- May 1 600,000 march for peace & freedom in Germany
- May 1 Dutch Reformed Church introduces new church choir
Baseball Record
May 1 Future Baseball Hall of Fame slugger Mickey Mantle hits first career home run in 8-3 win v White Sox in Chicago; Minnie Minoso homers in Sox debut
- May 3 Gil McDougald ties major league record with 6 RBIs in 1 inning
- May 3 NY Yankee Gil McDougald is 5th to get 6 RBIs in an inning (9th)
- May 3 Royal Festival Hall opens in London
- May 3 The Festival of Britain opens
- May 5 "Out of This World" closes at New Century Theater NYC after 157 performances
- May 5 77th Kentucky Derby: Conn McCreary aboard Count Turf wins in 2:02.6
- May 6 Pitts Pirate Cliff Chambers no-hits Boston Brave, 3-0
- May 7 International Olympic committee allows Russia to participate in 1952 Olympics
- May 7 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction awarded to Conrad Richter, for his novel "The Town"
- May 8 Dacron men's suits introduced
- May 8 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Enwetak
- May 9 Air raid on Chinese positions at Yalu River
- May 10 Z Alexander Looby elected to Nashville City Council
- May 11 American engineer Jay Forrester applies for patent for computer core memory
- May 14 Sammy Fain and Yip Harburg's musical "Flahooley" opens at Broadhurst Theater NYC for 40 performances
- May 14 Ernie Kovacs Show, TV Variety debut on NBC
- May 15 AT&T becomes the 1st US corporation to have a million stockholders after young car salesman Brady Denton purchases 7 shares worth $1,078
- May 15 Polish cultural attache in Paris, Czesław Miłosz, asks the French government for political asylum
Historic Event
May 15 First vaginoplasty procedure (sex reassignment surgery) in the UK performed on Roberta Cowell by Harold Gillies
Sports History
May 19 76th Preakness: Eddie Arcaro aboard Bold wins in 1:56.4
- May 21 The opening of the Ninth Street Show, otherwise known as the 9th Street Art Exhibition - a gathering of a number of notable artists, and the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde, collectively know as the New York School.
- May 23 Peter Ustinov's "Love of Four Colonels" premieres in London
- May 23 Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet signed in Beijing, formally establishes Chinese sovereignty over Tibet
- May 24 Racial segregation in Washington, D.C. restaurants ruled illegal
- May 24 US performs nuclear test at Enwetak (atmospheric tests)
Sports History
May 25 NY Giant Willie Mays 1st major league game (goes 0 for 5)
- May 26 Vaughan Williams' "Pilgrim's Progress" premieres in London
Historic Event
May 27 Chinese Communists force Dalai Lama to surrender his army to Beijing
- May 28 After going 0-for-12, Willie Mays connects for his 1st major league home run
- May 28 Bernardus J Alfrink appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of Utrecht and Titular Archbishop of Tyana
- May 28 The Jerry Colonna Show debuts on ABC-TV
Radio Premiere
May 28 Radio programme "Crazy People" (later titled The Goon Show) premieres on the BBC, created by Spike Milligan
- May 29 1st North Pole flight in single engine plane-CF Blair
Boxing Title Fight
May 30 Ezzard Charles beats Joey Maxim in 15 for heavyweight boxing title
