- 927 Battle of the Bosnian Highlands: Simeon I of Bulgaria is defeated by King Tomislav of Croatia
- 1120 Richard III of Capua is anointed as prince two weeks before his untimely death
- 1281 Flemish Earl Gwijde Dampierre takes financial responsibility of Brugge
- 1529 30 Jews of Posing, Hungary, charged with blood ritual, burned at stake
- 1660 Denmark & Sweden sign The Treaty Of Copenhagen, ends Second Northern War
- 1679 Habeaus Corpus Act (strengthening person's right to challenge unlawful arrest & imprisonment) passes in England
- 1689 Anthonie Heinsius succeeds G Fagel as Grand Pensionary of Holland
- 1692 Court of Oyer and Terminer ("to hear and determine") established by Governor of Massachusetts to hear accusations of witchcraft
Event of Interest
1703 Saint Petersburg (Leningrad) founded by Russian Tsar Peter the Great
Peter the Great
Opening of Euston Station
1849 Opening of the Great Hall at Euston station in London
- 1850 Mormon Temple in Nauvoo, Illinois, destroyed by tornado
- 1854 Marine Telegraph from Fort Point to San Francisco completed
- 1856 Doctor William Palmer (the Rugeley Poisoner ) found guilty of poisoning in Stafford, England
- 1862 Battle of Hanover Court House, Virginia (Slash Church, Peake's Station)
- 1863 CSS Chattahoochie explodes on Chattahoochie River, Georgia, 18 die
- 1863 Siege of Port Hudson in Louisiana by Union forces. Lasts 48 days, longest American military seige
- 1864 Skirmish at Salem Church (Haw's Shop), Virginia
- 1873 Heinrich Schliemann discovers "Priam's Treasure" a cache of gold and other objects in Hisarlik (Troy) in Anatolia
- 1883 Tsar Alexander III crowned in Moscow
- 1893 Audath Yisroel forms at Kattowitz (Katowice) Poland
- 1895 British inventor Birt Acres patents film camera/projector
- 1896 Bay District Race Track in San Francisco closes
- 1896 Tornado hit St Louis, killing 255, leaving thousands homeless
- 1898 Arthur Pinero's "Trelawney of the Wells" premieres in London
- 1900 Lord Roberts' army fights the Vaal in South Africa
- 1903 Queen Wilhelmina opens Berlages Merchants bureau in Amsterdam
Battle of Tsushima
1905 Japanese fleet destroys the Russian East Sea fleet in the Battle of Tsushima, the only decisive clash between modern steel battleships in history
Event of Interest
1916 President Woodrow Wilson addresses the League to Enforce Peace, founded in 1915, and gives public support to the idea of a league of nations
Woodrow Wilson
- 1917 Race riot in East St Louis Illinois, 1 black killed
- 1918 Third Battle of Aisne: German offensive overcomes British forces (WWI)
- 1919 1st transatlantic flight ends; US Navy flying boat takes 11 days
- 1920 Tatar ASSR forms in Russian SFSR
- 1921 After 84 years of British control, Afghanistan achieves sovereignty
- 1927 Japanese military intervention in Chinese civil war
Election of Interest
1927 Tomáš Masaryk re-elected President of Czechoslovakia for a second time
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk
- 1930 Richard Drew invents masking tape
Event of Interest
1930 The 1,046-foot (319-meter) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public
Walter Chrysler
- 1931 1st full scale wind tunnel for testing airplane at Langley Field, Virginia
- 1931 Swiss Auguste Piccard and Paul Kipfer make 1st flight into stratosphere, by balloon from Augsburg, Germany
- 1933 Austrian communist party banned
- 1933 Century of Progress Exposition opens in Chicago
- 1933 Federal Securities Act signed
- 1933 Walt Disney's "3 Little Pigs" released
Franklin D. Roosevelt
- 1936 RMS Queen Mary leaves Southampton for NY on maiden voyage
- 1937 Carl Hubbell wins his 24th consecutive game (since July 17, 1936)
- 1937 Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco opens to pedestrians
- 1940 British and Allied forces begin the evacuation of Dunkirk (Operation Dynamo) during WWII
- 1940 World War II: In the Le Paradis massacre, 97 soldiers from a Royal Norfolk Regiment unit are shot after surrendering to German troops
- 1941 FDR declares state of emergency due to Germany's sinking of Robin Moor
- 1941 German battleship Bismarck sunk by British naval force
- 1942 Dorie Miller awarded navy cross for deeds at Pearl Harbor
Adolf Hitler
- 1942 Italian army begin siege of French western Fort Bir Hachim
Event of Interest
1942 Nazi leader Reinhard Heydrich is shot and mortally wounded by Czech rebels in Prague during Operation Anthropoid
Reinhard Heydrich
Event of Interest
1944 Jean-Paul Sartres' "Huis Clos" premieres in Paris
Jean-Paul Sartre
Event of Interest
1951 Chinese Communists force Dalai Lama to surrender his army to Beijing
Tenzin Gyatso
- 1951 Maritime Museum at Aquatic Park, San Francisco opens
- 1952 European Defense Community forms
- 1953 Dutch social democratic/Dutch Liberal Party win municipal elections
- 1956 French raid in Algiers
- 1956 US performs nuclear test at Enwetak (atmospheric tests)
- 1958 Ernest Green and 600 whites graduate from Little Rock's Central HS
- 1958 Vanguard SLV-1 launched for Earth orbit (failed)
- 1958 Maiden flight of the F-4 Phantom II
- 1960 Military coup overthrows democratic government of Turkey
- 1961 1st black light is sold
Election of Interest
1963 Jomo Kenyatta elected 1st Prime Minister of Kenya
Jomo Kenyatta
- 1966 55th German F-104 Starfighter crashes
- 1966 6 French fighters crash above Spain
- 1967 Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and count them in the national census
- 1968 6th Mayor's Trophy Game, Mets beat Yanks 4-3
- 1968 The meeting of the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France (National Union of the Students of France) takes place. 30,000 to 50,000 people gather in the Stade Sebastien Charlety.
- 1969 Walt Disney World construction begins at Bay Lake and Lake Buena Vista, Florida
- 1970 British expedition climbs south face of Annapurna I in the Himalayas in north-central Nepal, 10th highest mountain
- 1970 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1973 Rick Wohlhuter runs record 880 yards in 1:44.6
- 1975 Worst motor vehicle disaster in UK; bus full of elderly women plunge into Dibble's Bridge Yorkshire, killing 38
- 1977 2 Boeing 747s by Pan Am & KLM collide in Canary Islands, killing 582
- 1977 New York City fines George Willig 1 cent for each of 110 stories he climbed of the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York
Event of Interest
1979 Pope John Paul II ordains John J O'Connor as a bishop
John Paul II
- 1980 South Korean police ends people's uprising; 2,000 killed
- 1980 The Gwangju Massacre: South Korean airborne and army troops retake city of Gwangju from civil militias, killing at least 207 possibly many more
- 1981 John Hinckley attempts suicide by overdosing on Tylenol
- 1981 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1983 Former EPA official Rita Lavelle indicted for contempt of Congress
- 1984 Beth Henley's "Miss Firecracker contest" premieres in NYC
- 1985 Britain agrees to return Hong Kong to China in 1997
- 1986 France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
- 1986 Norway Showcase groundbreaking
- 1987 Jim & Tammy Bakker appear on "Nightline" after PTL scandal
- 1988 Senate ratified a treaty eliminating medium-range nuclear missiles
- 1990 Caesar Gaviria Trujillo chosen President of Colombia
- 1990 Radical Democratic Party holds 1st political meetings in Moscow
- 1991 Austrian Boeing 767-300 explodes at Bangkok, 223 die
- 1993 Dale Murphy ends carreer at 398 HRs
- 1993 Mafia bombs Uffizi Museum in Florence, killing 6
- 1994 Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia after 20 years in exile
- 1994 Final broadcast of Arsenio Hall talk show
- 1994 Larry King ended his radio show
- 1997 1st all female (20 British women) team reach the North Pole
- 1997 Judge finds Pamela Lee not guilty of breaking a contract
- 1997 Marv Albert pleads innocent to charges of sexual assault
Treaty of Interest
1997 Russian President Boris Yeltsin signs a historic treaty with NATO
Boris Yeltsin
- 1998 Oklahoma City bombing: Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the terrorist plot.
Event of Interest
1999 The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia indicts Slobodan Milošević and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo
Slobodan Milosevic
- 2006 Earthquake strikes Java, Indonesia at 5:53:58 AM local time (22:53:58 UTC May 26) devastating Bantul and the city of Yogyakarta, killing over 6,600 people
- 2009 South Africa enters the global recession; the first recession for South Africa in 17 years
- 2012 A NATO airstrike kills a family of eight, including six children, in Afghanistan
- 2013 75 people are killed and 200 are injured in a wave of bombings across Iraq
- 2013 The largest flag ever made at 5 tons with 44 miles of thread is unveiled in Romania
- 2016 3 ships in 3 days sink carrying immigrants across the Mediterraneann, drowning over 700 people
- 2017 In Bangalore, India, white puffy toxic foam begins spilling out of Varthur Lake onto city streets