May 1959 in History

Events in History

May 1 West Germany introduces 5 day work week
May 3 Tiger's Charlie Maxwell hits 4 consecutive HRs in a doubleheader

Event of Interest

May 4 Pulitzer Prize awarded to Archibald MacLeish (J.B.)

May 6 Iceland gunboats shoot at British fishing vessels
May 8 3-deck Nile River excursion steamer springs a leak panicking passengers who capsized ship; 200 drown just yards from shore

Little Caesars Pizza Founded

May 8 Little Caesars Pizza is founded by Mike Ilitch and his wife Marian Ilitch in Garden City, Michigan

May 10 Giants Jim Hearn allows 2 runs against Pirates, game is suspended, Hearn is released & charged with loss 2 months after his retirement
May 10 Soviet forces arrive in Afghanistan

Sanctuary of Christ the King

May 17 Sanctuary of Christ the King inaugurated, a 28 meter (92 ft) high monument and shrine overlooking Lisbon, Portugal by sculptor Francisco Franco de Sousa

May 19 Jan de Quay becomes premier of the Netherlands
May 19 The USS Triton, the first submarine with two nuclear reactors, is completed
May 20 Ford wins battle with Chrysler to call its new car "Falcon"
May 20 Japanese-Americans regain their citizenship

Event of Interest

May 20 Shah of Persia Mohammad Reza Pahlavi visits Netherlands

May 21 Cleveland Metroparks Zoo Children's Petting Farm opens (Cleveland, Ohio)
May 22 Benjamin O Davis Jr becomes 1st black major general in US Air Force
May 24 1st house with built-in bomb shelter exhibited (Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania)
May 24 Empire Day renamed Commonwealth Day in Great Britain

Soviet History

May 25 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visits Angola

May 26 Harvey Haddix pitches 12 perfect innings, loses in 13th
May 28 Congressional Committee of Astronautics meets Project 7 astronauts
May 28 Monkeys Able & Baker zoom 300 miles (500 km) into space on Jupiter missile, become 1st animals retrieved from a space mission

Event of Interest

May 29 Charles de Gaulle forms French government

May 29 Saunders-Roe SR.N1, the first practical hovercraft, performs its first engine run
May 30 Iraq withdraws from the Baghdad Pact (Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom)
May 30 President Luis Somoza Debayle ends emergency crisis in Nicaragua
May 30 President Stroessner disbands Paraguay's parliament
May 30 The Auckland Harbour Bridge is officially opened in Auckland, New Zealand.

Birthdays in History

May 3 Uma Bharati, Indian politician, Minister of Drinking Water & Sanitation, born in Tikamgarh, Madhya Pradesh, India
May 6 Charles Hendry, British Conservative Party politician, born in Cuckfield, England
May 6 Eric D. Fingerhut, American businessman and politician (Rep-D-Ohio 1993-95), born in Cleveland, Ohio
May 7 Tamara E. Jernigan, American astronaut (STS 40, 52, 67, 80), born in Chattanooga, Tennessee
May 10 Cindy Hyde-Smith, American politician (Senator-R-Mississippi 2018-), born in Brookhaven, Mississippi
May 19 Nicole Brown Simpson, German-American ex-wife of O.J. Simpson who was later murdered, born in Frankfurt, Germany (d. 1994)
May 20 Peter Greene, American producer (After Midnight), born in Brooklyn, New York
May 21 Brisn Lenihan, Jnr, Irish politician and minister, born in Dublin (d. 2011)
May 25 Manolis Kefalogiannis, Greek politician (Minister for Mercantile Marine), born in Heraklion, Greece
May 27 Donna Strickland, Canadian physicist (Nobel Prize 2018 laser beams), born in Guelph, Ontario
May 28 Bernardine Evaristo, English writer ("Girl, Woman, Other" - 1st woman of Black heritage to win the Booker Prize), born in London, England
May 28 John Morgan, British etiquette expert (d. 2000)
May 30 Claudia Alexander, Canadian-born American NASA Scientist (led Galileo mission to Jupiter), born in Vancouver, British Columbia (d. 2015)
May 30 Frank Vanhecke, Belgian politician, born in Bruges, Belgium