Teenager makes staggering call after surviving airship disaster
May 6
The giant German airship Hindenburg caught fire and crashed on May 6, 1937, in Lakehurst, New Jersey.
The disaster killed 35 of the 97 people on board and a crewman on the ground. It was also captured by waiting photographers, film crews and a radio broadcaster on the ground, making it one of history's most iconic air accidents.
Among the survivors was 14-year-old cabin boy Werner Franz who was able to jump out of the Hindenburg as it fell burning to the ground.
Just as flames ripped through the airship, Franz was in the officers' mess when large tank of water burst open and drenched him, which protected him from the flames and the heat.
Franz was able to jump out of a hatch onto the ground below and made the wise decision to run into the wind. If he had headed in the other direction, the flames would have caught him.
Franz escaped the disaster without a scratch and was undeterred about flying on airships. When he returned to Germany, he asked if he could work aboard another one.
On May 6, 1954, British runner Roger Bannister became the first man to break the four-minute mile barrier.
During a typically cool, wet and blustery day in the English city of Oxford, Bannister ran four laps around a cinder track in three minutes, 59.4 seconds, for one of the defining sporting achievements of the 20th century.
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and France's President Francois Mitterrand formally opened the Channel Tunnel on May 6, 1994, during two elaborate ceremonies in France and Britain.
The 37km long rail tunnel was the first land link between Britain and Europe since the last Ice Age about 8000 years ago.
Grazier and businessman John Batman, a prominent figure in Australia's colonial period, died on May 6, 1839.
Widely regarded as one of Melbourne's founding fathers, Batman has been described as a controversial figure due to his dealings with Indigenous Australians.
Streets, parks and memorials bearing his name were erected across the VIctorian capital, but some have been vandalised in recent years.
Entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk founded the commercial space flight company SpaceX on May 6, 2002.
It helped usher in the era of private space exploration. SpaceX became the first private company to successfully launch and return a spacecraft from Earth orbit and the first to launch a crewed spacecraft and dock it with the International Space Station.
On May 6, 1966, Ian Brady, left, and his lover Myra Hindley, were sentenced to life by a British court for the so-called Moors murders.
They were found guilty for what the trial judge described as the "calculated, cruel, cold-blooded murders" of three children. HIndley was convicted for the murders of two other children.
Four victim bodies were found buried on moorland near the city of Manchester in northern England. But to date, the body of one has not been found despite several police searches over the past decades.
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