May 1986 in History

Events in History

May 1 Russian news agency Tass reports Chernobyl nuclear power plant mishap

May 1 Will Stegers expedition reaches North Pole
May 2 Transportation Expo 86 opens in Vancouver, BC
May 3 Air Lanka crashes, killing 22
May 3 NASA launches Goes-G, it fails to achieve orbit
May 4 President Babrak Karmal resigns as party leader of Afghanistan
May 6 Donald E Pelotte becomes 1st native American bishop
May 6 France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
May 7 Iraq bombs a Tehran oil refiner
May 12 Fred Markham (US), unpaced & unaided by wind, is 1st to pedal 65 mph on a level course, Big Sand Flat, California

May 12 President Reagan appoints Dr James C. Fletcher NASA Administrator

May 14 Netherlands Institute for War Documentation publishes Anne Frank's complete diary

May 15 Former President of Argentina Leopoldo Galtieri is sentenced to 12 years in prison for mishandling the Falkland Islands War [1]

May 16 South African President P. W. Botha sends Coetsee to visit Mandela

May 16 The Seville Statement on Violence is adopted by an international meeting of scientists, convened by the Spanish National Commission for UNESCO, in Seville, Spain.
May 18 Chung Kwung Ying does 2,750 "atomic" hand-stand push-ups
May 18 South African army occupies Botswana, Zimbabwe & Zambia
May 19 Anti-apartheid activist Hélène Pastoors sentenced to 10 yrs in South Africa
May 21 Atlanta Brave Rafael Ramirez hits 4 doubles in a game
May 21 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
May 23 US & Western Europe veto heavier sanctions against South Africa

May 24 Margaret Thatcher becomes 1st British Prime Minister to visit Israel

May 24 Reginald Huffstetler trod water for 985 hrs
May 25 95-year-old woman scores a hole-in-one in Florida
May 25 Ferry boat Shamia sinks on Maghna River Bangladesh, 600 killed
May 25 Hands Across America - 6.5 million people hold hands from California to NY
May 25 Virgilio Barco elected president of Colombia
May 27 France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
May 27 Norway Showcase groundbreaking
May 27 President Reagan orders 2 Poseidon-class submarines be dismantled
May 28 Democratic Labor Party wins parliamentary election in Barbados
May 29 59th National Spelling Bee: Jon Pennington wins spelling odontalgia
May 30 Ariane-2 (ESA) launched
May 30 France performs nuclear test

May 30 Ashley Slaney, daughter of Olympians Mary Decker & Richard Slaney
May 31 Robert Gesink, Dutch professional cyclist, born in Varsseveld, Netherlands

May 9 Tibetan climber who was the 1st to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953 with Edmund Hillary, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage at 71

May 11 Henry P. McIlhenny, American philanthropist, dies at 76
May 15 Theodore H. White, American journalist (Making of President, Pulitzer Prize1962), dies at 71
May 20 Willem Pee, Belgian linguist, dies at 83
May 24 Stephen D Thorne, Lt Cmdr USN/astronaut, dies in a plane crash at 33
May 25 Chester Bowles, American ambassador and writer (Conscience of a Liberal), dies at 85
May 27 Gaston Duribreux, Flemish writer (Sour Dove), dies at 82
May 27 Isma'il Raji' al-Faruqi, Palestinian-born philosopher (b. 1921)
May 31 James Rainwater, American physicist (Nobel 1975-determining the asymmetrical shapes of certain atomic nuclei), dies at 68
May 31 Jane Frank, American artist, dies at 67