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 A Black Hawk helicopter clipped the compound wall and crashed into the courtyard
May 2
1945 Soviet soldiers raised the red banner over the Reichstag's shattered dome on Apr
May 3
1979 Britain's Winter of Discontent did the campaigning for her. Rubbish piled uncoll
May 4
1886 A pipe bomb arced through the evening air and detonated among a line of police o
May 5
1862 The French army had not lost a battle in nearly fifty years. On May 5, 1862, out
May 6
1937 Thirty-six seconds. That is how long it took for the largest flying object ever
May 7
1945 Generaloberst Alfred Jodl sat down at a plain wooden table in a red brick school
May 8
1945 Church bells rang across Europe for the first time in six years. On May 8, 1945,
May 9
1994 Nelson Mandela had spent 27 years in prison, 18 of them on Robben Island breakin
May 10
1940 Winston Churchill became Prime Minister on the worst possible day. On May 10, 19
May 11
1960 A team of Mossad agents wrestled Adolf Eichmann into a car on a quiet Buenos Air
May 12
1941 Konrad Zuse built the future in a Berlin apartment while his country built weapo
May 13
1981 Four bullets struck Pope John Paul II as he rode through a packed St. Peter's Sq
May 14
1948 David Ben-Gurion stood beneath a portrait of Theodor Herzl in the Tel Aviv Museu
May 15
1911 John D. Rockefeller's monopoly over American oil ended with a single Supreme Cou
May 16
1960 A burst of deep red light from a synthetic ruby crystal changed the world on May
May 17
1954 Nine Supreme Court justices spoke with one voice on May 17, 1954, and dismantled
May 18
1980 A magnitude 5.1 earthquake shook Mount St. Helens at 8:32 AM on May 18, 1980, an
May 19
1536 A French swordsman's blade fell in a single stroke on the Tower Green on May 19,
May 20
1609 Thomas Thorpe registered a quarto volume at the Stationers' Company in London on
May 21
1927 A 25-year-old airmail pilot climbed into a single-engine monoplane loaded with 4
May 22
1980 Pizza inspired a revolution in entertainment. Game designer Toru Iwatani looked
May 23
1934 Six officers waited in the Louisiana woods with Browning automatic rifles. Bonni
May 24
1844 Four words hummed across 38 miles of copper wire and the speed of human communic
May 25
2020 A convenience store clerk called the police over a suspected counterfeit $20 bil
May 26
1940 A flotilla of fishing boats, pleasure yachts, and river ferries sailed into a wa
May 27
1937 Two hundred thousand people walked across it before a single car did. The Golden
May 28
1961 A newspaper article about six imprisoned strangers started a movement that has f
May 29
1453 The walls that had protected Christendom's greatest city for a thousand years fi
May 30
1431 English commanders rigged a tribunal to destroy the teenage girl who had reverse
May 31
1790 Fourteen years after declaring independence, the United States finally gave its