Event of Interest
1189 Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa and 100,000 crusaders depart Regensburg for the Third Crusade
Frederick Barbarossa
Event of Interest
1502 Christopher Columbus begins 4th & last trip to the "Indies"
Christopher Columbus
- 1625 Peasants besiege Frankenburg estate in Upper Austria
- 1647 Peter Stuyvesant arrives in New Amsterdam
- 1674 Netherlands & Cologne sign peace treaty
- 1678 French admiral Jean d'Estrees' fleet runs aground on Aves-islands, Curacao
- 1689 Battle of Bantry Bay, French & English naval battle
- 1690 English troops of W Phips conquer Port Royal, Nova Scotia
- 1745 Battle of Fontenoy (Doornik): Austrian Succession war
- 1749 British parliament accepts Consolidation Act, to reorganise the Royal Navy
Event of Interest
1751 Pennsylvania Hospital founded by Dr. Thomas Bond and Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
- 1752 1st US fire insurance policy issued in Philadelphia
- 1772 Amsterdam theater destroyed by fire, 18 killed
- 1784 Britain & Tippu Sahib of Mysore sign peace treaty
- 1792 Columbia River discovered & named by US Captain Robert Gray
- 1812 Waltz introduced into English ballrooms. Some observers consider it disgusting and immoral.
Assassination
1812 British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval is assassinated by John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons, London. Ironically, descendants of both later elected to Parliament at the same time.
Spencer Perceval
Event of Interest
1820 Launch of HMS Beagle, the ship that would later take a young Charles Darwin on his famous scientific voyage
Charles Darwin
- 1833 "Lady-of-the-Lake" strikes iceberg & sinks in North Atlantic; kills 215
Event of Interest
1841 American Charles Wilkes lands at Fort Nisqually in Puget Sound
Charles Wilkes
Event of Interest
1864 General J.E.B. Stuart is mortally wounded at Yellow Tavern
J.E.B. Stuart
Assassination Attempt
1891 The Otsu Scandal: While visiting Japan, Prince Nicholas (later Tsar Nicholas II) survives an assassination attempt
Nicholas II
- 1894 American RR Union strikes Pullman Sleeping Car Co
Event of Interest
1904 Andrew Carnegie donates $1.5M to build a peace palace
Andrew Carnegie
- 1907 Bank of San Francisco incorporated
- 1907 A derailment outside Lompoc, California, kills 32 Shriners when their chartered train jumps off the tracks at a switch near Surf Depot
- 1910 Montana's Glacier National Park forms
- 1911 The United States becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty
Event of Interest
1924 Pulitzer Prize awarded to Robert Frost (New Hampshire)
Robert Frost
- 1925 Communist Party of Holland splits
- 1925 Kara-Kalpak Autonomous Region constituted in RSFSR
- 1926 Airship Norge leaves Spitsbergen for 1st air crossing of Arctic Ocean
- 1927 Louis B Mayer forms Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences
- 1928 General Electric opens 1st TV-station (Schenectady, NY)
- 1929 Dr Annie Webb Blanton forms Delta Kappa Gamma Society in Austin, Texas
- 1931 Credit-Anstalt, Austria's largest bank, fails, beginning financial collapse of Central Europe
- 1940 NY World's Fair reopens
- 1941 1st Messerschmidt 109F shot down above England
- 1942 Japanese troops conquer Kalewa
Historic Publication
1942 William Faulkner's collections of short stories, "Go Down, Moses", is published
William Faulkner
Event of Interest
1943 Hermann Goering division in Tunisia surrenders
Hermann Goering
- 1943 US 7th div lands on Attu, Aleutian, (1st US territory recaptured)
- 1944 Opposition group surprise attack post office Washer
- 1944 Slomp Resistance fighter (Frits de Zwerver) freed from Arnhem prison
- 1945 US Marines conquer Awatsha Draw, Okinawa
- 1946 United Malays National Organisation is created.
- 1947 BF Goodrich announced the development of tubeless tire (Akron Ohio)
- 1947 Laos accepts constitution for parliamentary democracy
- 1948 Haganah takes control of Safed & port of Haifa
- 1948 Luigi Einaudi elected President of Italy
- 1949 By a vote of 37-12, Israel becomes 59th member of UN
- 1949 Siam renames itself Thailand
- 1950 Belgium mine disaster at Borinage, 39 die
- 1951 American engineer Jay Forrester applys for patent for computer core memory
- 1953 Tornado kills 114 in Waco Texas ($39M damage)
Event of Interest
1953 Winston Churchill criticizes US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' domino theory
Winston Churchill
John Foster Dulles
'The Banality of Evil'
1960 Israeli soldiers capture Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires
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- 1962 Antonio Segni becomes President of Italy
- 1962 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Christmas Island
- 1962 US sends troops to Thailand
- 1963 Racial bomb attacks in Birmingham Alabama
- 1965 1st of 2 cyclones in less than a month kills 35,000 (India)
- 1965 Bangladesh windstorm kills 17,000
- 1965 Ellis Island added to Statue of Liberty National monument
- 1965 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1967 100,000,000th US phone connected
- 1967 Great Britain, Ireland & Denmark apply for membership of the EEC
- 1968 Students & police battle in Paris, 100s injured
- 1968 Toronto Transit Commission opens the largest expansion of its Bloor-Danforth Line, going to Scarborough in the east, Etobicoke in the west
- 1970 Henry Marrow is murdered in a violent racially-motivated crime in Oxford, North Carolina.
- 1972 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1973 Dutch government of Uyl forms
- 1973 Citing government misconduct, Daniel Ellsberg has his charges for his involvement in releasing the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times dismissed
- 1975 Israel signs an agreement with European Economic Market
- 1978 Margaret A Brewer is 1st female general in the US Marine Corps
- 1983 Comet C/1983 H1 (IRAS-Araki-Alcock) approaches 0.0312 AUs of Earth
- 1984 Tigers set best 30 game start record (26-4)
- 1984 Transit of Earth as seen on Mars
- 1985 Booby trap bomb kills 86 people in India
- 1985 Pope John Paul II arrival in Netherlands marred by violent protest
- 1987 1st heart-lung transplant take place in Baltimore
- 1988 France performs nuclear test
- 1989 217th & final episode of TV soap "Dynasty" is aired
- 1989 France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
- 1989 Kenya announces worldwide ban on ivory to preserve its elephant herds
Event of Interest
1989 US President George H. W. Bush orders nearly 2,000 troops to Panama
George H. W. Bush
- 1993 Paramaribo Suriname TV studio destroyed by fire
- 1994 "Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult" released in France
- 1994 6 white racists sentenced to death in South Africa
- 1995 In New York City, more than 170 countries decide to extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely and without conditions.
- 1996 Valujet DC-9 crashes in Miami, 109 die
- 1998 India conducts three underground nuclear tests in Pokhran, including a thermonuclear device
- 2000 India's population officially reaches 1 billion - Astha Arora named India's billionth baby
- 2002 Her Royal Highness Princess Margriet of the Netherlands unveils the Man With Two Hats monument in Ottawa and Apeldoorn (May 2), 2000, symbolically linking both the Netherlands and Canada for their assistance throughout the Second World War.
Canonization
2007 Pope Benedict XVI canonizes the first Brazilian-born saint, Frei Galvão
Benedict XVI
- 2009 An American soldier in Iraq opened fire on a counseling center at Camp Liberty in Bagdhad, leaving 5 other US soldiers dead and 3 soldiers wounded
Election of Interest
2010 Imelda Marcos wins election to the House of Representatives of the Philippines, representing Ilocos Norte province
Imelda Marcos
Election of Interest
2010 David Cameron becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after forming a coalition government between the Liberal Democrats and his own Conservative Party
David Cameron
- 2012 Chinese scientists break world record by transferring photons over 97 kilometers using quantum teleportation
- 2013 43 people are killed in two car bombings in Reyhanlı, Turkey
- 2013 Bayern Munich set a new Bundesliga points record of 91
- 2013 Barcelona wins its fourth La Liga title in four years
- 2014 Thousands protest against the construction of a waste incineration plant in Hangzhou, China
Event of Interest
2015 Record price for a work of art at auction: Picasso's The Women of Algiers (Version ‘O’) sells for US$179.3 million at Christies in New York
Pablo Picasso
- 2016 Brazilian senate votes to suspend President Dilma Rousseff and put her on trial for budgetary violations
- 2018 Mass murder-suicide in Margaret River, Australia, grandfather shoots six members of his family and himself
- 2018 Most popular names in the US for 2017 revealed as Emma for girls, Liam for boys
May in History
Botched Crown Jewels Theft Pays Off
Thomas Blood, who tried to steal England's Crown Jewels from the Tower of London on this day was not only forgiven by the King, but given a reward.
May 9, 1671
One-Man Mission of Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Hess parachuted into Scotland on this day planning to negotiate peace with the British – without the knowledge or approval of his boss, Adolf Hitler.
May 10, 1941
Assassination of a British Prime Minister
Only one British Prime Minister has ever been assassinated, a fact that brought the only claim to fame for Spencer Perceval.
May 11, 1812
Nelson's Dying Wish: Save Emma
The blacksmith’s daughter who enchanted aristocrats, became an artist’s muse and finally the mistress of England’s naval hero, Admiral Lord Nelson.
May 12, 1765