Events in History
Event of Interest
May 1 President of the Philippines Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declares existence of "a state of rebellion", after thousands of supporters of her arrested predecessor, Joseph Estrada, storm towards the presidential palace at height of EDSA III rebellion
- May 2 Her Royal Highness Princess Margriet of the Netherlands unveils the Man With Two Hats monument in Apeldoorn and the other in Ottawa on May 11, 2000. Symbolically linking both Netherlands and Canada for their assistance throughout World War II.
Event of Interest
May 2 President Bill Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military
- May 4 Ken Livingstone becomes the first Mayor of London
- May 5 Conjunction of Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the Moon
- May 10 India's population reaches 1 billion, baby girl Aastha born at Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital chosen as symbolic billionth
- May 11 India's population officially reaches 1 billion - Astha Arora named India's billionth baby
- May 12 Tate Modern art gallery opens in the re-designed Bankside Power station by Herzog & de Meuron in London, England
- May 13 In Enschede, the Netherlands, a fireworks factory explodes, killing 22 people, wounding 950, and resulting in approximately €450 million in damage
- May 24 Israeli troops withdraw from southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation.
- May 25 Liberation Day of Lebanon. Israel withdraws its army from most of the Lebanese territory after 22 years of its first invasion in 1978.
Knighthood
May 26 Arthur C. Clarke is knighted "for services to literature" at a ceremony in Colombo, Sri Lanka
Deaths in History
- May 3 John Joseph Cardinal O'Connor, Catholic Archbishop of New York (b. 1920)
- May 8 Alexander Chislenko, Russian-American transhumanist (b. 1959)
- May 8 Guadalupe "Pita" Amor, Mexican poet (b. 1918)
- May 8 Henry Nicols, American AIDS activist, dies as the result of a car accident at 26
- May 10 Jules Deschênes, Canadian Quebec Superior Court judge, dies at 76
- May 14 Obuchi Keizo, Prime Minister of Japan (b. 1937)
- May 16 Bodacious the Bull Famous rodeo bull (b. 1988)
- May 17 Donald Coggan, 101st Archbishop of Canterbury (1974-80), dies at 90
- May 18 Maulana Yousuf Ludhianvi, Muslim scholar, dies at 68
- May 19 Yevgeny Khrunov, Soviet cosmonaut, dies at 66
- May 21 Barbara Cartland, English romance author (Camfield #69), dies at 98
- May 21 Mark R. Hughes, American entrepreneur (b. 1956)
- May 24 Kurt Schork, American reporter (b. 1947)
- May 27 Crawford Murray MacLehose of Beoch, British statesman (b. 1917)
- May 27 Kazimierz Leski, Polish engineer, fighter pilot, intelligence and counter-intelligence officer (b. 1912)
Authors
Civil Rights Activists
Inventors
Kings
Revolutionaries
Scientists