Events in History
- May 1 Evidence revealed that early humans from ancient Denisovan species lived at high altitudes in Tibet 160,000 years ago
- May 1 Thailand's King Maha Vajiralongkorn marries for the fourth time to Suthida Tidjai, deputy head of his bodyguard, days before his coronation
- May 1 UK Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson fired over leaking information about Huawei deal from a UK National Security Council meeting by Theresa May
- May 1 US Attorney General William Barr testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee, defending his handling of the Mueller Report
Assange Sentenced to Jail
May 1 Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for breaching his bail conditions in London
- May 2 A clean-up on Mt Everest has removed three metric tons (6,613 pounds) of rubbish and four bodies in just two weeks
- May 2 Drone delivers a kidney for transplant surgery in Baltimore, Maryland, for the first time
Event of Interest
May 2 Second-only sketch known of Leonardo da Vinci from Queen Elizabeth's collection revealed on the 500th anniversary of the artist's death
Event of Interest
May 2 US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi accuses US Attorney General William Barr of lying to Congress over the Mueller Report
- May 3 Cyclone Fani strikes Odisha State, India and Bangladesh, killing 33 people after one of the biggest human evacuations ever - 1.2 million in India in 24 hours
- May 5 At least 41 people die when a Russian Aeroflot plane catches fire after an emergency landing at Sheremetyevo Airport, Moscow
- May 5 King Vajiralongkorn is crowned King of Thailand, first monarch to be crowned in nearly seven decades during a three-day celebration in Bangkok
- May 5 Oil tanker explosion kills 55 in Niamey, Niger
- May 5 Violent clashes between Israel and Gaza militants over three days have left 4 Israelis and 23 Palestinians dead
- May 6 French telecom company Orange and its former CEO with other executives go on trial in France for psychological harassment of their staff that unions claim resulted in 19 suicides and 12 other attempts
- May 6 One million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction according to a major new UN report
- May 6 Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei announces a moratorium on the death penalty for gay sex and adultery after worldwide condemnation over new Sharia laws
- May 7 Denver is the first US city to decriminalize psilocybin "magic mushrooms"
- May 7 Hackers seize control of the computer system of the US city of Baltimore, demanding a ransom in Bitcoins to unlock them
- May 7 Turkish electoral body decides to re-run the Istanbul mayoral election, won by the opposition, amid worldwide criticism
- May 7 Venezuela's Congress strips opposition lawmakers of immunity and accuses them of treason
- May 8 Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes argues that Facebook should be split up and regulated in "New York Times" Op-Ed essay
- May 8 Governor of Georgia Brian Kemp signs new abortion law, the so-called "heart-beat bill" (comes into effect Jan 2020)
- May 8 Iran announces it will stop complying with parts of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal
- May 8 Pakistani Christian woman Asia Bibi who spent eight years in prison on death row for blasphemy arrives in Canada
- May 8 Singapore passes sweeping "anti-fake news" laws bill
- May 8 Thailand's general elections official results show opposition Pheu Thai Party won most seats but still unable to form governmen, due to rules favoring the military
- May 8 UK goes a week without using a coal-fired power station for first time in 137 years due to use of more renewable energy
- May 9 Archaeologists hail Anglo-Saxon tomb found 2003 in Prittlewell, England, as Britain’s equivalent of Tutankhamun’s tomb as full report of its contents published
- May 9 At least 65 migrants drown off the coast of Tunisia when their boat capsizes after leaving Libya according to the UN
- May 9 French adventurer Jean-Jacques Savin (72) successfully crosses the Atlantic Ocean in a barrel arriving in Martinique
- May 9 New Australian $50 bank note misspells responsibility as "responsibilty" on 46 million notes
Catholic History
May 9 Pope Francis introduces new rules on reporting sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, criticized for not going far enough
- May 10 Taxi service Uber becomes a public company opening on the New York Stock Exchange
- May 10 US begins raising tariffs on $250 billion of Chinese imports to 25% after trade talks fail
- May 11 Carbon dioxide levels in the earth's atmosphere hit levels not seen for 3 million years at 415 parts per million, according to the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii
- May 11 Militants attack Zaver Pearl-Continental Hotel in Gwadar, Pakistan killing five, Balochistan Liberation Army claim responsibility
Election of Interest
May 11 South African parliamentary elections return ruling Cyril Ramaphosa's ANC party to power with reduced majority (58%)
- May 12 Cuba announced more rationing of products such as rice and beans due to US trade embargo and hoarding
- May 12 Gunman kill five people and a priest in a Catholic church in Dablo, Burkina Faso, before setting fire to and looting nearby buildings
- May 13 China retaliates against the US as their trade war escalates, raising tariffs on $60 billion worth of goods affecting over 4,000 items
- May 13 Diary of Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt's last days rediscovered and displayed for the 400th anniversary of his execution
Anti Omar al-Bashir Protest
May 13 Former President of Sudan Omar al-Bashir is charged in connection with the deaths of protesters the previous month
- May 13 New study on the moon shows it is still shrinking with recent moonquakes as it cools, published in journal "Nature Geoscience"
- May 13 Sri Lanka imposes a nationwide curfew from 9pm to 4am to curb violence against Muslims after the Easter Sunday terrorist attacks
- May 14 Huge protests closes schools in Kashmir after the rape of a three-year-old girl
- May 14 San Francisco is the first city to vote to ban use of facial recognition
- May 14 Steve Bullock, US Governor of Montana announces his run for Presidential office
- May 14 Wikipedia confirms China has banned all versions of its site
- May 15 Alabama passes law banning abortion in almost all cases including rape or incest
- May 15 Findings from China's Chang'e-4 rover to the Moon suggests huge asteroid created the giant crater on Moon's far side with impact so great it cracked its crust and reached the mantle below published in "Nature"
Event of Interest
May 15 Five of world's biggest tech companies pledge to tackle extremist material at "The Christchurch Call" initiative in Paris hosted by Jacinda Ardern and Emmanuel Macron
- May 15 Mexico City declares an environmental emergency after air pollution reaches dangerous levels
- May 15 US birthrate in 2018 the lowest for 32 years (total fertility rate 1,728 births per 1,000 women), with record lows for teen births
- May 16 British people get drunk more than any other nation, 51 times year according to the Global Drug survey, with English-speaking countries drinking the most
- May 16 New DNA research showing bedbugs are older than humans - 115 million years old and outlived dinosaurs, published in "Current Biology"
- May 16 New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announces he is running for president, the 24th Democrat to run
- May 16 South African Saray Khumalo is the first black African woman to climb Mt Evervest
Event of Interest
May 16 US President Donald Trump declares a national emergency over IT threats, banning US companies from using foreign technology without a license
- May 17 Taiwan's parliament votes to legalize same-sex marriage, the first Asian country
- May 17 Tyler, the Creator releases his fifth studio album "Igor" which becomes his first number-one album in the United States
Election of Interest
May 18 Australian federal elections won by Scott Morrison's coalition government in a surprise result
- May 19 US billionaire Robert F. Smith announces he will pay off college loans of nearly 400 students of the graduating class of Morehouse College, Atlanta
- May 20 Bangladesh imposes a 65-day ban on coastal fishing to conserve fish stocks
- May 20 Google stops support for Huawei's Android system in an escalation of the tech war between US and China
- May 21 Austria's far-right Freedom Party resigns from the ruling coalition after two of their ministers are sacked for offering government contracts for political influence in a video
Election of Interest
May 21 Indonesian President Joko Widodo confirmed as winning re-election, defeating Prabowo Subianto with 55.5% of the vote
- May 21 More than 600 people, 75% children, identified as HIV in a month in Sindh province, Pakistan, thought to be due to use of infected needles
- May 21 Nepalese Sherpa Kami Rita sets a new record for the number of climbs of Mt Everest - 24
- May 21 Oldest and most distant gravitational waves detected from collision of two black holes with first intermediate-mass black hole ever discovered, 7 billion light years away
- May 21 Omani author Jokha Alharthi is the first Arabic writer to win the Man Booker International Prize for her novel "Celestial Bodies" with her translator Marilyn Booth
- May 21 Protests across American cities defending abortion rights after several US states pass new abortion laws
- May 21 Washington is the first US state to legalize human composting
- May 22 Protests break out in Jakarta, Indonesia against the re-election of President Joko Widodo, killing six people and injuring 200
- May 22 UN General Assembly votes for a motion condemning UK occupation of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean and for them to reunite with nearby Mauritius
- May 22 Washington State becomes the 1st US state to legalize composting human bodies
- May 23 Brazilian cosmetics group Natura buys UK's Avon for $2 billion, creating the world's fourth-largest cosmetics company
- May 23 Fifty children rescued from an international paedophile ring on the dark web in Thailand, Australia and the US by Interpol under Operation Blackwrist, main organizer sentenced to 146 years
Election of Interest
May 23 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wins re-election in a landslide over the opposition Congress Party, world's largest-ever democratic election with over 600 million voters
- May 23 More than 170 tornadoes reported in a week in US states of Missouri, Oklahoma and Iowa, killing seven and causing widespread damage
- May 23 Prototype of new high-speed train that will float above the track, capable of travelling 600km an hour (370 mph), unveiled by Chinese Railway Rolling Stock Corporation in Qingdao
- May 23 Six migrant children have now died in US custody in eight months prompting calls for an investigation
- May 23 The last slave ship to smuggle slaves to America from Africa, the Clotilda (sunk 1860), is found in Mobile river, Alabama
- May 24 Brazil's Supreme Court votes to make homophobia and transphobia crimes
- May 25 Boat capsizes on Lake Mai-Ndombe, western Democratic Republic of Congo, drowning at least 45 with 200 missing
- May 25 First ever albino panda footage in the wild released (taken in April) from China's Wolong National Nature Reserve
- May 25 Tornado tears through El Reno, Oklahoma. killing two and injuring dozens
- May 26 Ken Wyatt becomes Australia's first Aboriginal minister in government as the minister for indigenous Australians
- May 26 Nine climbers die in a week on Mt Everest after overcrowding leads to a huge queue to reach the summit
Event of Interest
May 27 Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz removed from office after a no-confidence vote in parliament, Vice Chancellor Hartwig Löger appointed interim chancellor
- May 27 European Parliament elections result in centralist parties losing their majority with liberals, the Greens and nationalists picking up more votes
- May 27 World's rivers widely contaminated with antibiotics according to new global study of 711 sites
- May 28 Johnson & Johnson go on trial in Oklahoma accused of deceptively marketing painkillers and downplaying risks of addiction helping create "opioid epidemic", first of 2,000 cases against US pharmaceutical firms
- May 29 16 people charged for setting fire to and murdering a teenager who reported sexual harassment at an Islamic school in Feni, Bangladesh
Event of Interest
May 29 British politician Boris Johnson ordered to appear in court over claims he lied to the public during Britain's Brexit campaign
Election of Interest
May 29 Israel's Knesset calls a snap election after Benjamin Netanyahu fails to form a government
- May 29 Tourist boat sinks after colliding with another boat on the Danube River in Budapest, Hungary, killing 28 people
- May 29 Transgender no longer classified as a mental health illness by the World Health Organization
- May 29 US Special Counsel Robert Mueller says charging President Donald Trump with a crime was never an option as no legal means to charge a sitting president; and that his report does not exonerate the president
Birthdays in History
- May 6 Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, British son of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, born in London, England
Deaths in History
- May 14 Grumpy Cat [Tardar Sauce], American cat internet celebrity, dies following complications from urinary tract infection at 7
Bob Hawke (1929-2019)
May 16 Australian politician and 23rd Prime Minister of Australia (Labor: 1983-91), dies at 89
I. M. Pei (1917-2019)
May 16 Chinese-American modernist architect (Louvre Pyramid) who won the 1961 Brunner Prize, dies at 102
- May 17 Herman Wouk, American novelist (The Caine Mutiny, The Winds of War), dies at 103
- May 22 Judith Kerr, British children's writer and illustrator (The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Mog books), dies at 95
- May 22 Sultan Ahmad Shah, 7th King of Malaysia (1979-84), dies at 88
- May 24 Murray Gell-Mann, American physicist who predicted quarks (1969 Nobel Prize for Physics for theory of elementary particles), dies at 89
- May 25 LaSalle Leffall Jr., American surgeon, medical educator, and 1st black president of the American Cancer Society (1978), and the American College of Surgeons (1995), dies at 89
- May 30 Thad Cochran, American politician (U.S. Senator from Mississippi), dies at 81
- May 31 Niara Sudarkasa [Gloria Albertha Marshall], American educator and anthropologist (Lincoln College), dies at 80
Authors
Civil Rights Activists
Inventors
Kings
Revolutionaries
Scientists