- 585 BC Solar eclipse, as predicted by Greek philosopher Thales, while Lydians at war with the Medes leads to a truce. One of the cardinal dates from which other dates calculated.
- 640 Severinus begins his reign as Catholic Pope (elected in 638)
- 1037 Holy Roman Emperor Conrad II removes "Constitutio the Feudis"
- 1156 Battle at Brindisi: Norman-Sicillian King William beats Byzantine fleet under John Doukas and Alexios Bryennios
- 1349 60 Jews murdered in Breslau, Silesia
- 1358 Daint-Leu at Oise begins French boer uprising
Event of Interest
1431 Joan of Arc is accused of relapsing into heresy by donning male clothing again, providing justification for her execution
Joan of Arc
- 1588 Spanish Armada under the Duke of Medina-Sidonia departs Lisbon to invade England
- 1608 Claudio Monteverdi's "Arianna" premieres in Mantua
- 1635 Zorilla's "El Desafio de Carlos V" premieres in Madrid
- 1644 Bolton Massacre by Royalist troops under the command of the Earl of Derby (English Civil War)
- 1664 1st Baptist Church organizes (Boston)
- 1731 All Hebrew books in Papal State are confiscated
- 1741 Spain and Bavaria sign treaty
Battle of Interest
1754 Battle of Jumonville Glen: forces led by George Washington kill French Canadian officer Joseph Coulon de Jumonville
George Washington
Trail of Tears
1830 US President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the Army to force Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole tribes out of Georgia and surrounding states, setting the stage for the Cherokee Trail of Tears
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- 1845 Fire in Quebec, Canada, 1,500 houses destroyed
- 1849 Princess Marianne of the Netherlands and Albrecht of Prussia separate
- 1858 Dion Boucicault's "Foul Play" premieres in London
- 1863 1st black regiment (54 Mass) leaves Boston to fight in US Civil War
- 1866 Dutch government of Zuylen van Nijevelt/Heemskerk forms
- 1871 Paris communards revolt put down
Event of Interest
1889 Édouard and André Michelin incorporate the Michelin tyre company
André Michelin
- 1900 Fire in Cincinnati nearly destroys Reds' grandstand
- 1900 Total solar eclipse occurs
- 1900 In China, rioters provoked by Boxers burn the Fengtai Railway Station, where many Belgians work
- 1900 Paul Kruger, President of the Boer Republic of South Africa, flees its capital, Pretoria, goes to Watervalboven to evade the advancing British
- 1901 Laws against phosphor matches enacted (inhibition white phosphorous)
- 1907 Auto-Cycle Union Tourist Trophy, 1st held
- 1918 Azerbaijan gains independence and declares itself a Democratic Republic
- 1918 The Armenian National Council declares Armenia independent from the Russian Empire
- 1923 US Attorney General says it is legal for women to wear trousers anywhere
- 1926 Military coup by General Manuel Gomes da Costa in Portugal
- 1926 US Customs Court created by congress
Walter Chrysler
- 1929 1st all color talking picture "On With the Show" exhibited (NYC)
- 1930 Georges Forbes succeeds Joseph Ward as premier of New Zealand
- 1932 Dam closed, at current monument (South Seas)
- 1934 Near Callander, Ontario, the Dionne quintuplets are born to Olivia and Elzire Dionne, later becoming the first quintuplets to survive infancy
- 1934 The Glyndebourne festival in Sussex, England, inaugurated
On Computable Numbers
1936 Alan Turing submits "On Computable Numbers" for publication, in which he set out the theoretical basis for modern computers.
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- 1937 Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco opens to vehicular traffic
Election of Interest
1937 Neville Chamberlain becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
Neville Chamberlain
- 1938 Foundation for Tel Aviv harbor laid
- 1940 Belgium surrenders to Germany, King Leopold III gives himself up
- 1940 British-French troops capture Narvik, Norway
- 1941 Allied troops begin evacuation of Crete
- 1942 1,800 Czechs murdered by Nazis during attack on Heydrich
- 1946 1st night game at Yankee stadium (Senators 2, Yanks 1)
Event of Interest
1946 Manuel Roxas was inaugurated as the last President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines
Manuel Roxas
- 1948 Israeli Air Force is officially founded shortly after the start of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War
- 1948 Iraq captures Ge'ulim settlement
- 1951 Bernardus J Alfrink appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of Utrecht and Titular Archbishop of Tyana
- 1952 Memphis Kiddie Park opens in Brooklyn, Ohio. The park's Little Dipper roller coaster would become the oldest operating steel roller coaster in North America.
- 1952 The women of Greece are given the right to vote.
- 1955 Henry Bolte becomes Premier of the state of Victoria
- 1956 Dale Long becomes 1st to hit HRs in 8 straight games
Event of Interest
1956 Eisenhower signs farm bill allows government to store agricultural surplus
Dwight D. Eisenhower
- 1957 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1958 French government of Pflimlin resigns/200,000 demonstrate against De Gaulle
- 1959 Congressional Committee of Astronautics meets Project 7 astronauts
- 1959 Monkeys Able & Baker zoom 300 miles (500 km) into space on Jupiter missile, become 1st animals retrieved from a space mission
- 1961 Amnesty International founded (Nobel Peace Prize 1977)
The Orient Express
1961 Last trip (Paris to Bucharest) on the Orient Express (after 78 years)
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Event of Interest
1964 Jawaharlal Nehru cremated in New Dehli
Jawaharlal Nehru
- 1964 Palestine National Congress forms the PLO in Jerusalem
- 1964 Unmanned Apollo 2 Saturn test launched into Earth orbit
- 1965 Fire & explosion at Dhori mine in Dhanbad India kills 400
- 1967 Francis Chichester arrives home at Plymouth from Round-the-world trip
- 1967 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1968 AL announces it is splitting into 2 divisions
Event of Interest
1968 Senator Eugene McCarthy wins Democrate primary in Oregon
Eugene McCarthy
- 1970 The formerly united Free University of Brussels officially splits into two separate entities, the French-speaking Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Dutch-speaking Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
- 1970 Arms Trial Begins: several men are charged in a Dublin court with conspiracy to illegally import arms for use by the Irish Republican Army (IRA)
- 1971 USSR Mars 3 launched, 1st spacecraft to soft land on Mars
- 1972 White House "plumbers" first break in at the Democratic National Headquarters at Watergate Complex in Washington D.C.
- 1972 Four Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers and four civilians killed when a bomb they were preparing exploded prematurely at a house in Belfast
- 1974 Italian fascists bomb demonstrators in Brescia, 6 killed
- 1975 Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 18 launches
- 1975 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is established by the Treaty of Lagos
- 1977 Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Southgate, Kentucky kills 168
- 1978 Second round of the presidential elections in Upper Volta. The election is won by incumbent Sangoulé Lamizana.
- 1979 European Market accepts Greece as member
Papal Visit
1982 Pope John Paul II is 1st reigning pope to visit Great Britain (Adrian IV was born in England, as Nicholas Breakspear)
John Paul II
Event of Interest
1984 George Soros founds the Soros Foundation Budapest to help countries free themselves from communism
George Soros
- 1985 David Jacobsen taken hostage in Beirut Lebanon
- 1985 Discovery moves to Vandenberg AFB for mating of STS 51-G
- 1986 Democratic Labor Party wins parliamentary election in Barbados
- 1987 60th US National Spelling Bee: Stephanie Petit wins spelling staphylococci
- 1987 Mathias Rust, 18 year old West German pilot, makes unauthorized landing near Red Square, Moscow in USSR
- 1987 Monitor, Civil War warship, is discovered by a deep sea robot
- 1987 Paul Pearman jumps 21 barrels on a skateboard in Augusta
- 1987 Southern League no-hit record-Bob Milacki pitches 11 1/3 no-hit inn
- 1987 Stacking of Discovery's SRBs completed
- 1990 Cesar Gaviria Trujillo installed as president of Colombia
- 1990 Eugenia Charles' Dominican Freedom Party wins election in Dominica
- 1990 Longest wheelie (David Robilliard with 5h12m33s (Channel Islands)
- 1991 Ethiopian rebels seize Addis Ababa
- 1992 65th National Spelling Bee: Amanda Goad wins spelling lyceum
- 1993 200,000 demonstrate against mafia terror
- 1993 Polish government of Suchocka falls
- 1994 Twin's Dave Winfield passes Rod Carew into 15th hit list (3,054)
- 1995 Earthquake hits Russian town of Khabarovsk, killing 2,000 people
- 1995 Southwestern Florida outside of Tampa begins using new area code 941
Event of Interest
1996 U.S. President Bill Clinton's former business partners in the Whitewater land deal, James McDougal and Susan McDougal, and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, are convicted of fraud.
Bill Clinton
Election of Interest
1996 Pavlo Lazarenko becomes Prime Minister of Ukraine
Pavlo Lazarenko
- 1997 Linda Finch completes Amelia Earhart attempted around-the-world flight
- 1997 Tornado in Jarrell, Texas kills at least 28
- 1997 Wallace Berg, 42, is 4th American to scale Mt Everest for 3rd time
- 1998 Nuclear testing: Pakistan responds to a series of Indian nuclear tests with five of its own, prompting the United States, Japan, and other nations to impose economic sanctions.
Event of Interest
1999 In Milan, Italy, after 22 years of restoration work, Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece "The Last Supper" is put back on display
Leonardo da Vinci
- 1999 Two Swedish police officers are murdered with their own fire arms by the bank robbers Jackie Arklöv and Tony Olsson after a dramatic car chase
- 2002 NATO declares Russia a limited partner in the Western alliance.
- 2003 Peter Hollingworth becomes the first Governor-General of Australia to resign his office as a result of criticism of his conduct
- 2004 The Iraqi Governing Council chooses Ayad Allawi, a longtime anti-Saddam Hussein exile, to become Prime Minister of Iraq's interim government
- 2008 The first meeting of the Constituent Assembly of Nepal formally declares Nepal a republic, ending the 240-year reign of the Shah dynasty.
- 2014 Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is elected President of Egypt
- 2016 Harambe, a gorilla form Cincinnati Zoo, is shot after dragging a 3 year old boy who had slipped into it's enclosure
- 2017 Floods and landslides in Sri Lanka kill at least 151
- 2017 Tom Dumoulin wins the 100th Giro d’Italia in Milan, 1st Dutchman to win
- 2018 Coco-Cola launches its first alcoholic drink - Lemon-Do on island of Kyushu, Japan
- 2018 One million French smokers quit in one year after anti-smoking measures introduced according to Public Health France
- 2019 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 in History
![Ship that Changed the Face of Britain]()
Ship that Changed the Face of Britain
Britain was on its knees after the Second World War, its economy and infrastructure in tatters. For help the Mother Country turned to the Commonwealth.
May 27, 1948![A Modern Major-General of Light Entertainment]()
A Modern Major-General of Light Entertainment
William Gilbert, celebrated as the unique lyricist behind the highly popular Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas, met his death in highly unexpected circumstances.
May 29, 1911![Voltaire: Writer, Wit, Philosopher and Rebel]()
Voltaire: Writer, Wit, Philosopher and Rebel
They burned his books, sent him to the Bastille and into exile, but Voltaire, who died on this day, remained rich, successful – and defiant.
May 30, 1778![Cloak And Dagger World of Walter Raleigh]()
Cloak And Dagger World of Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh's secret marriage to a lady-in-waiting was uncovered on this day. It ruined his career, but things were to get much worse.
May 31, 1592
