Film Premiere
May 3 "Going My Way", directed by Leo McCarey and starring Bing Crosby premieres in New York (Academy Award for Best Picture, 1945)
Film Release
May 4 "Gaslight", starring an 18-year-old Angela Lansbury in her film debut, is released
Historic Event
May 5 Mahatma Gandhi freed from prison
- May 8 33 communist resistance fighter sentenced to death
- May 9 1st eye bank opens in New York
- May 9 Country singer Jimmie Davis becomes Governor of Louisiana
- May 9 Dutch resistance fighter Gerard Musch arrested
- May 9 Joe McCarthy returns as Yankee manager after an illness
- May 9 Russians recapture Crimea by taking Sevastopol
- May 10 Chinese offensive in West-Yunnan
- May 10 Smith v Allwright (excluding Blacks from primary voting) is illegal
- May 11 Opposition group surprise attack post office Washer
- May 12 900+ 8th US Air Force bombers attack Zwikau, Bohlen & Brux
- May 12 Crimea purged of Nazi troops
- May 12 German police arrest Dutch resistance member Gerrit van der Veen and later execute him
- May 13 69th Preakness: Conn McCreary aboard Pensive wins in 1:59.2
- May 14 91 German bombers harass Bristol
- May 14 British troops occupy Kohima
- May 15 Cincinnati Red Clyde Shoun no-hits Boston Braves, 1-0
Historic Event
May 15 Eisenhower, Montgomery, Churchill and King George VI discuss the plan for D-Day
D-Day
May 17 General Eisenhower sets D-Day for June 5th
- May 17 Operation Straightline: Allies land in Dutch New Guinea
- May 18 Polish 2nd Army corps captures convent of Monte Cassino, Italy
- May 18 Expulsion of more than 200,000 Tartars from Crimea by Soviet Union begins, they are accused of collaborating with the Germans
- May 19 240 gypsies transported to Auschwitz from Westerbork, Netherlands, including Sinti girl Settela Steinbach famously filmed by Jewish photographer Rudolf Breslauer [1]
- May 19 German defense line in Italy collapses
- May 20 US Communist Party dissolves
- May 23 British and Canadian troops occupy Pontecorvo, Italy
- May 23 Chinese counter offensive at Hunan front
- May 23 Operation Buffalo: Allied break out from Anzio bridgehead
Historic Event
May 24 Enver Hoxha becomes head of Albania's anti fascists
Historic Event
May 27 Jean-Paul Sartres' "Huis Clos" premieres in Paris