- 553 2nd Council of Constantinople (5th ecumenical council) opens
Event of Interest
1260 Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, becomes ruler of the Mongol Empire
Kublai Khan
- 1430 Jews are expelled from Speyer, Germany
Voyage of Discovery
1494 On 2nd voyage to New World Christopher Columbus sights Jamaica, landing at Discovery Bay
Christopher Columbus
- 1640 English Short Parliament rises
Event of Interest
1778 George Washington appoints Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben Inspector General of the Continental Army
Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben
George Washington
Event of Interest
1792 Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre commissioned to measure the meridian between Dunkerque to Rodez to calculate accurate length of the metre
Jean Baptiste Joseph Delambre
Event of Interest
1840 Thomas Carlyle begins his famous lecture series "The Hero as Divinity", later collected in his book "On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History"
Thomas Carlyle
- 1842 City-wide fire burns for over 100 hours in Hamburg, Germany
- 1847 American Medical Association organized (Philadelphia)
- 1854 British Commodore James Plumridge attacks Finnish settlements in Gulf of Bothnia, killing civilans and destroying British-owned goods.
- 1855 New York City regains Castle Clinton, to be used for immigration
- 1861 Alexandria, Virginia - Confederate troops abandon the city
- 1862 French army intervenes in Puebla, Mexico: Cinco de Mayo
- 1862 Peninsular Campaign-Battle of Williamsburg, Virginia
- 1864 Atlanta Campaign: 5 days fighting begins at Rocky Face Ridge
- 1864 Battle between Confederate & Union ships at mouth of Roanoke
- 1864 Battle of Wilderness, Virginia (Germanna Ford, Wilderness Tavern)
- 1864 Campaign in Northern Georgia - Chattanooga to Atlanta
- 1865 1st US train robbery (North Bend, Ohio)
- 1870 The British and Foreign Society for Improving the Embossed Literature of the Blind adopts Braille as best format for blind people
- 1874 Dutch 2nd Chamber passes child labor law
Event of Interest
1877 Indian Wars: Sitting Bull leads his band of Lakota into Canada to avoid harassment by the United States Army under Colonel Nelson Miles
Sitting Bull
Panic of 1893
1893 Panic of 1893 causes a large crash on the NY Stock Exchange
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- 1905 Robert S Abbott published 1st issue of newspaper "Chicago Defender"
Great White Fleet
1908 Great White Fleet arrives in San Francisco
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- 1912 Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda begins publishing (4/22 OS)
- 1915 German U-20 captures and sinks Britsih schooner Earl of Lathom
- 1916 US Marines invade Dominican Republic, stay until 1924
- 1917 Eugene Bullard gains his pilot's license from Aéro-Club de France and becomes the 1st African-American military pilot (French Air Service)
- 1920 German-Latvian peace treaty signed
- 1920 Polish troops occupy Kiev
Event of Interest
1920 US President Woodrow Wilson makes Communist Labor Party illegal
Woodrow Wilson
- 1920 Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are arrested on charges and robbery of a paymaster at a shoe factory in Massachusetts, US - the two men will executed
- 1921 1st ranger for Cleveland Metroparks hired
- 1921 Miniature newspaper published (Brighton Gazette 10 x 13 cm)
- 1922 Construction begins on Yankee Stadium (Bronx)
- 1924 Unions terminate Twentse textile strike
- 1925 John T. Scopes arrested for teaching evolution in Tennessee
- 1925 Yankee Everett Scott is benched, ending his 1,307-game playing streak
- 1925 Afrikaans is established as an official language in South Africa.
- 1926 Sinclair Lewis refuses his Pulitzer Prize for "Arrowsmith"
Event of Interest
1930 Amy Johnson takes off - first woman to fly solo from England to Australia
Amy Johnson
- 1932 Japan & China sign a peace treaty
- 1936 Edward Ravenscroft patents screw-on bottle cap with a pour lip
- 1936 Italian troops occupy Addis Ababa
- 1939 Flash floods kill 75 in Northeast Kentucky
- 1940 Norwegian government-in-exile forms in London
- 1941 2 Fokker employees flee Nazi occupied Netherlands to England
Event of Interest
1941 Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie returns to Addis Ababa
Haile Selassie
- 1941 Pulitzer prize awarded to Robert E Sherwood (There shall be no night)
Event of Interest
1941 First modern perfume Chanel No. 5 released by fashion designer Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel
Event of Interest
1944 Mahatma Gandhi freed from prison
Mahatma Gandhi
- 1944 Soviet offensive against Sebastopol, Crimea
- 1945 Mauthausen Concentration camp in Austria liberated by US forces from 41st Reconnaissance Squadron
- 1945 Netherlands & Denmark liberated from Nazi control
- 1945 Uprising against occupying SS troops in Prague
- 1945 Premier Gerbrandy on Radio Orange tells Dutch they are liberated
Battle of Interest
1945 World War II: Admiral Karl Dönitz, leader of Germany after Hitler's death, orders all U-boats to cease offensive operations and return to their bases
Karl Dönitz
Royal Coronation
1950 Bhumibol Adulyadej crowned King Rama IX of Thailand in the Royal Palace in Bangkok
Bhumibol Adulyadej
- 1952 Pulitzer prize awarded to Herman Wouk for this novel "The Caine Mutiny"
- 1954 Military coup in Paraguay led by general Alfredo Stroessner
- 1955 Indian parliament accepts Hindu divorce
- 1955 US performs nuclear test at Nevada test Site
- 1955 West Germany is granted full sovereignty by its three occupying powers
- 1956 Jim Bailey (US) runs mile a record 3:58.6 in LA Calif
- 1957 Adolf Scharf elected president of Austria
- 1958 Pulitzer prize awarded to James Agee for Death in the Family
- 1958 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Enwetak
- 1961 Alan Shepard becomes 1st American in space (aboard Freedom 7)
- 1964 Separatists riot in Quebec
- 1965 First large-scale US Army ground units arrive in South Vietnam
Event of Interest
1969 Pulitzer prize awarded to Norman Mailer (Armies of the Night)
Norman Mailer
- 1970 US performs nuclear test at Nevada test Site
- 1971 Race riot in Brownsville section of Brooklyn (NYC)
- 1972 Alitalia DC-8 crashes west of Palermo Sicily; killing 115
- 1975 Pulitzer prize awarded to Michael Shaara for historical novel "Killer Angels"
- 1975 A's release pinch runner Herb Washington, who played 104 games without batting, pitching, or fielding. He did steal 30 bases and score 33 runs.
- 1976 Train collision at Schiedam, Netherlands, kills 24
- 1979 Masterpiece Radio Theater begins broadcasting
- 1979 Voyager 1 passes Jupiter
- 1980 Siege at Iranian Embassy in London ends as the SAS and police storm the building
- 1980 Konstantinos Karamanlis is elected for the first time President of Greece
- 1981 16th and final Mayor's Trophy Game, Mets beat Yanks 4-1, hold 8-7-1 edge
- 1981 After 66 days on hunger strike, 26 year old Provisional IRA member and British MP Bobby Sands dies in the Maze Prision. Nine more hunger strikers die in the next 3 months.
- 1983 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1986 Hall of Fame & Museum announced to be built in Cleveland
- 1987 Congress begins Iran-Contra hearings
- 1987 France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
- 1988 Eugene A Marino installed as 1st African American archbishop
- 1990 ABC Masters Bowling Tournament won by Chris Warren
- 1991 A riot breaks out in the Mt. Pleasant section of Washington, D.C. after Salvadoran man is shot by police
- 1994 Labour beats Conservatives in British local elections
- 1994 North-Yemen air force bombs Aden South Yemen
- 1997 Iridium-1 Delta 2 Launch, Successful
- 2000 Conjunction of Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn & Moon
Election of Interest
2002 Jacques Chirac wins the French Presidential election for a second term defeating Jean-Marie Le Pen leader of the far-right National Front
Jacques Chirac
Election of Interest
2005 Tony Blair's Labour Party is re-elected for a third consecutive term in UK general election
Tony Blair
- 2006 The government of Sudan signs an accord with the Sudan Liberation Army
- 2007 Kenya Airways Flight KQ 507 crashes in Cameroon.
- 2012 Japan shuts down its nuclear reactors leaving the country without nuclear power for the first time since 1970
- 2012 17 people are killed and 47 missing after a flash flood in Nepal
- 2013 10 people are killed in a church attack in Njilan, Nigeria
- 2013 5 people are killed after a limousine catches fire in Hayward, California
- 2014 China announces it will upgrade Ethiopia's infrastructure in an effort to improve a China-Africa strategic partnership
- 2015 Scientists announce the discovery of the oldest & most distant galaxy known to man, EGS-zs8-1
- 2015 Archaeornithura meemannae, the oldest known prehistoric bird, is discovered
- 2016 Fort McMurray wildfires: Canadian province of Alberta declares a state of emergency as evacuation of 80,000 people continues
Knighthood
2017 Anna Wintour, the editor of US Vogue, is made a dame by Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace
Anna Wintour
- 2018 Electric cigarette explodes killing a man in St. Petersburg, Florida, first death from a vaping product
- 2019 Violent clashes between Israel and Gaza militants over three days have left 4 Israelis and 23 Palestinians dead
- 2019 King Vajiralongkorn is crowned King of Thailand, first monarch to be crowned in nearly seven decades during a three-day celebration in Bangkok
- 2019 At least 41 people die when a Russian Aeroflot plane catches fire after an emergency landing at Sheremetyevo Airport, Moscow
- 2019 Oil tanker explosion kills 55 in Niamey, Niger
May in History
The 100-year Football Curse that Appears to be Working
S.L. Benfica has failed to win a European Championship since 1962, when former coach Béla Guttmann placed a 100 year curse on the club. Is the curse working?
May 2, 1962Volunteers Help Defeat General Strike
Britain's fist and only General Strike occurred in May 1926 and was quickly defeated by volunteers and a cunning plan by Winston Churchill.
May 3, 1926Latest Wonder of the World
Often referred to as "the Chunnel", the 31-mile undersea tunnel linking England to France has been hailed as one of the "seven wonders of the modern world".
May 6, 1994Suicide Woman Floats To Safety
Nobody could expect to survive a fall from the 100-metre high Clifton Suspension Bridge. But one woman was saved on this day by her billowing skirt.
May 8, 1885
