1972 – Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace was shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, MD while campaigning for the U.S. presidency. Wallace was paralyzed by the shot.
1222 – Mongolian leader Genghis Khan meets the leader of the Taoist Dragon Gate sect Chang Chun at his camp in Parwan (Afghanistan)
1252 – Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad exstirpanda, which authorizes the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition.
1492 – Cheese & Bread rebellion: German mercenaries kills 232 Alkmaarse
1525 – German boer army surrounded/slaughters 5,000; ends Boer war
1536 – Anna Boleyn & Lord Rochford accused of adultery/incest
1567 – Mary Queen of Scots weds James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, her third husband.
1602 – Cape Cod was discovered by Bartholomew Gosnold.
1614 – An aristocratic uprising in France ended with the treaty of St.Menehould.
1618 – Johannes Kepler confirms his previously rejected discovery of the third law of planetary motion (he first discovered it on March 8 but soon rejected the idea after some initial calculations were made).
1672 – The first copyright law enacted by Massachusetts
1702 – The War of Spanish Succession began.
1718 – James Puckle, a London lawyer, patents the world’s first machine gun
1756 – The Seven Years’ War begins when England declares war on France.
1768 – Under the Treaty of Versailles, France purchased Corsica from Genoa.
1795 – Napoleon entered the Lombardian capital of Milan.
1800 – King George III survives a 2nd assassination attempt
1817 – Opening of the first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1849 – Neapolitan troops entered Palermo, and were in possession of Sicily.
1862 – President Abraham Lincoln signs a bill into law creating the United States Bureau of Agriculture (later renamed USDA).
1862 – General Benjamin F Butler issues “”Woman’s Order”” – women of New Orleans to be treated as whores as a result of their treatment of Union soldiers
1869 – Woman’s suffrage: In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association
1882 – May Laws-Czar Alexander III bans Jews from living in rural Romania
1907 – Toronto Ontario, plumbers go on four-month strike
1911 – The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil Company, ruling it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
1916 – U.S. Marines landed in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.
1919 – Greek invasion of Zamir. During the invasion, the Greek army killed or wounded 350 Turks. The responsible were punished by the Greek Commander Aristides Stergiades. Hasan Tahsin fired the first shot of the Turkish War of Independence.
1926 – Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth were forced down in Alaska after a four-day flight over an icecap. Ice had begun to form on the dirigible Norge.
1928 – Release of the animated short “”Plane Crazy””, featuring the first appearances of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
1932 – The May 15 Incident. In an attempted coup the Prime Minister of Japan Inukai Tsuyoshi is killed
1934 – Department of Justice offers $25,000 reward for Dillinger, dead or alive
1940 – World War II: After fierce fighting, the poorly trained and equipped Dutch troops surrender to Nazi Germany, marking the beginning of 5 years of occupation.
1940 – Nylon stockings went on sale for the first time in the U.S.
1942 – Gasoline rationing began in the U.S. The limit was 3 gallons a week for nonessential vehicles.
1948 – Israel was attacked by Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon only hours after declaring its independence.
1951 – AT&T became the first corporation to have one million stockholders.
1957 – 18,000 people at Madison Square Garden-Billy Graham launched a crusade
1957 – Britain dropped its first hydrogen bomb on Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean.
1958 – Sputnik III, the first space laboratory, was launched in the Soviet Union.
1960 – Taxes took 25% of earnings in US
1963 – Project Mercury: launch of Mercury-Atlas 9 with astronaut L. Gordon Cooper onboard. He became the first American to spend more than a day in space. Final Mercury mission
1969 – Associate Justice Abe Fortas resigns from Supreme Court https://www.politico.com/story/2008/05/abe-fortas-resigns-from-supreme-court-may-15-1969-010346
1970 – U.S. President Nixon appointed America’s first two female generals.
1972 – Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace was shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, MD while campaigning for the U.S. presidency. Wallace was paralyzed by the shot. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/governor-george-wallace-shot
1972 – The island of Okinawa, under U.S. military governance since its conquest in 1945, reverts to Japanese control
1974 – Ma’alot, Israel massacre – a total of 31 people, including hostage takers, are killed.
1975 – The merchant ship U.S. Mayaguez was recaptured from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge.
1980 – Ottawa agrees to extend natural gas pipeline from Montreal to Quebec City.
1983 – In Boston, MA, the Madison Hotel was destroyed by implosion.
1988 – The Soviet Union began their withdrawal of its 115,000 troops from Afghanistan. Soviet forces had been there for more than eight years.
1989 – Maxwell House coffee runs ads during “”Roe vs Wade”” movie despite threat of boycott by right to lifers
1991 – Angry independent truckers close down 20 km of Highway 401 near Toronto; cause huge traffic jams.
1997 – The Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a mission to deliver urgently needed repair equipment and a fresh American astronaut to Russia’s orbiting Mir station.
1999 – The Russian parliament was unable a attain enough votes to impeach President Boris Yeltsin.
2004 – The largest known prime number at the time of its discovery, 224036583 1, is found by Josh Findley and the GIMPS collaborative effort
2008 – California becomes the second U.S. state after Massachusetts in 2004 to legalize same-sex marriage after the state’s own Supreme Court rules a previous ban unconstitutional.
2012 – Greece’s fifth attempt to a form a coalition government fails and new June elections are scheduled
2014 – The National September 11 Memorial Museum was dedicated in New York City.
2017 – 1st US prosecution under federal Hate Crimes Act of violence against transgender person, murder of Mercedes Williamson
2017 – State of Emergency declared in Sanaa, Yemen after outbreak of cholera kills 115
2018 – 58 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and 1700 hospitalized on the Gaza border protesting opening of US embassy in Jerusalem and 70 year founding of Israel
2018 – Controversial Kerch bridge linking Russia and annexed Crimea opened by Russian President Vladimir Putin. At 19km the longest bridge in Europe.
2018 – North Korea threatens to pull out of summit with US and South Korea saying it can “not hide our feeling of repugnance” towards US security advisor John Bolton
2019 – Alabama passes law banning abortion in almost all cases including rape or incest
2021 – China lands its Zhurong rover on Utopia Planitia, Mars, for the first time as part of the Tianwen-1 mission
2022 – Finland’s government says it intends to apply to join NATO, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, ending decades of neutrality
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
