Treaty of Interest
1386 Treaty of Windsor between Portugal and England is ratified at Windsor cementing and strengthening ties between the two kingdoms (oldest diplomatic alliance still in force). The treaty guarantees the mutual security of both nations and strengthens commercial ties. [1]
Historic Discovery
1502 Christopher Columbus leaves Spain on his 4th and final trip to the New World
- 1519 Austrian adel and burgerij in uprising against central government
- 1573 Polish Parliament selects Duke of Anjou as king
- 1588 Duke Henri de Guise's troops occupy Paris
- 1671 Colonel Thomas Blood attempts to steal Crown Jewels of England and Scotland from the Tower of London, captured running from the tower with the jewels
Declaration of War
1689 English King William III declares war on France
- 1726 Three men arrested during a February raid on Mother Clap's molly-house (a coffee house catering to homosexuals) in London are executed by hanging at Tyburn, England
- 1738 Britain sends fleet to the Mediterranean Sea & West Indies
- 1753 King Louis XV disbands French parliament
- 1766 John Byron back in England after trip around the world
Historic Event
1768 John Hancock pays duties on 25 pipes of wine, only one fourth of his ship's carrying capacity. British officials accuse him of unloading the rest during the night to avoid paying duties on the entire cargo.
Historic Publication
1816 Lady Caroline Lamb publishes the Gothic novel "Glenarvon", a thinly disguised account of her affair with Lord Byron which also depicts her husband William Lamb
- 1837 "Sherrod" burns in the Mississippi River below Natchez, Mississippi; 175 die
- 1846 Battle of Resaca de la Palma-US sends Mexico back to Rio Grande
- 1862 Battle of Farmington, Mississippi
- 1862 Battle of Fort Pickens, Florida, Pensacola evacuated by Confederates
- 1862 US Naval Academy relocated from Annapolis Maryland to Newport, Rhode Island
- 1864 -20] Skirmish at Ware Bottom Church, Virginia
- 1864 Battle of Cloyd's Mt, & Swift Creek, Virginia (Drewery's Bluff, Fort Darling)
- 1864 Ship battle at Helgoland, Austria-Denmark
Historic Event
1865 President Andrew Johnson issues a proclamation declaring armed resistance in the South is virtually at an end; this is the commonly accepted end date of the American Civil War
- 1868 The city of Reno, Nevada, is founded
- 1873 Der Krach: Vienna stock market crash heralds the Long Depression
- 1874 London's Victoria Embankment opens
- 1874 The first horse-drawn bus makes its début in the city of Mumbai, plying two routes
- 1877 Mihail Kogălniceanu reads, in the Chamber of Deputies, the Declaration of Independence of Romania. This day becomes the Independence Day of Romania.
- 1882 Telegraph Hill RR Co (Cable Cars) in San Francisco organized
- 1887 Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show opens in London
- 1896 1st horseless carriage show in London (featured 10 models)
- 1899 John Burr patents an improved rotary blade lawn mower in the US
- 1901 A financial panic begins in the USA following the struggle between two groups to control the railroads between the Great Lakes and the Pacific
First Australian Parliament
1901 The first Australian Parliament opens in Melbourne, though the first working session will not be until 21 May
Historic Event
1914 US President Woodrow Wilson proclaims Mother's Day
Historic Event
1922 The International Astronomical Union formally adopt Annie Jump Cannon's stellar classification system, which with only minor changes, is still used today
- 1925 Cornerstone for Hebrew University, Jerusalem, laid
Historic Event
1926 1st flight over the North Pole claimed by Richard E. Byrd and co-pilot Floyd Bennett. Later discovery of Byrd's diary suggests they may have turned back 150 miles short of the pole due to an oil leak.
Historic Event
1941 British intelligence at Bletchley Park breaks German spy codes after capturing Enigma machines aboard the weather ship Muenchen
Murder of Interest
1941 Louis Buchalter is arraigned in New York state court on the 1936 Joseph Rosen murder along with three other murders
- 1943 5th German Panzer army surrenders in Tunisia
- 1943 Rotschild-Haddassh University Hospital opens
- 1944 1st eye bank opens in New York
- 1944 Dutch resistance fighter Gerard Musch arrested
- 1944 Russians recapture Crimea by taking Sevastopol
- 1945 Czechoslovakia liberated from Nazi occupation (National Day)
- 1945 Nazi propagandist Max Blokzijl arrested
Historic Event
1945 Norwegian nazi collaborators Vidkun Quisling arrested
- 1945 Victory celebration at Red Square
Historic Event
1945 World War II: Hermann Goering is captured by the United States Army
- 1945 World War II: Partisans liberate Ljubljana.
- 1945 World War II: The Channel Islands are formally liberated by the British
- 1945 World War II: The Soviet Union marks Victory Day
Historic Event
1946 King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy abdicates and is succeeded by his son Umberto II who reigns for only 34 days before the monarchy is abolished
- 1949 Britain's 1st launderette opens in Queensway, London
Historic Event
1949 Prince Rainier III becomes monarch of Monaco
- 1950 French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman calls for European community EGKS
- 1951 Air raid on Chinese positions at Yalu River
- 1955 German Federal Republic (West Germany) joins NATO
- 1956 First ascent of Manaslu, the world's eighth-highest mountain in the Nepalese Himalayas by Japanese climbers Toshio Imanishi and Gyalzen Norbu
- 1960 Nigeria becomes a member of British Commonwealth
- 1960 US becomes the first country to legalize the birth control pill
- 1961 FCC Chairman Newton N Minow criticizes TV as a "vast wasteland"
- 1961 Jim Gentile is 4th to hit grand slams in consecutive innings
- 1962 Laser beam successfully bounced off Moon for 1st time
- 1962 US performs atmospheric nuclear test at Christmas Island
- 1963 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
Historic Event
1964 Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev visits Egypt
- 1965 Luna 5 launched (USSR) 1st attempt to soft land on Moon (fails)
- 1966 1st black member of Federal Reserve Board (A F Brimmer)
- 1966 China performs nuclear test at Lop Nor, PRC
- 1967 1st flight of Fokker F-28 Fellowship
- 1967 Gijs van Hall resigns as mayor of Amsterdam
- 1969 BPAA All-Star Bowling Tournament won by Billy Hardwick
Historic Event
1969 Following his release from prison Ian Paisley, North Ireland Loyalist holds a 'victory' meeting
- 1971 Friends of Earth return 1500 non-returnable bottles to Schweppes
- 1971 Largest walk in crowd (31,626) in Baltimore Oriole history
- 1974 US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins formal hearings on Nixon impeachment
- 1977 Hotel Poland in Amsterdam destroyed by fire, 33 killed
- 1977 Mabel Murphy Smythe confirmed as ambassador to Rep of Cameroon
Historic Event
1977 Patty Hearst let out of jail
- 1978 Fee Waybill of Tubes breaks a leg falling off stage
- 1979 Iranian-Jewish businessman Habib Elghanian is the 1st Jew executed by the Islamic government firing squad in Tehran, prompting the mass exodus of the once 100,000-strong Jewish community of Iran
- 1980 35 motorists die when roadway collapses after Liberian freighter 'Summit Venture' rams Sunshine Skyway Bridge, during a squall (Tampa Bay, Florida)
- 1981 Kazimiroff Blvd in Bronx named for a Bronx historian
The Motherland Monument
1981 The Motherland Monument at 62 m (203 ft) high is opened in Kyiv, Ukraine in ceremony attended by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev
Historic Event
1984 Alexander Calder's "Big Crinkly" sells for $852,000
- 1987 183 die aboard a Polish jetliner that crashes in Warsaw
Historic Event
1988 Australia's new parliament house is opened by Queen Elizabeth II in Canberra
- 1988 Belgium: 8th government of Martens forms
- 1989 Journalist petition Chinese government for freedom of press
- 1989 VP Quayle says in United Negro College Fund speech: "What a waste it is to lose one's mind" instead of "a mind is terrible thing to waste"
- 1990 NY Newsday reporter Jimmy Breslin suspended for a racial slur
- 1992 America Cup finals begin in San Diego
- 1992 Armenian forces capture Shusha, marking a major turning point in the Karabakh War
Salem Witch Trials
1992 Salem Village Witchcraft Victims' Memorial dedicated in Danvers (formally Salem Village) to mark 300 year anniversary of trials
- 1993 Landslide in Nambija Ecuador, kills 300
- 1993 Mustapha Matura's "Playboy of West Indies" premieres in NYC
- 1993 Paraguay holds its 1st pres & parliamentary elections in 50 years
- 1994 Mass murderer Joel Rifkin found guilty in New York
- 1995 Kinshasa, Zaire under quarantine after an outbreak of Ebola virus
- 1997 1st US ambassador since Saigon fell arrives in Vietnam
- 2002 38-day stand-off in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem comes to an end when Palestinians inside agree to have 13 suspected militants among them deported
- 2002 In Kaspiysk, Russia, a remote-controlled bomb explodes during a holiday parade killing 43 and injuring at least 130
- 2004 Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov is killed in a land mine bomb blast under a VIP stage during a World War II memorial victory parade in Grozny, Chechnya
Historic Event
2005 Liberal commentary website The Huffington Post is launched
- 2006 Estonia ratifies the European Constitution.
- 2006 George Preca is canonized as the first Maltese saint in history
Historic Event
2009 Jacob Zuma is sworn in as President of South Africa
- 2012 A Russian passenger jet disappears with 45 people on board
- 2012 Mark Rothko's "Orange, Red, Yellow" becomes the most expensive contemporary art piece to be sold at auction for $86.9 million dollars
Historic Event
2012 United States President Barack Obama officially states his support for same-sex marriage
- 2015 A gun fight erupts in Macedonian town of Kumanovo between police and Albanian separatists adding to the government crisis
Historic Event
2016 Boris Johnson resigns as Mayor of London, succeeded by Sadiq Khan
Election of Interest
2016 Rodrigo Duterte wins Philippine presidential election, promising war on drug trade and killing of criminals
- 2017 Fossil of Chinese feathered baby dinosaur formally identified as Beibeilong sinensis (baby dragon in Chinese)
- 2017 Jakarta’s Christian governor Ahok jailed for 2 years for blasphemy
Election of Interest
2017 Moon Jae-in elected President of South Korea after a snap election to replace Park Geun-hye
Historic Event
2017 US President Donald Trump dismisses FBI Director James Comey
- 2018 Argentina announces talks with the IMF amid a new financial crisis with interest rates at 40%
- 2018 Dam bursts after heavy rains near Solai, Kenya, killing at least 41
Malaysian 14th General Election
2018 Historic win in Malaysian general election by opposition coalition Pakatan Harapan led by 92 year old former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad, defeating Prime Minister Najib Razak and ending 61 years of rule by the Barisan Nasional coalition
- 2018 Nicaraguan anti-government protests involving tens of thousands take place in Managua and Matagalpa y Chinandega
- 2018 Oldest viral DNA, a form of hepatitis B, reported discovered in 7,000 year old skeleton found in Germany
Historic Event
2018 President of Iran Hassan Rouhani and some Iranians react angrily to President Trump pulling the US out the Iran Nuclear deal
- 2018 Walmart takes a majority stake in Indian online retailer Flipkart for 16 billion
- 2019 Archaeologists hail Anglo-Saxon tomb found 2003 in Prittlewell, England, as Britain’s equivalent of Tutankhamun’s tomb as full report of its contents published
- 2019 At least 65 migrants drown off the coast of Tunisia when their boat capsizes after leaving Libya according to the UN
- 2019 French adventurer Jean-Jacques Savin (72) successfully crosses the Atlantic Ocean in a barrel arriving in Martinique
- 2019 New Australian $50 bank note misspells responsibility as "responsibilty" on 46 million notes
Historic Event
2019 Pope Francis introduces new rules on reporting sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, criticized for not going far enough
- 2022 44 more inmates die in a prison riot in Ecuador, leading Amnesty International to say imprisonment nearly “a death sentence” now in Ecuador [1]
- 2022 Sri Lanka's Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa submits his resignation to his brother President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, amid continuing violent protests causing four deaths [1]