Events Pre-1600 28 BC – A sunspot is observed by Han dynasty astronomers during the reign of Emperor Cheng of Han, one of the earliest dated sunspot observations in China. 946 – Alberic II of Spoleto arranges the election of pope Agapetus II following the death of Pope Marinus II. 1291 – Scottish nobles recognize the authority of Edward I of England pending the selection of a king. 1294 – Temür, Khagan of the Mongols, is enthroned as Emperor of the Yuan dynasty. 1497 – Amerigo Vespucci allegedly leaves Cádiz for his first voyage to the New World. 1503 – Christopher Columbus visits the Cayman Islands and names them Las Tortugas after the numerous turtles there. 1534 – Jacques Cartier visits Newfoundland. 1591 – Elizabeth I is entertained by the Hermit's Welcome at Theobalds.Elizabeth Zeman Kolkovich, The Elizabethan Country House Entertainment (Cambridge, 2016), p. 42.
1601–1900 1688 – King Narai nominates Phetracha as regent, leading to the revolution of 1688 in which Phetracha becomes king of the Ayutthaya Kingdom.; 1713 – Great Northern War: The Russian Navy led by Admiral Fyodor Apraksin land both at Katajanokka and Hietalahti during the Battle of Helsinki. 1768 – Rioting occurs in London after John Wilkes is imprisoned for writing an article for The North Briton severely criticising King George III. 1773 – The Parliament of Great Britain passes the Tea Act, designed to save the British East India Company by reducing taxes on its tea and granting it the right to sell tea directly to North America. The legislation leads to the Boston Tea Party. 1774 – Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette become King and Queen of France. 1775 – American Revolutionary War: A small Colonial militia led by Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold captures Fort Ticonderoga. 1775 – American Revolutionary War: The Second Continental Congress takes place in Philadelphia. 1796 – War of the First Coalition: Napoleon wins a victory against Austrian forces at Lodi bridge over the Adda River in Italy. The Austrians lose some 2,000 men. 1801 – First Barbary War: The Barbary pirates of Tripoli declare war on the United States of America. 1824 – The National Gallery in London opens to the public. 1833 – A revolt broke out in southern Vietnam against Emperor Minh Mang, who had desecrated the deceased mandarin Le Van Duyet. 1837 – Panic of 1837: New York City banks suspend the payment of specie, triggering a national banking crisis and an economic depression whose severity was not surpassed until the Great Depression.; 1849 – Astor Place Riot: A riot breaks out at the Astor Opera House in Manhattan, New York City over a dispute between actors Edwin Forrest and William Charles Macready, killing at least 22 and injuring over 120. 1857 – Indian Rebellion of 1857: In India, the first war of Independence begins. Sepoys mutiny against their commanding officers at Meerut. 1865 – American Civil War: In Kentucky, Union soldiers ambush and mortally wound Confederate raider William Quantrill, who lingers until his death on June 6. 1869 – The First transcontinental railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory with the golden spike. 1872 – Victoria Woodhull becomes the first woman nominated for President of the United States. 1876 – The Centennial Exposition is opened in Philadelphia. 1881 – Carol I is crowned the King of the Romanian Kingdom. 1899 – Finnish farmworker Karl Emil Malmelin kills seven people with an axe at the Simola croft in the village of Klaukkala.
1901–present 1904 – The Horch & Cir. Motorwagenwerke AG is founded. It would eventually become the Audi company. 1908 – Mother's Day is observed for the first time in the United States, in Grafton, West Virginia. 1916 – Sailing in the lifeboat James Caird, Ernest Shackleton arrives at South Georgia after a journey of 800 nautical miles from Elephant Island. 1922 – The United States annexes the Kingman Reef. 1924 – J. Edgar Hoover is appointed first Director of the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and remains so until his death in 1972. 1933 – Censorship: In Germany, the Nazis stage massive public book burnings. 1940 – World War II: German fighters accidentally bomb the German city of Freiburg. 1940 – World War II: Winston Churchill is appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following the resignation of Neville Chamberlain. On the same day, Germany invades France, The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom occupies Iceland. 1941 – World War II: The House of Commons in London is damaged by the Luftwaffe in an air raid. 1941 – World War II: Rudolf Hess parachutes into Scotland to try to negotiate a peace deal between the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany. 1942 – World War II: The Thai Phayap Army invades the Shan States during the Burma Campaign. 1946 – First successful launch of an American V-2 rocket at White Sands Proving Ground. 1961 – Air France Flight 406 is destroyed by a bomb over the Sahara, killing 78. 1962 – Marvel Comics publishes the first issue of The Incredible Hulk. 1967 – The Northrop M2-F2 crashes on landing, becoming the inspiration for the novel Cyborg and TV series The Six Million Dollar Man. 1969 – Vietnam War: The Battle of Dong Ap Bia begins with an assault on Hill 937. It will ultimately become known as Hamburger Hill. 1975 – Sony introduces the Betamax videocassette recorder. 1993 – In Thailand, a fire at the Kader Toy Factory kills over 200 workers. 1994 – Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president. 1996 – A blizzard strikes Mount Everest, killing eight climbers by the next day. 1997 – The 7.3 Mw Qayen earthquake strikes Iran's Khorasan Province killing 1,567 people. 2002 – FBI agent Robert Hanssen is sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for selling United States secrets to Russia for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds. 2005 – A hand grenade thrown by Vladimir Arutyunian lands about from U.S. President George W. Bush while he is giving a speech to a crowd in Tbilisi, Georgia, but it malfunctions and does not detonate. 2012 – The Damascus bombings are carried out using a pair of car bombs detonated by suicide bombers outside a military intelligence complex in Damascus, Syria, killing 55 people. 2013 – One World Trade Center becomes the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. 2017 – Syrian civil war: The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) capture the last footholds of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Al-Tabqah, bringing the Battle of Tabqa to an end. 2022 – Queen Elizabeth II misses the State Opening of Parliament for the first time in 59 years. It was the first time that a new session of Parliament was opened by the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge acting as Counsellors of State. 2024 – Start of the May 2024 solar storms, the most powerful set of geomagnetic storms since the 2003 Halloween solar storms.
Births Pre-1600
874 – Meng Zhixiang, Chinese general and emperor (died 934)Spring and Autumn Annals of the Ten Kingdoms (十國春秋), vol. 48.Academia Sinica Chinese-Western Calendar Converter . 955 – Al-Aziz Billah, Fatimid caliph (died 996) 1491 – Suzanne, Duchess of Bourbon (died 1521)
1601–1900 1604 – Jean Mairet, French author and playwright (died 1686) 1697 – Jean-Marie Leclair, French violinist and composer (died 1764) 1727 – Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune, French economist and politician (died 1781) 1755 – Robert Gray, American captain and explorer (died 1806) 1760 – Johann Peter Hebel, German author and poet (died 1826) 1760 – Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, French captain, engineer, and composer (died 1836) 1770 – Louis-Nicolas Davout, French general and politician, French Minister of War (died 1823) 1788 – Augustin-Jean Fresnel, French physicist and engineer (died 1827) 1793 – R. E. B. Baylor, American politician and jurist (died 1873) 1812 – William Henry Barlow, English engineer (died 1902) 1813 – Montgomery Blair, American lieutenant and politician, 20th United States Postmaster General (died 1883) 1838 – John Wilkes Booth, American actor, assassin of Abraham Lincoln (died 1865) 1841 – James Gordon Bennett Jr., American publisher and broadcaster (died 1918) 1843 – Benito Pérez Galdós, Spanish author and playwright (died 1920) 1847 – Wilhelm Killing, German mathematician and academic (died 1923) 1855 – Yukteswar Giri, Indian guru and educator (died 1936) 1872 – Marcel Mauss, French sociologist and anthropologist (died 1950) 1876 – Ivan Cankar, Slovenian poet and playwright (died 1918) 1878 – Konstantinos Parthenis, Greek painter (died 1967) 1878 – Gustav Stresemann, German journalist and politician, Chancellor of Germany, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1929) 1879 – Symon Petliura, Ukrainian journalist and politician (died 1926) 1886 – Karl Barth, Swiss theologian and author (died 1968) 1886 – Olaf Stapledon, English novelist and philosopher (died 1950) 1886 – Felix Manalo, Filipino minister and founder of the indigenous sect Iglesia ni Cristo (died 1963)Felix Y. Manalo: From Taguig to top three religion 1888 – Max Steiner, Austrian-American composer and conductor (died 1971) 1890 – Alfred Jodl, German general (died 1946) 1891 – Mahmoud Mokhtar, Egyptian sculptor and academic (died 1934) 1893 – Tonita Peña, San Ildefonso Pueblo (Native American) artist (died 1949) 1894 – Dimitri Tiomkin, Ukrainian-American composer and conductor (died 1979) 1895 – Joe Murphy, (Irish-American), died during the 1920 Cork hunger strike (died 1920)Massachusetts Births, 1841-1915. FamilySearch. Retrieved 26 October 2020 1897 – Einar Gerhardsen, Norwegian politician, Prime Minister of Norway (died 1987) 1898 – Ariel Durant, American historian and author (died 1981) 1899 – Fred Astaire, American actor, singer, and dancer (died 1987) 1900 – Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, English-American astronomer and astrophysicist (died 1979)
1901–present 1901 – John Desmond Bernal, Irish-English crystallographer and physicist (died 1971) 1902 – David O. Selznick, American producer and screenwriter (died 1965) 1903 – Otto Bradfisch, German economist, jurist, and SS officer (died 1994) 1904 – Frieda Belinfante, Dutch musician and LGBT member of the Dutch resistance (died 1995) 1905 – Alex Schomburg, Puerto Rican artist and illustrator (died 1998) 1908 – Carl Albert, American lawyer and politician, 54th Speaker of the United States House of Representatives (died 2000) 1909 – Maybelle Carter, American autoharp player (died 1978) 1915 – Denis Thatcher, English businessman, Spouse of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (died 2003) 1919 – Ella T. Grasso, Governor of Connecticut (died 1981) 1920 – Bert Weedon, English guitarist (died 2012) 1922 – David Azrieli, Polish-Canadian businessman and philanthropist (died 2014) 1922 – Nancy Walker, American actress, singer, and director (died 1992) 1923 – Heydar Aliyev, Azerbaijan general and politician, President of Azerbaijan (died 2003) 1926 – Hugo Banzer, Bolivian general and politician, President of Bolivia (died 2002) 1928 – Arnold Rüütel, Estonian agronomist and politician, President of Estonia (died 2024) 1928 – Lothar Schmid, German chess player (died 2013) 1928 – Denyse Émond, Canadian actress and comedian (died 2026) 1929 – George Coe, American actor and producer (died 2015) 1929 – Antonine Maillet, Canadian writer and scholar (died 2025) 1930 – George E. Smith, American physicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2025) 1931 – Ettore Scola, Italian director and screenwriter (died 2016) 1933 – Barbara Taylor Bradford, British novelist (died 2024) 1935 – Larry Williams, American singer-songwriter, pianist, and producer (died 1980) 1938 – Manuel Santana, Spanish tennis player (died 2021) 1940 – Arthur Alexander, American country-soul singer-songwriter (died 1993) 1942 – Jim Calhoun, American basketball player and coach