461 – Libius Severus is declared emperor of the Western Roman Empire. The real power is in the hands of the magister militumRicimer.[1]
636 – The Rashidun Caliphate defeats the Sasanian Empire at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah in Iraq.
1493 – Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island called Borinquen he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed again Puerto Rico).[2]
1794 – The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay's Treaty, which attempts to resolve some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.
1802 – The Garinagu arrive at British Honduras (Present day Belize)
1847 – The second Canadian railway line, the Montreal and Lachine Railroad, is opened.
1863 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
1881 – A meteoritelands near the village of Grossliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine.
1885 – Serbo-Bulgarian War: Bulgarian victory in the Battle of Slivnitsa solidifies the unification between the Principality of Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia.
1911 – The Doom Bar in Cornwall claimed two ships, Island Maid and Angele, the latter killing the entire crew except the captain.
1912 – First Balkan War: The Serbian Army capturesBitola, ending the five-century-long Ottoman rule of Macedonia.
1916 – Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures.
1941 – World War II: Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran. The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.
1942 – World War II: Battle of Stalingrad: Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranuscounterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR's favor.
1942 – Mutesa II is crowned the 35th and last Kabaka (king) of Buganda, prior to the restoration of the kingdom in 1993.
1943 – Holocaust: Nazis liquidate Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt.
1944 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling US$14 billion in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.
1944 – World War II: Thirty members of the Luxembourgish resistance defend the town of Vianden against a larger Waffen-SS attack in the Battle of Vianden.
1959 – The Ford Motor Company announces the discontinuation of the unpopular Edsel.
1967 – The establishment of TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong.
1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the "Ocean of Storms") and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.
1977 – TAP Portugal Flight 425 crashes in the Madeira Islands, killing 131.
1979 – Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader AyatollahRuhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran.
1984 – San Juanico disaster: A series of explosions at the Pemexpetroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City starts a major fire and kills about 500 people.
1985 – Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachevmeet for the first time.
1985 – Pennzoil wins a US$10.53 billion judgment against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States, stemming from Texaco executing a contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.
1985 – Police in Baling, Malaysia, lay siege to houses occupied by an Islamic sect of about 400 people led by Ibrahim Mahmud.
1988 – Serbian communist representative and future Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milošević publicly declares that Serbia is under attack from Albanian separatists in Kosovo as well as internal treachery within Yugoslavia and a foreign conspiracy to destroy Serbia and Yugoslavia.
1994 – In the United Kingdom, the first National Lottery draw is held. A £1 ticket gave a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.
1996 – Lt. Gen. Maurice Baril of Canada arrives in Africa to lead a multi-national policing force in Zaire.
1998 – Clinton–Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against U.S. President Bill Clinton.
1998 – Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of the Artist Without Beard sells at auction for US$71.5 million.
1999 – Shenzhou 1: The People's Republic of China launches its first Shenzhou spacecraft.
2002 – The Greek oil tankerPrestige splits in half and sinks off the coast of Galicia, releasing over 20 million US gallons (76,000 m³) of oil in the largest environmental disaster in Spanish and Portuguese history.
2004 – The Malice at the Palace: The worst brawl in NBA history, Ron Artest suspended 86 games (rest of season), Stephen Jackson suspended 30 games.
2006 – Nintendo's first video game console with motion control, the Wii, is released.
2010 – The first of four explosions takes place at the Pike River Mine in New Zealand. Twenty-nine people are killed in the nation's worst mining disaster since 1914.
2013 – A double suicide bombing at the Iranian embassy in Beirut kills 23 people and injures 160 others.
2019 – Google launches its cloud gaming service Stadia.
Births[]
1417 – Frederick I, Count Palatine of Simmern (d. 1480)
1464 – Emperor Go-Kashiwabara of Japan (d. 1526)
1503 – Pier Luigi Farnese, Duke of Parma (d. 1547)[4]
1563 – Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester, English poet and politician (d. 1626)[5]
1600 – Charles I of England (d. 1649)
1600 – Lieuwe van Aitzema, Dutch historian and diplomat (d. 1669)
1617 – Eustache Le Sueur, French painter and educator (d. 1655)
1700 – Jean-Antoine Nollet, French priest and physicist (d. 1770)
1711 – Mikhail Lomonosov, Russian physicist, chemist, astronomer, and geographer (d. 1765)
1722 – Leopold Auenbrugger, Austrian physician (d. 1809)
1722 – Benjamin Chew, American lawyer and judge (d. 1810)
1752 – George Rogers Clark, American general (d. 1818)
1770 – Bertel Thorvaldsen, Danish sculptor and academic (d. 1844)
1802 – Solomon Foot, American lawyer and politician (d. 1866)
1805 – Ferdinand de Lesseps, French diplomat and engineer, developed the Suez Canal (d. 1894)
1808 – Janez Bleiweis, Slovenian journalist, physician, and politician (d. 1881)
1812 – Karl Schwarz, German theologian and politician (d. 1885)
1828 – Rani Lakshmibai, Indian queen (d. 1858)
1831 – James A. Garfield, American general, lawyer, and politician, 20th President of the United States (d. 1881)
1833 – Wilhelm Dilthey, German psychologist, sociologist, and historian (d. 1911)
1834 – Georg Hermann Quincke, German physicist and academic (d. 1924)
1843 – Richard Avenarius, German-Swiss philosopher and academic (d. 1896)
1843 – C. X. Larrabee, American businessman (d. 1914)
1845 – Agnes Giberne, Indian-English astronomer and author (d. 1939)
1859 – Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Russian composer, conductor, and educator (d. 1935)
1862 – Billy Sunday, American baseball player and evangelist (d. 1935)
1873 – Elizabeth McCombs, the first woman elected to the Parliament of New Zealand (d. 1935)
1875 – Mikhail Kalinin, Russian civil servant and politician, 1st Head of State of The Soviet Union (d. 1946)[6]
1876 – Tatyana Afanasyeva, Russian-Dutch mathematician and theorist (d. 1964)
1877 – Giuseppe Volpi, Italian businessman and politician, founded the Venice Film Festival (d. 1947)
1883 – Ned Sparks, Canadian-American actor and singer (d. 1957)
1887 – James B. Sumner, American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955)
1888 – José Raúl Capablanca, Cuban-American chess player and theologian (d. 1942)
1889 – Clifton Webb, American actor, singer, and dancer (d. 1966)[7]
1892 – Thomas Clay, English footballer and coach (d. 1949)
1892 – Huw T. Edwards, Welsh poet and politician (d. 1970)[8]
1893 – René Voisin, French trumpet player (d. 1952)
1894 – Américo Tomás, Portuguese admiral and politician, 14th President of Portugal (d. 1987)
1895 – Louise Dahl-Wolfe, American photographer (d. 1989)
1895 – Evert van Linge, Dutch footballer and architect (d. 1964)
1897 – Quentin Roosevelt, American lieutenant and pilot (d. 1918)
1898 – Klement Jug, Slovenian philosopher and mountaineer (d. 1924)
1898 – Arthur R. von Hippel, German-American physicist and academic (d. 2003)
1899 – Abu al-Qasim al-Khoei, Iranian religious leader and scholar (d. 1992)
1899 – Allen Tate, American poet and critic (d. 1979)
1900 – Bunny Ahearne, Irish-English ice hockey player and manager (d. 1985)
1900 – Mikhail Lavrentyev, Russian mathematician and hydrodynamicist (d. 1980)
1900 – Anna Seghers, German author and politician (d. 1983)
1901 – Nina Bari, Russian mathematician (d. 1961)[9]
1904 – Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Jr., American murderer (d. 1971)
↑Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War: Trial by Fire, (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 666.
↑Murphy, Lynne (1996). "Hollinworth, May (1895–1968)". Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 14. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. ISBN0522842364. Retrieved 22 May 2019.