History by month
May
31 days of history. Every date is an entry point to the events, births, and moments that shaped our world.
May 1
2011 U.S. Navy SEALs stormed a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, and killed Osama bin
May 2
1945 Soviet forces shattered Berlin's defenses from April 20 to May 2, driving Adolf
May 3
1979 Margaret Thatcher leads the Conservative Party to a decisive victory, ousting th
May 4
1886 A bomb detonates among Chicago police dispersing a labor rally, instantly killin
May 5
1862 Mexican forces repelled a larger, better-equipped French army at Puebla, deliver
May 6
1937 The German zeppelin Hindenburg erupts in flames and shatters into wreckage withi
May 7
1945 Generaloberst Alfred Jodl signed the first Instrument of Surrender in a red bric
May 8
1945 German forces sign their unconditional surrender, halting combat across Europe a
May 9
1994 South Africa's newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela as its first black
May 10
1940 Winston Churchill accepted the premiership on May 10, 1940, immediately shifting
May 11
1960 Four Israeli Mossad agents snatch fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann from a Buenos Air
May 12
1941 Konrad Zuse's Z3 became the world's first working programmable, fully automatic
May 13
1981 Mehmet Ali Ağca fired four shots into Pope John Paul II, sending the pontiff rus
May 14
1948 David Ben-Gurion declares Israel an independent state and establishes a provisio
May 15
1911 The Supreme Court dismantles Standard Oil into thirty-four separate companies af
May 16
1960 Theodore Maiman fires a pulse of red light from his ruby crystal, instantly prov
May 17
1954 The Supreme Court struck down racial segregation in public schools, declaring se
May 18
1980 Mount St. Helens explodes with a lateral blast that flattens 230 square miles of
May 19
1536 Henry VIII ordered the execution of his second wife, Anne Boleyn, on charges of
May 20
1609 Thomas Thorpe printed Shakespeare's sonnets in London, likely without the poet's
May 21
1927 Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis cleared a muddy runway by twenty feet to
May 22
1980 Namco unleashes Pac-Man into arcades, instantly transforming the industry by pro
May 23
1934 A Texas posse led by Frank Hamer turned a routine family visit into a deadly amb
May 24
1844 Samuel Morse fired the first telegraph message "What hath God wrought" from Wash
May 25
2020 Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd's neck for over n
May 26
1940 Allied troops scramble onto beaches and harbor piers to board a ragtag fleet of
May 27
1937 Crowds surged onto the Golden Gate Bridge on foot and roller skates before cars
May 28
1961 Peter Benenson's article "The Forgotten Prisoners" ignites a global movement by
May 29
1453 Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II breach Constantinople's walls after a grue
May 30
1431 English commanders stacked a tribunal with pro-English clerics to condemn Joan o
May 31
1790 James Madison and Charles C. Pinckney pushed Congress to grant copyrights for li