Events in History
Event of Interest
May 1 Seven days after parliament was dissolved, Charles Tupper is sworn in as the 6th Prime Minister of Canada
Charles Tupper
- May 4 1st edition of London Daily Mail (halfpenny)
- May 4 Grease fire ignites half ton of dynamite at Cripple Creek, Colorado
- May 6 Samuel Pierpont Langley flies his unpiloted Number 5 aircraft using a catapult launch from a boat on the Potomac River, USA. The aircraft travels almost 3/4 of a mile - ten times further than any previous heavier-than-air flying machine.
- May 9 1st horseless carriage show in London (featured 10 models)
- May 14 Lowest US temperature in May recorded (-10°F /-23°C at Climax, Colorado)
- May 15 Tornado kills 78 in Texas
- May 18 US Supreme court affirms legitimacy of racial separation (Plessy v Ferguson)
Royal Coronation
May 18 Khodynka Tragedy: A mass panic on Khodynka Field, Moscow, during the festivities of the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II, results in the deaths of 1,389 people
Nicholas II
- May 26 Dow Jones index begins with an average of 12 industrial stocks (closing is 40.94)
- May 26 Last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II, crowned
- May 26 James Dunham murders six people in Campbell, California
- May 27 Bay District Race Track in San Francisco closes
- May 27 Tornado hit St Louis, killing 255, leaving thousands homeless
Birthdays in History
- May 1 Herbert Backe, German Nazi politician (Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture), born in Batumi, Kutais Governorate, Russian Empire (d. 1947)
- May 1 Mark W. Clark, American general, born in Madison Barracks, Sackets Harbor, New York (d. 1984)
- May 1 J. Lawton Collins, American general, born in New Orleans, Louisiana (d. 1987)
- May 2 Helen of Greece and Denmark, Queen Mother of Romania, born in Athens, Greece (d. 1982)
- May 3 Dodie Smith, English novelist and playwright (101 Dalmatians), born in Whitefield, Lancashire, England (d. 1990)
- May 3 Karl Allmenröder, German World War I flying Ace, born in Wald, Rhine Province, Germany (d. 1917)
- May 7 Pavel Sergeevich Aleksandrov, Russian mathematician (topology), born in Moscow, Russia (d. 1982)
- May 11 Philippo de Pisis, Italian painter
- May 17 Hannah Tillich, German-American writer (Harbor Mouse) and wife of Paul Tillich, born in Rotenburg an der Fulda, Germany (d. 1988)
- May 19 Michael Balcon, producer/father of Jill Balcon, born in Birmingham, England
- May 23 Felix Martin Julius Steiner, German Heer and Waffen-SS officer (d. 1966)
- May 25 Jan Nicolaas Bakhuizen van den Brink, Dutch theologist and church historian, born in Joure, Netherlands (d. 1987)
- May 29 George L. Funke, Dutch botanist (Flower Physiology), born in The Hague, Netherlands
Deaths in History
H. H. Holmes
May 7 H. H. Holmes [Herman Webster Mudgett], American serial killer executed by hanging at 34
H. H. Holmes
- May 13 Nora Perry, writer, dies
- May 23 Jose Asunción Silva, Colombian poet (Nocturno III), dies at 30
- May 27 Allard Pierson, Dutch theologist, philosopher and art historian, dies at 65
- May 27 Aleksandr Grigorievich Stoletov, Russian physicist (b. 1839)
- May 29 Gabriel Auguste Daubrée, French geologist, dies at 81