Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/May

May 1: Beltane and Samhain in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, respectively; Third Month Fair begins in southwest China (2026); Maharashtra Day in Maharashtra, India (1960); Pesach Sheni (Judaism, 2026); Loyalty Day in the United States

Anna Jagiellon

• 880 – The Nea Ekklesia church in Constantinople, on which many later cross-in-square Eastern Orthodox churches were based, was consecrated.
• 1576 – Stephen Báthory and Anna Jagiellon (pictured) were crowned as the elected rulers of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
• 1941 – Citizen Kane, a widely acclaimed film by actor and director Orson Welles, premiered.
• 1991 – In Major League Baseball, Rickey Henderson broke the record for stolen bases on the same night that Nolan Ryan broke his own record for no-hitters.

May 2: Flag Day in Poland

Great Mill Disaster illustration

• 1194 – King Richard I of England gave the city of Portsmouth its first royal charter.
• 1878 – A dust explosion (depicted) at the world's largest flour mill in Minneapolis resulted in 18 deaths.
• 1986 – Henri Toivonen was killed in an accident while leading the Tour de Corse rally, resulting in FISA banning the popular Group B rally cars for the following season.
• 2003 – Cyclone Manou formed in the Indian Ocean; over the next two weeks it struck Madagascar and left more than 100,000 people homeless.
• 2011 – Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six in his private residential compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

May 3: World Press Freedom Day; Constitution Memorial Day in Japan (1947); Constitution Day in Poland (1791)

The Dance of Anitra

• 1491 – Nkuwu Nzinga, the ruler of the Kingdom of Kongo, was baptised as João I by Portuguese missionaries.
• 1616 – The Treaty of Loudun was signed, ending a war that originally began as a power struggle for the French throne.
• 1911 – Edith Maryon's statuette The Dance of Anitra (pictured), one of the few of her works known to survive in private hands, was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts.
• 2021 – An elevated section of the Mexico City Metro collapsed, killing 26 people and injuring 98 others.

May 4: Youth Day in China; Literary Day in Taiwan; Star Wars Day

Jamie Chadwick

• 1626 – Having been appointed the director-general of New Netherland, Peter Minuit arrived in Manhattan.
• 1776 – American Revolution: The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations became the first of the Thirteen Colonies to renounce its allegiance to the British Crown.
• 1886 – During a labor rally in Chicago, a bomb explosion and gunfire led to the deaths of eight police officers and four members of the public.
• 1919 – The May Fourth Movement began in China with large-scale student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.
• 2019 – The inaugural race of the W Series took place at Hockenheimring, Germany, and was won by Jamie Chadwick (pictured), who later became the season's champion.

May 5: Lixia begins in China (2026); Uyghur Doppa Day in China; Cinco de Mayo in Mexico and the United States

Italian troops in Addis Ababa

• 1654 – Cromwell's Act of Grace, which pardoned the people of Scotland for any crimes committed during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, was proclaimed in Edinburgh.
• 1936 – Second Italo-Ethiopian War: Italian troops (pictured) captured the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa unopposed.
• 1961 – Project Mercury: American astronaut Alan Shepard made a sub-orbital spaceflight on board Freedom 7, becoming the second person to travel into outer space.
• 2020 – Philippine broadcast network ABS-CBN was forced to go off-air by the National Telecommunications Commission after Congress failed to renew its franchise granted in 1995.

May 6

Christopher Smart

• 1536 – Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire: Sapa Inca emperor Manco Inca Yupanqui's army began a ten-month siege of Cusco.
• 1757 – English poet Christopher Smart (pictured) was admitted to St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in London, beginning his six-year confinement in mental asylums.
• 1801 – French Revolutionary Wars: The 32-gun Spanish frigate El Gamo was captured by the outmanned and outgunned HMS Speedy.
• 1941 – American entertainer Bob Hope performed his first show with the United Service Organizations, beginning a 50-year involvement with them.
• 1976 – An earthquake struck Northern Italy, killing 990 people and injuring up to 3,000.
• 2023 – King Charles III and Queen Camilla were crowned at Westminster Abbey in London.

May 7: National Day of Prayer in the United States (2026)

Constantius Gallus

• 351 – Jews in the Roman province of Syria Palaestina rebelled against the rule of Constantius Gallus (pictured), caesar of the Eastern Roman Empire.
• 1544 – During the Rough Wooing, an English army carried out the Burning of Edinburgh.
• 1991 – A fire and explosion at a fireworks factory in Sungai Buloh, Malaysia, killed 26 people.
• 2010 – A draft sequence of the Neanderthal genome was published, demonstrating that most living humans have Neanderthal ancestors.
• 2023 – A tourist boat capsized, killing at least 22 people in Tanur, India.

May 8: Anniversary of the birth of Miguel Hidalgo in Mexico (1753); Victory in Europe Day (1945)

Pope Leo XIV

• 1373 – Julian of Norwich experienced religious visions, later recorded in Revelations of Divine Love, the earliest surviving English-language work attributed to a woman.
• 1821 – Greek War of Independence: At the Battle of Gravia Inn, a 120-man Greek force led by Odysseas Androutsos repulsed an Ottoman army of 8,000 soldiers.
• 1976 – Great American Revolution opened at Six Flags Magic Mountain, California.
• 2025 – Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected as Pope Leo XIV (pictured), making him the first pope born in the United States, the first to hold either U.S. or Peruvian citizenship, the first from the Order of Saint Augustine, and the second from the Americas after his immediate predecessor, Pope Francis.

May 9: Europe Day in the European Union; Liberation Day in the Channel Islands (1945); Home Front Heroes Day in the United States

Battle of Heligoland

• 1761 – The inaugural exhibition of the Society of Artists of Great Britain opened at Spring Gardens in London.
• 1864 – Second Schleswig War: The Battle of Heligoland (depicted), the last naval engagement fought by squadrons of wooden ships, took place between the Danish and Austro-Prussian fleets.
• 1961 – In a speech to U.S. broadcasters, Newton Minow, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, described commercial television programming as "a vast wasteland".
• 2001 – Police at the Ohene Djan Stadium in Accra, Ghana, fired tear gas to quell unrest at a football match, leading to a stampede that killed 126 people.
• 2023 – Pakistani protests: Riots broke out following the arrest of former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan.

May 10

Rudolf Hess

• 1627 – Dutch explorer Pieter Nuyts was appointed governor of Formosa (modern-day Taiwan) by the Dutch East India Company.
• 1801 – First Barbary War: The Barbary corsairs of Tripoli declared war on the United States by cutting down the flagstaff in front of the U.S. consulate.
• 1941 – World War II: German Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess (pictured) parachuted into Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the British government.
• 1994 – American serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection for the murders of twelve teenage boys and young men in a series of killings committed between 1972 and 1978.
• 2012 – Suicide bombers detonated two car bombs outside a military intelligence complex in Damascus, killing 55 people.

May 11

Cast of a 2011 production of Cats

• 1813 – William Lawson, Gregory Blaxland and William Wentworth departed westward from Sydney on an expedition to become the first confirmed Europeans to cross the Blue Mountains.
• 1894 – In response to a 28-percent wage cut, 4,000 Pullman Palace Car Company workers went on strike in Illinois, bringing rail traffic west of Chicago to a halt.
• 1981 – Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats (performers pictured), opened at the New London Theatre.
• 2011 – An earthquake registering M_w 5.1, the worst to hit the region for more than 50 years, struck near Lorca, Spain.
• 2022 – Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed while reporting on an Israel Defense Forces raid on the Jenin refugee camp.

May 12 :

Roald Amundsen's airship Norge

• 1510 – Zhu Zhifan, the Prince of Anhua (in modern Shaanxi, China), began an unsuccessful rebellion against the reign of the Zhengde Emperor.
• 1846 – The Donner Party, an American pioneer group which became known for resorting to cannibalism when they became trapped in the Sierra Nevada, left Independence, Missouri, for California.
• 1926 – The crew of the airship Norge (pictured), led by Roald Amundsen, became the first people to make a verified trip to the North Pole.
• 1941 – German engineer Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, the first working programmable and fully automatic computer, to an audience of scientists in Berlin.
• 2015 – A train derailment killed eight people and injured more than 200 others in Philadelphia.

May 13

Ben Carlin

• 1110 – Baldwin I of Jerusalem captured Beirut from the Fatimid Caliphate with the help of a Genoese fleet.
• 1725 – Johann Sebastian Bach first performed the church cantata Sie werden euch in den Bann tun, BWV 183 in Leipzig, Germany.
• 1958 – The Australian adventurer Ben Carlin (pictured) became the only person to circumnavigate the world in an amphibious vehicle, having travelled over 80,000 kilometres (50,000 miles) by land and sea.
• 1985 – Eleven people, including five children, were killed after the Philadelphia Police Department dropped bombs from a helicopter during a raid on a house occupied by the Black liberation group MOVE.
• 2005 – Uzbek Interior Ministry and State Security Service troops fired at protesters in Andijan, killing between 187 and 1,500 people.

May 14: Feast day of Saint Matthias (Catholicism)

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark

• 1804 – Led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, the Corps of Discovery left Camp Dubois near present-day Hartford, Illinois, to begin the first overland expedition to the West Coast of the United States and back.
• 1856 – Major Henry C. Wayne arrived in Indianola, Texas, with 34 camels to form the short-lived United States Camel Corps.
• 1868 – Boshin War: Troops of the Tokugawa shogunate withdrew from the Battle of Utsunomiya Castle and retreated north towards Nikkō and Aizu.
• 1980 – Salvadoran Civil War: Refugees trying to flee El Salvador across the Sumpul River to Honduras were attacked by both Salvadoran and Honduran forces, resulting in at least 300 deaths.
• 2008 – On the day of the UEFA Cup Final, violence erupted between football hooligan supporters of both teams and the Greater Manchester Police, resulting in 39 arrests and 39 injured officers.

May 15: Feast day of Saint Carthage (Catholicism); Nakba Day in Palestinian communities

Baily's beads observed during a solar eclipse in 2019

• 1836 – English astronomer Francis Baily observed Baily's beads (example pictured), a phenomenon during a solar eclipse in which the rugged topography of the lunar limb allows sunlight to shine through.
• 1891 – Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Rerum novarum, which addressed the condition of the working classes and is considered to be the foundation of modern Catholic social teaching.
• 1966 – Disapproving of General Tôn Thất Đính's handling of the Buddhist Uprising, South Vietnamese prime minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ ordered an attack on his forces and ousted Đính from his post.
• 2001 – A runaway train loaded with hazardous chemicals traveled driverless for 66 miles (106 km) through Ohio before being stopped near Kenton.
• 2010 – Three days before her seventeenth birthday, Jessica Watson arrived in Sydney after sailing non-stop and unassisted around the world.

May 16:

Battle of Albuera

• 1426 – Mohnyin Thado captured Sagaing to become the king of Ava, in present-day Myanmar.
• 1811 – Peninsular War: Allied British, Spanish, and Portuguese forces clashed with French troops at the Battle of Albuera (depicted) fought south of Badajoz, Spain.
• 1925 – The first modern performance of Claudio Monteverdi's opera Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria occurred in Paris.
• 1961 – Led by Park Chung Hee, the Military Revolution Committee carried out a bloodless coup against the government of Yun Po-sun in Seoul, ending the Second Republic of Korea.
• 2014 – At least 12 people were killed and 70 others injured when two bombs exploded in a market in Nairobi, Kenya.

May 17: International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia; World Hypertension Day

Edward Stafford

• 1395 – An outnumbered Wallachian army repulsed invading Ottoman forces at the Battle of Rovine.
• 1521 – Edward Stafford (pictured), whose father had been beheaded for rebelling against King Richard III of England, was himself executed for treason against King Henry VIII.
• 1900 – Second Boer War: The Siege of Mafeking in South Africa was lifted after 217 days, a decisive victory for the British against the Boers.
• 1974 – The Troubles: The Ulster Volunteer Force detonated a series of car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan, Ireland, killing 34 people and injuring almost 300 others.
• 1995 – Six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the 11th Panchen Lama selected by the 14th Dalai Lama, was kidnapped by the Chinese government, who advocated a proxy.

May 18: Haitian Flag Day in Haiti (1803); Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Crimean Tatar Genocide in Ukraine; Victoria Day in Canada

Aimee Semple McPherson

• 1388 – At the Battle of Buir Lake, a Ming Chinese army led by general Lan Yu defeated the forces of Tögüs Temür, the Mongol khan of Northern Yuan.
• 1926 – Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (pictured) was reportedly kidnapped near Venice Beach in Los Angeles before reappearing five weeks later in Mexico.
• 1936 – In a crime that captivated Japan, Sada Abe strangled her lover, cut off his genitals, and carried them around with her for several days until her arrest.
• 2006 – The Parliament of Nepal unanimously voted to strip King Gyanendra of many of his powers.
• 2018 – Cubana de Aviación Flight 0972 crashed near Santiago de las Vegas shortly after takeoff from José Martí International Airport, killing 112 of the 113 people on board.

May 19: Pontian Greek Genocide Remembrance Day in Greece (1919); Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day in Turkey (1919)

John III Sobieski

• 715 – Gregory II began his pontificate; his conflict with Byzantine emperor Leo III eventually led to the establishment of the temporal power of the pope.
• 1655 – Anglo-Spanish War: English forces invaded Jamaica, then administered by Spain as the Colony of Santiago, and captured it a week later.
• 1674 – John III Sobieski (pictured) was elected by the szlachta as the monarch of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: A Continental Army garrison west of Montreal surrendered to British troops at the Battle of the Cedars.
• 1991 – Breakup of Yugoslavia: With the local Serb population boycotting the referendum, Croatians voted in favour of independence from Yugoslavia.
• 2015 – A corroded pipeline near Refugio State Beach, California, spilled 142,800 gallons (3,400 barrels) of crude oil onto the Gaviota Coast.

May 20: Independence Day in Timor-Leste (2002); National Day of Remembrance in Cambodia (1975); National Awakening Day in Indonesia (1908)

The Luttra Woman's skull

• 685 – The Picts defeated the Northumbrians at the Battle of Dun Nechtain, severely weakening the latter's power in northern Great Britain.
• 1811 – A British squadron under Charles Marsh Schomberg defeated a French force off Tamatave, Madagascar, that was attempting to reinforce the French garrison on Mauritius.
• 1943 – The Luttra Woman (skull pictured), a bog body from the Early Neolithic period, was discovered near Luttra, Sweden.
• 1965 – While attempting to land at Cairo International Airport, Pakistan International Airlines Flight 705 crashed for unknown reasons, killing all but 6 of the 121 people on board.
• 1996 – In deciding Romer v. Evans, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a constitutional amendment in Colorado that prevented protected status under the law for homosexuals or bisexuals.
• 2022 – Russo-Ukrainian war: Russia claimed full control of Mariupol after a nearly three-month siege.

May 21: World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development

Busoni c. 1897

• 1138 – The Crusades: The siege of Shaizar ended, and the Emir of Shaizar became a vassal of the Byzantine Empire.
• 1864 – American Civil War: The inconclusive Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in Virginia ended with combined Union and Confederate casualties totaling around 31,000.
• 1894 – The Manchester Ship Canal, linking Manchester in North West England to the Irish Sea, officially opened, becoming the world's largest navigation canal at the time.
• 1925 – The opera Doktor Faust, unfinished when composer Ferruccio Busoni (pictured) died, was premiered in Dresden.
• 2014 – A Taiwanese man carried out a stabbing spree on a Taipei Metro train, killing four people and injuring 24 others.

May 22: National Maritime Day in the United States; Harvey Milk Day in some parts of the United States; Unity Day in Yemen; First day of Shavuot, (Judaism, 2026)

Prayut Chan-o-cha

• 1766 – A magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck Constantinople and was followed by a tsunami that caused significant damage.
• 1874 – Giuseppe Verdi's Requiem was first performed in the San Marco church in Milan to commemorate the first anniversary of Alessandro Manzoni's death.
• 1998 – In Public Prosecutor v Taw Cheng Kong, the Court of Appeal of Singapore overruled a High Court decision in the only time a statute in Singapore had been ruled unconstitutional.
• 2014 – Prayut Chan-o-cha (pictured), the commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Army, launched a coup d'état against the caretaker government following six months of political crisis.

May 23: Aromanian National Day

Louis of Nassau

• 1568 – The Dutch Revolt broke out when rebels led by Louis of Nassau (pictured) invaded Friesland at the Battle of Heiligerlee.
• 1873 – The North-West Mounted Police, the forerunner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was established to bring law and order to and assert Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Territories.
• 1934 – During a strike against the Electric Auto-Lite company in Toledo, a fight began between nearly 10,000 American strikers and sheriff's deputies, later involving the Ohio National Guard.
• 1999 – Professional wrestler Owen Hart died immediately before a World Wrestling Federation match after dropping 70 feet (21 m) onto the ring during a botched entrance.

May 24: Aldersgate Day (Methodism)

Eric XIV of Sweden

• 1567 – The mentally ill King Erik XIV of Sweden (pictured) and his guards murdered five incarcerated nobles, including some members of the influential Sture family.
• 1689 – The Act of Toleration became law, granting freedom of worship to English nonconformists under certain circumstances, but deliberately excluding Catholics.
• 1798 – The Irish Rebellion of 1798 began, with battles beginning in County Kildare and fighting later spreading across the country.
• 1963 – United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy met with African American author James Baldwin in an unsuccessful attempt to improve race relations.
• 2014 – A gunman involved in Islamic extremism opened fire at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels, killing four people.

May 25: Memorial Day in the United States (2026); Africa Day (1963); Independence Day in Jordan (1946)

A memorial to George Floyd following his murder

• 1810 – The Primera Junta, the first independent government in Argentina, was established in an open cabildo in Buenos Aires, marking the end of the May Revolution.
• 1940 – Second World War: German troops captured Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, forcing British forces to evacuate via Dunkirk.
• 1955 – Joe Brown and George Band, members of the British Kangchenjunga expedition, made the first ascent of the world's third-highest mountain but deliberately did not set foot on the summit.
• 1967 – Having purged a group of rivals, Supreme Leader of North Korea Kim Il Sung delivered the "May 25 teaching", entrenching his son Kim Jong Il as his designated successor.
• 2020 – George Floyd, a black American man, was murdered (memorial pictured) during an arrest by a white police officer in Minneapolis, sparking violent riots in the U.S. and other countries where dozens of people were killed and armed militias took control of parts of Seattle and Minneapolis for months.

May 26: National Sorry Day in Australia; Independence Day in Georgia (1918)

Damage to the Interstate 40 bridge

• 1644 – Portuguese Restoration War: Portuguese and Spanish forces both claimed victory at the Battle of Montijo.
• 1894 – Germany's Emanuel Lasker defeated Wilhelm Steinitz to become the world chess champion, beginning a record 27-year reign.
• 1999 – Manchester United won the UEFA Champions League final to become the first English football club to win three major championships in the same season.
• 2002 – Barges being towed destroyed part of a bridge (aftermath pictured) near Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, causing vehicles to fall into the Robert S. Kerr Reservoir on the Arkansas River.

May 27

Manchu Prince Dorgon

• 1644 – Manchu regent Dorgon (depicted) defeated rebel leader Li Zicheng of the Shun dynasty at the Battle of Shanhai Pass, allowing the Manchus to enter and conquer the capital city of Beijing.
• 1799 – War of the Second Coalition: Austrian forces defeated the French Army of the Danube, capturing the strategically important Swiss town of Winterthur.
• 1954 – The security clearance of American nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of Project Y, was revoked.
• 1967 – Australians voted overwhelmingly to include Indigenous Australians in population counts for constitutional purposes and to allow the federal government to make special laws affecting them in states.
• 1997 – A destructive F5-rated tornado tracked through a subdivision of homes northwest of Jarrell, Texas, killing 27 people.

May 28: Republic Day in Armenia (1918); Independence Day in Azerbaijan (1918)

Mozaffar ad-Din

• 585 BC – According to the Greek historian Herodotus, a solar eclipse, accurately predicted by Thales of Miletus, abruptly ended the Battle of Halys between the Lydians and the Medes.
• 1644 – English Civil War: Royalist troops stormed and captured the Parliamentarian stronghold of Bolton, leading to a massacre of defenders and local residents.
• 1901 – Mozaffar ad-Din (pictured), Shah of Persia, granted exclusive rights to prospect for oil in the country to William Knox D'Arcy.
• 1937 – The rise of Neville Chamberlain culminated with his accession as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, being summoned to Buckingham Palace to "kiss hands".
• 2002 – An independent commission appointed by the Football Association voted two-to-one to allow Wimbledon F.C. to relocate from London to Milton Keynes.

May 29: Feast day of Saint Paul VI (Catholicism)

Headline in the New York Times

• 1233 – Mongol–Jin War: The Mongols entered and began looting Kaifeng, the capital of the Jin dynasty of China, after a 13-month siege.
• 1416 – A squadron of the Venetian navy captured many Ottoman ships at the Battle of Gallipoli, confirming Venetian naval superiority in the Aegean Sea for the next few decades.
• 1913 – During the premiere of the ballet Le Sacre du printemps by Igor Stravinsky at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a near-riot in the audience (report pictured).
• 1999 – Charlotte Perrelli, representing Sweden, won the Eurovision Song Contest, the first edition not to feature an orchestra or live accompaniment.
• 2011 – Residents of Portland, Oregon, held a rally called Hands Across Hawthorne in response to an attack against a gay couple holding hands while crossing the Hawthorne Bridge.

May 30: Statehood Day in Croatia (1990)

Johann Sebastian Bach

• 1431 – Hundred Years' War: After being convicted of heresy, Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France.
• 1723 – Johann Sebastian Bach (pictured) assumed the office of Thomaskantor in Leipzig, presenting the cantata Die Elenden sollen essen in St. Nicholas Church.
• 1922 – The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., featuring a sculpture of the sixteenth U.S. president Abraham Lincoln by Daniel Chester French, opened.
• 1963 – Buddhist crisis: A protest against pro-Catholic discrimination was held outside the National Assembly of South Vietnam in Saigon, the first open demonstration against President Ngô Đình Diệm.
• 2008 – The Convention on Cluster Munitions, prohibiting the use, transfer, and stockpiling of cluster bombs, was adopted.

May 31: World No Tobacco Day

Bessarion

• 455 – Petronius Maximus, the ruler of the Western Roman Empire, was stoned to death by a mob as he fled Rome ahead of the arrival of a Vandal force that sacked the city.
• 1223 – Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus': Mongol forces defeated a Kievan Rus' army at the Battle of the Kalka River in present-day Ukraine.
• 1468 – Cardinal Bessarion (pictured) announced his donation of 746 Greek and Latin codices to the Republic of Venice, forming the Biblioteca Marciana.
• 1935 – A magnitude-7.7 earthquake struck Balochistan in British India, now part of Pakistan, killing between 30,000 and 60,000 people.
• 2013 – An extremely large, powerful, and erratic tornado struck Central Oklahoma, killing eight people and injuring more than 150 others.