Richard Anthony Monsour (May 4, 1937 – March 16, 2019), known professionally as Dick Dale, was an American rock guitarist. He
was a pioneer of surf music, drawing on Middle Eastern music
scales and experimenting with reverb.

Audrey Hepburn (May 4, 1929 – January 20, 1993)

On May 4, 1929, Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston—who will
one day be better known to legions of film fans as Audrey
Hepburn—was born near Brussels, Belgium.

The daughter of an English banker and a Dutch baroness, Hepburn
was attending school in London when World War II erupted in
Europe. During the war, the Nazis occupied Holland, where the
young Audrey and her mother were staying, and the family
suffered many hardships. Hepburn continued to pursue her
ballet studies, and at war’s end, she returned to London, where
she modeled and began acting in small parts on stage and screen.

In 1951, Hepburn was “discovered” by the French writer Colette
while in Monaco shooting a film. Colette insisted Hepburn be cast
in the title role of the Broadway version of her novel Gigi, and the
young actress made her Broadway debut that same year.

Twenty-five-year-old Norman Mailer’s first novel, The Naked and
the Dead, was published on May 4, 1948. The book is critically
acclaimed and widely considered one of the best novels to
come out of World War II.

Norman Kingsley Mailer (1923 – 20007)

In This Day in History, May 4, 1970, National Guard troops kill
four students, wounding eight and permanently paralyzing
another at Kent State University In Kent, Ohio.

On May 3, 1942, during World War II, the first modern naval
engagement in history, the Battle of the Coral Sea, began. A
Japanese invasion force succeeds in occupying Tulagi of
the Solomon Islands in an expansion of Japan’s defensive
perimeter.

The United States, having broken Japan’s secret war code
and forewarned of an impending invasion of Tulagi and Port
Moresby, attempted to intercept the Japanese armada. Four
days of battles between Japanese and American aircraft
carriers resulted in 70 Japanese and 66 American warplanes
destroyed.