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Christopher Columbus became the first European to set foot on Jamaica, claiming it for Spain without notable concern for the people already living there. It was, by the standards of the age, a completely typical Tuesday.

The Estates-General convened at Versailles for the first time since 1614 — 175 years — as France lurched toward financial collapse and Louis XVI ran out of options. Within weeks it would become the National Assembly. Within years, the king would lose his head. It began, as revolutions sometimes do, with a budget meeting.

Karl Marx was born in Trier on May 5, 1818. He would spend his life in poverty, obscurity, and London, writing ideas that would reshape the political geography of the twentieth century. History has been arguing about him ever since and shows no sign of stopping.

Napoleon Bonaparte died on the island of Saint Helena, six years into his second and final exile. The cause was likely stomach cancer, though conspiracy theories involving arsenic have never entirely gone away. He was fifty-one. He had once controlled most of Europe.

A badly outgunned Mexican army under General Ignacio Zaragoza defeated a French force considered among the finest in the world at the Battle of Puebla. France was not done with Mexico, but the victory became a lasting symbol of resistance. Americans celebrating Cinco de Mayo are, mostly without knowing it, toasting a nineteenth-century military upset.

Carnegie Hall held its inaugural concert on May 5, 1891, with Tchaikovsky himself conducting. Andrew Carnegie had funded the construction of what would become the most famous concert venue in America. Getting there still requires practice.

Cy Young pitched the first perfect game of the modern baseball era, retiring all twenty-seven batters he faced. Young had already been pitching professionally for fourteen years. He would continue for ten more. The award bearing his name was established fifty-two years after his death.

Coco Chanel introduced Chanel No. 5 on May 5, 1921 — choosing the date, by her own account, because five was her lucky number. It became the bestselling perfume in the world and remains so. Some decisions are that simple.

Alan Shepard became the first American in space, completing a suborbital flight lasting fifteen minutes and twenty-two seconds aboard Freedom 7. The Soviets had beaten America into space by three weeks with Yuri Gagarin. Shepard's flight was nonetheless watched by an estimated forty-five million Americans, which was roughly a quarter of the country.

Bobby Sands died in the Maze Prison after a sixty-six day hunger strike, becoming the first of ten IRA prisoners to die in the 1981 protest over political status. He had been elected to Parliament from his prison cell twenty-five days earlier. His death triggered riots across Northern Ireland and drew international attention to the conflict in a way that years of violence had not.

We are living in volatile times. While you cannot control the state of international affairs, you can position your portfolio accordingly.

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