California Chrome (foaled 2011) is an American Thoroughbred racehorse who won the 2014 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, and was the 2014 American Horse of the Year. His fans—called "Chromies"—supported him at his races as "the people's horse". His owners, Perry Martin and Steve Coburn, named their partnership DAP Racing, standing for "Dumb Ass Partners"—inspired by a passerby who questioned their wisdom in purchasing the horse's dam. Critics did not think the colt, trained by Art Sherman and ridden by Victor Espinoza, could win the Kentucky Derby due to his humble origins and pedigree, but California Chrome defied the skeptics and won. After the Preakness, anticipation rose that he could win the Triple Crown in the 2014 Belmont Stakes. But in that race, California Chrome was stepped on by another horse at the start, tearing tissue from his heel, and finished fourth. Healing from his injury, he raced in the fall, running third in the Breeders' Cup Classic and winning the Hollywood Derby. He received the 2014 Secretariat Vox Populi Award, the NTRA Moment of the Year, and Eclipse Awards for Champion Three-Year-Old Male Horse and Horse of the Year. (Full article...)

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• ... that Head of Christ (pictured) by Correggio was likely intended for private devotion?
• ... that the very first basketball players in Lithuania were women, but the first official game was played by men?
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• ... that Big Inch, a petroleum pipeline, had a companion project named Little Big Inch?
• ... that the 1984 status referendum in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands has been described as the "smallest act of self-determination ever conducted"?
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• Following a week of protests in Baltimore, United States, six city police officers are charged in relation to the death of Freddie Gray.
• NASA's MESSENGER probe (artist's rendering pictured) to Mercury purposely crashes into the surface of the planet after an eleven-year mission.
• Scientists announce the discovery of the first known dinosaur with membranous wings, Yi qi.
• The Americas becomes the first World Health Organization region to be officially declared free of rubella.
• Eight convicts, including Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran of the Bali Nine, are executed by firing squad in Indonesia.
• Omar al-Bashir is re-elected President of Sudan.

Ongoing: Nepal earthquake – Yemeni Civil War
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May 2: Flag Day in Poland

• 1559 – Scottish clergyman John Knox returned to Scotland from exile to lead the Scottish Reformation.
• 1863 – American Civil War: Confederate general Stonewall Jackson was wounded by friendly fire during the Battle of Chancellorsville, leading to his death by pneumonia eight days later.
• 1945 – World War II: General Helmuth Weidling, commander of the German troops in Berlin, surrendered the city to Soviet forces led by Marshal Georgy Zhukov, ending the Battle of Berlin.
• 1982 – Falklands War: HMS Conqueror launched three torpedoes and sank ARA General Belgrano (pictured), the only ship ever to have been deliberately sunk by a nuclear submarine in battle.
• 1995 – Croatian War of Independence: Serb forces began firing rockets on the Croatian capital of Zagreb, killing 7 and injuring at least 175 others.

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