- 1374 BC Solar eclipse lasting 2 minutes 7 seconds is seen at Ugarit by Mesopotamian astronomers, "On the day of the new moon, in the month of Hiyar, the Sun was put to shame, and went down in the daytime, with Mars in attendance."
- 738 Maya ruler 18 Rabbit of Copán is captured and beheaded by his former vassal Cauac Sky ruler of the nearby city of Quiriguá
- 1294 John II becomes Duke of Brabant and Limburg
- 1342 Count Hartmann II becomes the ruler of Vaduz, Liechtenstein
- 1382 Battle of Beverhoutsveld near Bruges in modern-day Belgium; the army of Ghent defeats a drunken Bruges militia
- 1491 Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga is baptized by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I
Fifth Council of the Lateran
1512 Pope Julius II opens the Fifth Council of Lateran at St. John Lateran Basilica in Rome
- 1537 Strategic city of Santa Cruz de Mompox founded on the Magdalena River (modern Colombia) by Spanish conquistadors
- 1558 Ferdinand I officially appointed Holy Roman Emperor after his brother Charles abdicated in 1556
- 1616 Treaty of Loudun ends French civil war
Fall of Francis Bacon
1621 After confessing to corruption, Lord Chancellor of England Francis Bacon is sentenced to imprisonment in the Tower of London, must pay a £40,000 fine, and is banished from court, Parliament, and public office
- 1624 Spanish silver fleet sails towards Panama to collect silver and gold
- 1629 French huguenot leader Duke De Rohan signs accord with Spain
Event of Interest
1640 English Upper house accepts Act of Attainder to execute Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, a leading advisor to Charles I
- 1654 Bridge at Rowley, Massachusetts, begins charging tolls for animals
- 1660 Sweden, Poland, Brandenburg, and Austria sign the Treaty of Oliva, one of the peace treaties ending the Second Northern War
- 1661 Johannes Hevelius observes the third transit of Mercury ever to be seen
- 1662 Royal charter granted to Connecticut
Halley Observes Baily's Beads
1715 Edmond Halley observes total eclipse phenomenon "Baily's Beads"
- 1722 Pierre de Marivaux's play "La Double Inconstance" premieres in Paris
- 1747 William IV Prince of Orange appointed Stadtholder of Holland and Utrecht
- 1765 First North American medical school is established at the College of Philadelphia
- 1791 Constitution of May 3 is proclaimed by the Great Sejm (Parliament) of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the first modern constitution in Europe
- 1802 Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city
1808 Day depicted by Spanish painter Francisco Goya in his "The Third of May," which he paints in 1814
- 1808 Finnish War: Sweden loses the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia
- 1808 Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels who rose up on May 2 are fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill
Byron Swims the Hellespont
1810 English poet Lord Byron swims across the dangerous Hellespont Strait in Turkey (modern day Dardanelles)
- 1815 Battle at Tolentino: Austria beats King Joachim of Naples
- 1822 Society for the Propagation of the Faith founded in Lyon, France
- 1830 First regular steam train passenger service in the US starts in South Carolina, with U.S.-built locomotive “The Best Friend of Charleston”
- 1837 The University of Athens is founded by King Otto of Greece and is the first modern university in the Eastern Mediterranean
- 1841 New Zealand is proclaimed a colony independent of New South Wales
- 1845 Fire kills 1,600 in a popular theater in Canton, China
- 1845 First African American lawyer, Macon B. Allen, admitted to the bar in Massachusetts
- 1846 Mexican Army begins the Siege of Fort Texas near Brownsville, Texas, during the Mexican–American War
- 1849 The May Uprising in Dresden begins; the last of the German revolutions of 1848
- 1851 Sixth major fire in San Francisco destroys 1500–2000 buildings
- 1855 Antwerp-Rotterdam railway officially opens
- 1860 Charles XV of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Sweden
- 1861 General Winfield Scott presents his Anaconda Plan for the North against the South in American Civil War
- 1861 Lincoln asks for 42,000 Army Volunteers and another 18,000 seamen
- 1863 Battle of Salem Church, Virginia
- 1863 The Second Battle of Fredericksburg occurs in Virginia, part of the Chancellorsville Campaign of the American Civil War
- 1864 Red River Campaign: third day of Battle at Alexandria, Louisiana
- 1867 Hudson's Bay Company gives up all claims to Vancouver Island
- 1886 M. A. Maclean is elected first mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia
- 1887 Nanaimo Mine Disaster: explosion in the mine kills 150 men; British Columbia's worst mine disaster [1]
- 1898 Camp Merriman forms at Presidio San Francisco (see 0517)
- 1901 Fire destroys 1,700 buildings in Jacksonville, Florida
- 1906 British-controlled Egypt secures control over the Sinai Peninsula from the Ottoman Empire
- 1910 Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States is renamed the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)
In Flanders Fields
1915 Canadian poet and physician John McCrae writes the poem "In Flanders Fields" at Ypres on the Western Front
- 1916 Irish Nationalists Patrick Pearse, Thomas MacDonagh, and Thomas Clarke are executed by firing squad following their involvement in the Easter Rising
Schelomo
1917 Ernest Bloch's "Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque" and "Israel Symphony" premiere in Carnegie Hall, NYC, with Artur Bodanzky conducting the former, and the composer conducting the latter
- 1919 Emir of Afghanistan Amanullah Khan declares war against Great Britain
- 1921 Northern Ireland is created under the UK Government of Ireland Act partitioning off six north eastern counties with a Protestant majority
- 1921 West Virginia imposes first state sales tax
- 1922 Mayor Hylan closes two streets for building of Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, NYC
- 1922 Salt layer find at Winterswijk, Netherlands
- 1923 First non-stop North American transcontinental flight from New York to San Diego is completed
- 1924 Aleph Zadik Aleph is formed in Omaha, Nebraska, by Sam Beber
1926 Britain's Trade Union Congress calls for the country's first-ever general strike, begins at 1 minute to midnight in support of striking coal miners and lasts 9 days
- 1926 Pulitzer Prize is awarded to Sinclair Lewis for "Arrowsmith," however, Lewis declines the award; only author in history to turn down a Pulitzer Prize
- 1926 US Marines land in Nicaragua (9 months after leaving), stay until 1933
- 1928 Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China
- 1929 Prussia bans anti-fascists
- 1932 24 tourists begin first air-charter holiday from London, England, to Basel, Switzerland
- 1933 Nellie T. Ross takes office as the first female director of the US Mint
- 1936 French People's Front win elections
Joe DiMaggio Debuts
1936 New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio makes his major-league debut, gets 3 hits
Gone With The Wind Wins Pulitzer
1937 Margaret Mitchell wins the Pulitzer Prize for her novel "Gone with the Wind"
- 1938 Flossenbürg concentration camp is officially established in Bavaria, Germany
- 1938 Lefty Grove defeats Tigers 4-3 for 1st of record 20 consecutive wins at his home field Fenway Park; he doesn't lose there until May 12, 1941
- 1939 The All India Forward Bloc is formed by Subhash Chandra Bose
- 1941 German air raid on Liverpool, England
- 1941 WPAT-AM radio in Patterson, New Jersey begins broadcasting
- 1942 German Luftwaffe again bombs Exeter, destroying its town centre
- 1942 Japanese troop attack Tulagi, Gavutu & Tanambogo, Solomon Islands during WWII
- 1942 Nazis execute 71 Dutch resistance fighters in reprisal at Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany
- 1942 Nazis require Dutch Jews to wear a Jewish star
- 1943 Nationwide strikes in German-occupied Netherlands against obligatory labor camps ends after 200 people are killed
Pulitzer to Upton Sinclair
1943 Pulitzer Prize is awarded to Upton Sinclair for his novel "Dragon's Teeth" about the Nazi rise to power
- 1943 US 1st Armored Division occupies Mateur, Tunisia, from Axis forces
Going My Way
1944 "Going My Way," directed by Leo McCarey and starring Bing Crosby, premieres in New York (Academy Award for Best Picture, 1945)
- 1944 Meat rationing ends in the US
- 1945 1st Polish Armoured Division of the Polish Armed Forces in the West occupies Wilhelmshafen in Germany
- 1945 German ocean liner SS Cap Arcona, laden with prisoners, is sunk by the Royal Air Force in the western Baltic Sea, killing 5,800 people in one of the largest maritime losses of life in World War II
- 1945 Louis de Visser, Dutch Communist politician (CPN), is killed in Allied bombing of German prison ship SS Cap Arcona at 66
- 1946 International Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo War Crimes Trial) begins proceedings in Tokyo, Japan
Post-War Constitution
1947 Japan's post-war constitution goes into effect, granting universal suffrage, stripping Emperor Hirohito of all but symbolic power and outlawing Japan's right to make war
- 1948 First broadcast of "CBS Evening News"; longest running network news show in the US
Michener and Williams Win Pulitzers
1948 Pulitzer Prizes are awarded to James Michener for his novel "Tales of the South Pacific" and Tennessee Williams for his play "A Streetcar Named Desire"
- 1949 First US Viking rocket launches, reaching an apogee of 80 kilometers
- 1951 New York Yankees Gil McDougald ties major league record with 6 RBIs in 1 inning; 5th to get 6 RBIs in an inning (9th)
- 1951 Royal Festival Hall opens in London
- 1951 The Festival of Britain opens
- 1952 First airplane lands at the geographic North Pole
- 1953 Westchester conference of American Library Association proclaims "Freedom to Read"
- 1953 WTVO TV channel 17 in Rockford, Illinois (NBC) begins broadcasting
- 1954 KTEN TV channel 10 in Ada-Ardmore, Oklahoma (ABC) begins broadcasting
Pulitzer Prize
1954 Pulitzer Prizes are awarded to Charles Lindbergh for his biography "The Spirit of St. Louis" and John Patrick for drama for his play "The Teahouse of August Moon"
- 1954 WHA TV channel 21 in Madison, Wisconsin (PBS) begins broadcasting
- 1956 A new range of mountains is discovered in Antarctica, with two peaks over 13,000 feet
- 1958 WINS suspends disc jockey Alan Freed for being charged with inciting a riot at a Boston concert, he quits, charges are dropped
- 1959 Tiger's Charlie Maxwell hits 4 consecutive HRs in a doubleheader
- 1960 Musical "The Fantasticks" by Harvey Schmidt and Tom Jones opens in Greenwich Village, NYC; becomes “the longest-running musical in the universe”
Event of Interest
1960 The Anne Frank House opens in Amsterdam, Netherlands
- 1962 Express train crashes into the wreckage of a commuter train and a freight train, killing 163 and injuring 400 in Tokyo, Japan
- 1963 Birmingham officials turn high pressure hoses and dogs on children's crusade protest against segregation prompting widespread condemnation
- 1963 Leslie Narum is only Baltimore Oriole to homer on his 1st at bat
- 1965 Cambodia severes diplomatic relations with the US
- 1965 First use of satellite TV, Today Show on Early Bird satellite
- 1965 Pulitzer Prize is awarded to Irwin Unger for "The Greenback Era"
- 1966 WDHO (now WNWO) TV channel 24 in Toledo, Ohio (ABC) begins broadcasting
- 1967 African American students seize finance building at Northwestern University
- 1968 Holland Pirate Radio Station VRON becomes Radio Veronica International
- 1970 Trans-Arabian Pipeline delivery from Saudi Arabia to the Mediterranean interrupted in Syria, driving oil tanker rates to all time highs
- 1970 World premiere of The Beatles' "Let it Be" documentary film directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, in New York City
- 1971 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction is awarded to John Toland for "The Rising Sun"
- 1971 US National Public Radio begins programming with newscast "All Things Considered" airing on 112 stations nationwide
Event of Interest
1971 US President Nixon administration authorizes arrest of 13,000 anti-war protesters in 3 days
- 1973 The Sears Tower in Chicago is topped off at 110 stories and 1,451 feet; world's tallest building until 1998
- 1975 Christa Vahlensieck runs female world record marathon with 2:40:15.8
- 1976 Pan Am Boeing 747SP lands after a record flight around world in just 46 hours
Pulitzer Prize
1976 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is awarded to Saul Bellow for "Humboldt's Gift"
- 1977 1977 NFL Draft: Ricky Bell from USC first pick by Tampa Bay Buccaneers
- 1978 "Sun Day": solar energy events held in the US
- 1978 First unsolicited bulk commercial email ("spam") is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the US West Coast
- 1978 West Indies all set to lose the cricket test v Australia at Kingston till riots end game in the last test match appearance for Bob Simpson
- 1979 1979 NFL Draft: Tom Cousineau from Ohio State first pick by Buffalo Bills
- 1979 Martin Sherman's play "Bent" premieres in London
Baseball Record
1979 MLB Cleveland Indian Bobby Bonds hits his 300th HR (2nd to have 300 HRs & 300 stolen bases)
- 1981 "Moony, Shapiro Songbook" opens and closes at the Morosco Theater in NYC
- 1982 ABC's All Talk network begins radio broadcasting (two west coast stations)
- 1982 New York Times reports that the military will get 25% of NASA's budget
Event of Interest
1983 Soviet leader Yuri Andropov decreases nuclear weapons in Europe
- 1983 US National Conference of Catholic Bishops condemn nuclear weapons
- 1985 Date of $5 million check in "A View To A Kill"
- 1986 Bomb explodes aboard Air Lanka Flight 512 on the ground at Colombo airport, killing 21 people
- 1986 Cubs third baseman Ron Cey hits his 300th & 301st HR
- 1986 NASA launches GOES-G, but it fails to reach orbit
Sports History
1986 New York Yankees Don Mattingly is 6th to hit 3 sacrifice flies in a game
- 1987 Miami Herald reports a woman (Donna Rice) spent Friday and Saturday with presidential candidate Gary Hart creating a media frenzy that forces him to withdraw from the race
- 1988 4,200 kilograms of Colombian cocaine are seized in Tarpon Springs, Florida
- 1988 Jasper Johns' painting "Diver" sells for $4,200,000
Television Finale
1991 356th and final episode of CBS' second longest running series TV show "Dallas" airs (2nd only to "Gunsmoke")
Sports History
1991 Future Hockey HOF right wing Cam Neely injures knee on a cheap shot by Ulf Samuelsson in Wales Conference Finals; injury limits him to only 162 games for remainder of NHL career; retires at 31
- 1991 The Declaration of Windhoek (on press freedom) signed by African journalists
- 1992 Baltimore Orioles Gregg Olson, 25, is youngest to record 100 saves
- 1992 Ohio Glory wins first WLAF game after 6 loses to defeat Frankfurt 20-17
- 1994 Wim Kok and the Labour Party win Dutch general election
- 1995 Australia defeats the West Indies to regain the Frank Worrell Cricket Trophy
- 1995 David Bell makes his MLB debut for the Cleveland Indians (3rd generation player, Gus & Buddy)
- 1996 Martin Moxon and Michael Vaughan make 362 for the 1st wicket, Yorkshire v Glamorgan
Sports History
1997 Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov begins chess match with IBM supercomputer Deep Blue
- 1999 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, is slammed by an F5 tornado which kills 42 people, injurs 665, and causes $1 billion in damages; one of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak
- 1999 The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 11,000 for the first time in its history at 11,014.70
- 1999 World Snooker Championship, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield: Stephen Hendry of Scotland defeats Welshman Mark Williams 18-11 for a record seventh world crown
- 2000 Sport of geocaching begins with the first cache placed and the GPS coordinates posted on Usenet
- 2001 The United States loses its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947
Spider-Man
2002 "Spider-Man," starring Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn/The Green Goblin, premieres
- 2002 Military MiG-21 aircraft crashes into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight people
- 2003 New Hampshire's famous Old Man of the Mountain collapses
From Under the Cork Tree
2005 Fall Out Boy's breakthrough album "From Under the Cork Tree" is released through Island Records
- 2006 Al-Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui is sentenced to life in prison for his part in the 9/11 attacks, in Alexandria, Virginia
- 2006 Armavia Flight 967 crashes into the Black Sea, killing all 113 people on board, with no survivors
- 2007 British girl Madeleine McCann disappears from her bed in a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal
- 2013 Aorun zhaoi, a Theropod dinosaur dating from 161 million years ago, is discovered in China
- 2015 Chelsea wins the 2014–15 English football Premier League
Appointment of Interest
2015 Chris Isaak is confirmed as a judge on the seventh season of "The X Factor Australia"
Event of Interest
2016 Ted Cruz suspends his campaign to be the Republican Presidential nominee
- 2018 Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan becomes NFL's first $30m per season player after agreeing to $150m contract extension
Film & TV History
2018 Bollywood actors are both posthumously recognized at India's National Film Awards; Sridevi Kapoor Best Actress for "Mum" and Vinod Khanna receives Dadasaheb Phalke award
- 2018 Indian government confirms around 110 people have died in dust storms in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh in the last nine days
- 2018 Kilauea volcano on Big Island, Hawaii, begins erupting, forcing the evacuation of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and residential areas
- 2019 Cyclone Fani strikes Odisha State, India and Bangladesh, killing 33 people after one of the biggest human evacuations ever; 1.2 million in India in 24 hours
- 2020 Brazilian confirmed COVID-19 cases pass 100,000 with the death toll at 7,025, the 9th country to do so
Event of Interest
2020 Investor Warren Buffett dumps his holdings in four major US airlines saying "the world has changed" for aviation, reflecting an increasingly bleak outlook for the industry
2020 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says China responsible for the spread and severity of COVID-19 and should be held accountable
- 2021 Former US Senator and astronaut Bill Nelson becomes Administrator of NASA
- 2021 Subway overpass carrying a train collapses in Mexico City killing at least 24 people
- 2021 The Democratic Republic of the Congo announces the end of the latest Ebola outbreak after three months, with six deaths
- 2021 US Environmental Protection Agency takes first significant step against climate change by announcing new limits on hydrofluorocarbons (-85% over 15 years) [1]
- 2021 World Snooker Championship, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield: Englishman Mark Selby wins his 4th world title with an 18-15 win over countryman Shaun Murphy
- 2022 Heatwave continues across North and Central India disproportionally affecting the poor, with March and April temperatures the hottest ever recorded in 122 years [1]
- 2022 US government says W.N.B.A. player Brittney Griner has been "wrongfully detained" in Russia, after being taken into custody when drugs were found in her luggage in Feb 2022 [1]
- 2023 13-year-old Serbian student shoots and kills nine people at his Belgrade school, eight students and a security guard, before handing himself in [1]
Ajay Banga Elected to World BanK
2023 Ajay Banga is elected President of the World Bank after being nominated by US President Joe Biden [1]
Most Goals in a Premier League Season
2023 Manchester City's Norwegian striker Erling Haaland scores in a 3-0 win over West Ham to set a new record for most goals scored in a single Premier League season (35)
- 2023 MLB LA Angels pitcher Shohei Ohtani joins NY Yankee legend Babe Ruth as only pitcher to strike out 500 batters and hit over 100 career home runs in 6-4 over the Cardinals in St. Louis
Drone Attack on the Kremlin
2023 Mysterious explosive drone attack on the Kremlin in Moscow has no clear motive or link to people behind it, despite Russian claim it was attempt to assassinate Vladimir Putin, amid Ukrainian and US denials [1]
Ledecky Breaks Own Record
2025 American swimmer Katie Ledecky breaks her own world record for the 6th time in the 800-meter freestyle event at the TYR Pro Swim Series in Fort Lauderdale, Florida [1]
Albanese Wins in Landslide
2025 Labor government led by Anthony Albanese, wins re-election in landslide victory in Australian federal election
Largest Concert for a Female artist
2025 Lady Gaga's free concert at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, draws crowd estimated at 2.5 million attendees, the largest concert in history for a female artist; police later reveal they thwarted a bombing attempt
- 2025 Liberal Leader Peter Dutton becomes the first Leader of the Opposition to lose his seat in Australian electoral history, following his loss to Anthony Albanese [1]
- 2025 People's Action Party, led by Lawrence Wong, wins re-election in a landslide victory in Singapore's general election [1]
