1932 – A $50,000 ransom was paid for the infant son of Charles and Anna Lindbergh. He child was not returned and was found dead the next month.
0999 – Gerbert of Aurillac elected as 1st French Pope
1416 – Alfonso V succeeds his father as King of Aragon
1453 – Turkish forces under Sultan Mehmed II begin the siege of Constantinople (İstanbul), which falls May 29
1513 – Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sighted Florida. The next day he went ashore.
1550 – Jewish physician Joseph Hacohen expelled from city of Genoa, all Jews soon after
1645 – Robert Devereux resigns as parliament supreme commander
1755 – Commodore William James captures the pirate fortress of Suvarnadurg on west coast of India
1767 – King Charles III of Spain gives orders to expel the Jesuits from the Spanish Empire
1792 – The U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act to regulate the coins of the United States. The act authorized $10 Eagles, $5 Half Eagles, $2.50 Quarter Eagle gold coins, silver dollars, dollars, quarters, dimes and half-dimes to be minted.
1796 – Haitian revolt leader Toussaint L’Ouverture takes command of French forces at Santo Domingo.
1801 – During the Napoleonic Wars, the Danish fleet was destroyed by the British at the Battle of Copenhagen.
1860 – The first Italian Parliament met in Turin.
1863 – Bread revolt in Richmond, Virginia
1865 – Confederate President Davis and most of his Cabinet fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, VA.
1877 – The first Egg Roll was held on the grounds of the White House in Washington, DC.
1889 – Charles Hall patented aluminum.
1905 – The Simplon rail tunnel officially opened. The tunnel went under the Alps and linked Switzerland and Italy.
1910 – Karl Harris perfected the process for the artificial synthesis of rubber.
1914 – The U.S. Federal Reserve Board announced plans to divide the country into 12 districts.
1917 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson presented a declaration of war against Germany to the U.S. Congress.
1917 – Jeannette Pickering Rankin is sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.
1926 – Riots between Muslims & Hindus in Calcutta
1932 – A $50,000 ransom was paid for the infant son of Charles and Anna Lindbergh. He child was not returned and was found dead the next month.
1935 – Sir Watson-Watt was granted a patent for RADAR.
1944 – The Soviet Union announced that its troops had crossed the Prut River and entered Romania.
1947 – The U.N. Security Council voted to appoint the U.S. as trustee for former Japanese-held Pacific Islands.
1951 – U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower assumed command of all allied forces in the Western Mediterranean area and Europe.
1958 – The National Advisory Council on Aeronautics was renamed NASA.
1960 – France signed an agreement with Madagascar that proclaimed the country an independent state within the French community.
1963 – Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King began the first non-violent campaign in Birmingham, AL.
1964 – Military coup in Brazil by Gen Castello Branco, President Goulart ousted
1966 – South Vietnamese troops joined in demonstrations at Hue and Da Nang for an end to military rule.
1968 – Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey receives its world premiere. Upon release, the epic about human evolution, technology, and extraterrestrial life polarized audiences and critics alike. Today, it is considered a classic in its genre
1970 – Meghalaya becomes autonomous state within India’s Assam state
1973 – Launch of the LexisNexis computerized legal research service.
1981 – In Lebanon, thirty-seven people were reported killed during fighting in the cities of Beirut and Zahle. It was the worst violence since the 1976 cease fire.
1982 – Argentina invaded the British-owned Falkland Islands. The following June Britain took the islands back.
1983 – The New Jersey Transit strike that began on March 1 came to an end.
1984 – In Jerusalem, three Arab gunmen wounded 48 people when they opened fire into a crowd of shoppers.
1986 – On a TWA airliner flying from Rome to Athens a bomb exploded under a seat killing four Americans.
1987 – The speed limit on U.S. interstate highways was increased to 65 miles per hour in limited areas.
1989 – An editorial in the “New York Times” declared that the Cold War was over.
1989 – General Prosper Avril, Haiti’s military leader, survived a coup attempt. The attempt was apparently provoked by Avril’s U.S.-backed efforts to fight drug trafficking.
1990 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein threatened to incinerate half of Israel with chemical weapons if Israel joined a conspiracy against Iraq.
1992 – Mob boss John Gotti was convicted in New York of murder and racketeering. He was later sentenced to life in prison.
1995 – The costliest strike in professional sports history ended when baseball owners agreed to let players play without a contract.
1996 – Russia and Belarus signed a treaty that created a political and economic alliance in an effort to reunite the two former Soviet republics.
1996 – Lech Walesa resumed his old job as an electrician at the Gdansk shipyard. He was the former Solidarity union leader who became Poland’s first post-war democratic president.
2002 – Israeli troops surrounded the Church of the Nativity. More than 200 Palestinians had taken refuge at the church when Israel invaded Bethlehem.
2004 – Islamist terrorists involved in the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks attempt to bomb the Spanish high-speed train AVE near Madrid. Their attack is thwarted.
2013 – 13 children are killed in a fire in a mosque in Yangon, Burma
2013 – The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Arms Trade Treaty to regulate the international trade of conventional weapons.
2014 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that limits on the total amount of money individuals can give political candidates and political action committees were unconstitutional.
2015 – 140 people are killed after gunmen attack Garissa University College, Kenya
2019 – Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika resigns after 20 years in office after widespread protests over running for another term
2020 – New study shows western Antarctica once swampy with temperate forests 93-83 million years ago during Cretaceous period, according to Alfred Wegener Institute
2020 – Number of COVID-19 cases worldwide passes 1 million, with 1,002,159 cases and 51,485 deaths reported, according to Johns Hopkins University
2020 – Record 6.6 million Americans filed claims for unemployment in last week according to the US Department of Labor, 10 million over 2 weeks
2022 – Ukraine liberates the entire Kyiv region from retreating Russian forces
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
