- 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 Habeas Corpus Act passes in England, strengthening a person's right to challenge unlawful arrest and imprisonment
- 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
- 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 siege
- 1864 Skirmish at Salem Church (Haw's Shop), Virginia
Historic Discovery
1873 Heinrich Schliemann discovers "Priam's Treasure" a cache of gold and other objects in Hisarlik (Troy) in Anatolia
Heinrich Schliemann
- 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
Event of Interest
1903 Queen Wilhelmina opens Berlages Merchants bureau in Amsterdam
Wilhelmina of the Netherlands
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
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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
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
Event of Interest
1933 Martin Heidegger gives his inaugural rectoral address on “The Self-Assertion of the German University”, taken by some take as supporting the Nazi regime
Martin Heidegger
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Miracle of Dunkirk
1940 British and Allied forces begin the evacuation of Dunkirk (Operation Dynamo) during WWII
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- 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 after a German U-boat sinks the American flagged SS 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 mortally wounded by a grenade thrown by Czech rebels in Prague during Operation Anthropoid; he would die a week later
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
Little Rock Crisis
1958 Ernest Green becomes the 1st African-American to graduate from Little Rock's Central High School
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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 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.
- 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; brakes fail on a bus full of elderly women and it plunges 17 feet off the road at Dibble's Bridge, Yorkshire, killing 33; a similar accident occurred there killing 11 in 1925
Event of Interest
1979 Pope John Paul II ordains John J O'Connor as a bishop
John Paul II
Event of Interest
1985 Inaugural bands parade for President Reagan
Ronald Reagan
- 1986 France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
- 1986 Norway Showcase groundbreaking
- 1986 President Reagan orders 2 Poseidon-class submarines be dismantled
- 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 Mafia bombs Uffizi Museum in Florence, killing 6
Event of Interest
1994 Writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn returns to Russia after 20 years in exile
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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 Milošević
- 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
- 2012 Senior PGA Championship Men’s Golf, The GC at Harbor Shores: Englishman Roger Chapman wins first of 2 Champions Tour major titles of the year by 2 strokes from John Cook
- 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
Event of Interest
2014 The director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde calls for "tougher regulation and tighter supervision" of banking sector
Christine Lagarde
Event of Interest
2018 Italian PM-designate Giuseppe Conte gives up attempt to form coalition government after President Sergio Matarella vetoes his choice of economy minister
Giuseppe Conte
- 2018 Oil workers for Brazilian state oil company Petrobrás join the truckers' national strike
- 2018 Senior PGA Championship Men's Golf, GC at Harbor Shores: Englishman Paul Broadhurst wins by 4 strokes from American Tim Petrovic
- 2019 Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz removed from office after a no-confidence vote in parliament, Vice Chancellor Hartwig Löger appointed interim chancellor
- 2019 European Parliament elections result in centralist parties losing their majority with liberals, the Greens and nationalists picking up more votes
- 2019 World's rivers widely contaminated with antibiotics according to new global study of 711 sites
- 2020 America's COVID-19 death toll passes 100,000 (Johns Hopkins figures) equal to number of US servicemen and women killed in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan put together
- 2020 Spain begins 10 days of mourning for victims of COVID-19 with death toll just under 27,000
Event of Interest
2020 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says Hong Kong no longer has autonomy from China, doesn't merit special trade relationship, in note to Congress
Mike Pompeo
- 2020 Locust swarms in western and central India worst since 1993 after spreading from Pakistan and Iran and due to extreme weather
Event of Interest
2021 French President Emmanuel Macron makes statement recognizing France's role in 1994 genocide meeting with Rwanda President Paul Kagame in Kigali, Rwanda
Emmanuel Macron
- 2021 English playwright William Shakespeare reported to have died after receiving COVID-19 vaccine by Argentine news channel Chanal 26 (case of mistaken identity, the Bard died in 1616)