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, Peking.
• 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 to 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 – The coronation of Charles III and Camilla as King and Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms was held at Westminster Abbey in London.

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

Maximilien Robespierre

• 1487 – Granada War: Forces of Aragon and Castile began a siege of Málaga, a Muslim city in the south of the Iberian Peninsula.
• 1794 – French Revolution: Maximilien Robespierre (pictured) established the Cult of the Supreme Being as the new state religion of the French First Republic.
• 1798 – War of the First Coalition: A British garrison repelled a French attack on the Îles Saint-Marcouf off the Normandy coast, inflicting heavy losses.
• 1937 – Employees at Fleischer Studios in New York City went on strike in the animation industry's first major labor strike.
• 1946 – Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita founded the telecommunications corporation Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo, later renamed Sony.

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

Pope Leo XIV

• 1643 – First English Civil War: The first siege of Wardour Castle ended after six days with the surrender of the Royalist garrison under Lady Blanche Arundell
• 1842 – A train derailed and caught fire near Versailles, France, killing at least 52 people.
• 1927 – French aviators Charles Nungesser and François Coli aboard the biplane L'Oiseau Blanc took off from Paris, attempting to make the first non-stop flight to New York, only to disappear before arrival.
• 1963 – In Huế, South Vietnam, soldiers opened fire into a crowd of Buddhists protesting against a government ban on the flying of the Buddhist flag on Phật Đản, killing nine and sparking the Buddhist crisis.
• 1972 – Four members of Black September hijacked Sabena Flight 571 to demand the release of 315 Palestinians convicted on terrorism charges.
• 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)

Hotel Polen fire

• 1877 – An earthquake struck northern Chile, leading to the deaths of 2,385 people, mostly victims of the ensuing tsunami, as far away as Hawaii and Fiji.
• 1944 – World War II: The Japanese Take Ichi convoy arrived at Halmahera in the Dutch East Indies after losing many ships and thousands of troops to Allied attacks while attempting to carry two divisions of troops from China to New Guinea.
• 1977 – The Hotel Polen in Amsterdam was destroyed by fire (pictured), leaving 33 people dead.
• 1980 – Part of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Florida collapsed after a pier was struck by MV Summit Venture, killing 35 people.
• 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.

May 10

Ethan Allen demanding the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga

• 28 BC – Chinese astronomers during the Han dynasty made the first precisely dated observation of a sunspot.
• 1775 – American Revolutionary War: A small force of Patriots led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured Fort Ticonderoga (depicted) in New York, without significant injury or incident.
• 1933 – As part of Nazi Germany's persecution of transgender people, thousands of books taken from the Institute for Sexual Science were burned in Bebelplatz square for being "un-German".
• 1940 – British prime minister Neville Chamberlain resigned and formally recommended Winston Churchill as his successor.
• 2005 – Vladimir Arutyunian attempted to assassinate U.S. president George W. Bush and Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi using a hand grenade, which failed to detonate.

May 11

HMS Beagle

• 868 – A copy of the Diamond Sutra was printed in Tang-dynasty China, making it the world's oldest dated printed book.
• 1820 – HMS Beagle (pictured), the ship that would take Charles Darwin on his voyage, was launched.
• 1889 – Bandits attacked a U.S. Army paymaster's escort in the Arizona Territory, stealing more than $28,000.
• 1970 – Lubbock, Texas, was struck by a tornado that left 26 people dead.
• 2010 – Gordon Brown resigned as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party after failing to strike a coalition agreement with the Liberal Democrats.
• 2022 – Myanmar civil war: Government troops killed 37 unarmed civilians in Mondaingbin.

May 12 : Pesach Sheni in Judaism (2025)

B-17 bombers intercepting the Rex

• 1743 – War of the Austrian Succession: Habsburg ruler Maria Theresa was crowned Queen of Bohemia after Austrian forces drove French troops from the territory.
• 1938 – During an exercise to demonstrate air power, United States Army Air Corps bomber aircraft intercepted the Italian ocean liner SS Rex (pictured) 620 nautical miles (1,100 km) off the US Atlantic coast.
• 1948 – The United Kingdom publicly announced that it was independently developing nuclear weapons, after the US Atomic Energy Act of 1946 ended cooperation on the matter.
• 1968 – Vietnam War: The 1st Australian Task Force began the defence of Fire Support Base Coral in the largest unit-level action of the war for the Australian Army.
• 1998 – Four students were shot and killed by Indonesian soldiers at Trisakti University in Jakarta, which led to widespread riots and the resignation of President Suharto nine days later.

May 13

Aftermath of the Enschede explosion

• 1909 – The inaugural edition of the Giro d'Italia, a long-distance multiple-stage bicycle race, began in Milan; the Italian cyclist Luigi Ganna was the eventual winner.
• 1958 – US vice president Richard Nixon's motorcade was attacked by a mob in Caracas, Venezuela.
• 2000 – An explosion (aftermath pictured) at a fireworks factory in Enschede, Netherlands, resulted in 23 deaths and approximately €450 million in damage.
• 2008 – Nine bombs placed by the Indian Mujahideen, then an unknown terrorist group, exploded in a 15-minute period in Jaipur, India, killing 80 people and injuring more than 200 others.

May 14: Feast day of Saint Matthias (Catholicism)

Monument to the Battle of Lewes

• 1264 – Second Barons' War: King Henry III was defeated at the Battle of Lewes (monument pictured) and forced to sign the Mise of Lewes, making Simon de Montfort the de facto ruler of England.
• 1857 – Mindon Min was crowned as King of Burma.
• 1863 – American Civil War: Union troops captured Jackson, the capital of Mississippi.
• 1931 – Five people were killed in Ådalen, Sweden, as soldiers opened fire on an unarmed trade union demonstration.
• 1948 – David Ben-Gurion publicly read the Israeli Declaration of Independence at a building later called Independence Hall in Tel Aviv.

May 15: Feast day of Saint Carthage (Catholicism); Nakba Day in Palestinian communities; Peace Officers Memorial Day in the United States

Statue of Valentinian II

• 392 – Roman emperor Valentinian II (pictured) was found hanged in his residence in Vienne, in present-day France.
• 1725 – Bach led the first performance of his cantata Ich bin ein guter Hirt, BWV 85, about Jesus as the Good Shepherd.
• 1855 – Thieves stole 224 pounds (102 kg) of gold from a train travelling from London to Folkestone, England.
• 1864 – American Civil War: A small Confederate force, which included cadets from the Virginia Military Institute, forced the Union army out of the Shenandoah Valley.
• 1916 – Jesse Washington, a teenage African-American farmhand, was lynched in Waco, Texas.

May 16: Malcolm X Day in some parts of the United States (2025)

Junko Tabei

• 1426 – Mohnyin Thado captured Sagaing to become the king of Ava, in present-day Myanmar.
• 1605 – After a scuffle in which one cardinal had several bones broken, a papal conclave convened in Rome elected Camillo Borghese as Pope Paul V.
• 1929 – The first Academy Awards ceremony was held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles, California.
• 1975 – Japanese climber Junko Tabei (pictured) became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

May 17: International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia

Anne of Denmark

• 1590 – Anne of Denmark (pictured) was crowned the queen consort of Scotland in a ceremony at Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh.
• 1863 – American Civil War: At the Battle of Big Black River Bridge in Mississippi, Union forces under John A. McClernand defeated a Confederate rearguard and captured around 1,700 men.
• 1900 – The first copies of the children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum were printed.
• 1954 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education, outlawing racial segregation in public schools because "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal" and therefore unconstitutional.
• 1987 – An Iraqi jet fired two Exocet missiles at the American frigate USS Stark, killing 37 personnel and injuring 21 others.

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

The Bath School after the explosions

• 1302 – Armed insurrectionists massacred the occupying French garrison in Bruges, Flanders, killing approximately 2,000 people.
• 1695 – An earthquake measuring M_s7.8 struck Shanxi Province in northern China, resulting in at least 52,600 deaths.
• 1927 – Disgruntled school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe set off explosives with timers and a rifle (aftermath pictured), causing the Bath School disaster in the Bath Consolidated School in Michigan, killing 44 people in the deadliest mass murder in a school in United States history.
• 2009 – The Sri Lanka Army killed Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader and founder of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, to bring an end to the 26-year Sri Lankan civil war.

May 19: Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day in Turkey (1919); Victoria Day in Canada (2025)

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle

• 1655 – Anglo-Spanish War: England invaded Spanish Jamaica, capturing it a week later.
• 1743 – French physicist Jean-Pierre Christin published the design of a mercury thermometer using the centigrade scale, with 0 representing the melting point of water and 100 its boiling point.
• 1828 – The United States Congress passed the largest tariff in the nation's history, which resulted in severe economic hardship in the American South.
• 1915 – First World War: Australian and New Zealand troops repelled the third attack on Anzac Cove, inflicting heavy casualties on the attacking Ottoman forces.
• 2018 – The wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (both pictured) took place at St George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, England.

May 20: National Day of Remembrance in Cambodia (1975); National Awakening Day in Indonesia (1908)

• 325 – The First Council of Nicaea (depicted), the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church, was formally opened by Constantine the Great.
• 794 – According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, King Æthelberht II of East Anglia was beheaded on the orders of Offa of Mercia.
• 1714 – J. S. Bach led the first performance of his Pentecost cantata Erschallet, ihr Lieder at the chapel of Schloss Weimar.
• 1927 – With the signing of the Treaty of Jeddah, the United Kingdom recognized the sovereignty of Ibn Saud over Hejaz and Nejd, which later merged to become Saudi Arabia.
• 1941 – World War II: German paratroopers began the Battle of Heraklion on the island of Crete, capturing the airfield and port in Heraklion ten days later.

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

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.