whittaker, with the aid of his Sherpa climbing partner Nawang Gombu, becomes the first American to reach the peak of Mount Everest in the Himalayas, nearly a decade after New Zealand mountaineer Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay first reached the summit of the world's highest mountain.

2003: Aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of California, President George W. Bush announces that combat operation in Iraq are over, while standing in front of a banner proclaiming "mission accomplished." However, due to insurgency and guerrilla warfare, the vast majority of casualties in the Iraq War would occur after Bush's speech. The U.S. military presence in Iraq would not end until December 2011.