April 21st
 

1649 ~ The Maryland Toleration Act, which provided for freedom of worship for all Christians, was passed by the Maryland assembly.

1816 ~ Birthday of Charlotte Brontë, Author.

1838 ~ Birthday of John Muir, Environmentalist.

1910 ~ Death of Mark Twain, author.

1912 ~ The New York Giants and New York Yankees played an exhibition game to benefit survivors of the RMS Titanic.

1918 ~ "The Red Baron", Manfred von Richthofen, was shot down and killed over France.

1926 ~ Birthday of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

1944 ~ Women in France were enfranchised.

1960 ~ Brazil inaugurated its new capital, Brasilia, transferring the seat of national government from Rio de Janeiro.

1992 ~ The first extrasolar planets were announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan.

April 22nd
 

1870 ~ Birthday of Vladimir Lenin, Russian revolutionary.

1889 ~ The Oklahoma Land Rush began.

1904 ~ Birthday of Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist.

1937 ~ Birthday of Jack Nicholson, Actor.

1943 ~ Albert Hofmann wrote his first report about the hallucinogenic properties of LSD.

1984 ~ Death of Ansel Adams, Photographer.

1997 ~ A four-month siege of the Japanese embassy in Peru ended when commandos stormed and captured the building, rescuing 71 hostages. Interestingly, all 14 rebels died.

2000 ~ In a pre-dawn raid, armed immigration agents seized Elian Gonzalez from his relatives' home in Miami; the 6-year-old boy was reunited with his father.

2002 ~ Death of Linda Lovelace, Porn Actress.

2008 ~ The last F-117 Nighthawk aircraft were retired.


Feastdays & Holidays

Earth Day : Canada, U.S.

April 23rd
 

1564 ~ Birthday of William Shakespeare, Playwright.

1858 ~ Birthday of Max Planck, Physicist. Awarded the Nobel Prize in physics 1918.

1891 ~ Birthday of Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet Composer.

1954 ~ Hank Aaron hit his first major league home run.

1968 ~ Birthday of Timothy McVeigh, American Terrorist.

1969 ~ Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for assassinating Sen. Robert Kennedy.

1985 ~ The Coca-Cola Co. introduced New Coke.

1998 ~ Death of James Earl Ray, Assassin.

2004 ~ President Bush eased Reagan-era sanctions against Libya in return for Moammar Gadhafi's giving up weapons of mass destruction.

2007 ~ Death of Boris Yeltsin, architect of the dismantling of the USSR.

April 24th
 

1898 ~ Spain declared war on the U.S. over Cuba.

1905 ~ Birthday of Robert Penn Warren, Writer, Pulitzer Prize winner, first American Poet Laureate.

1916 ~ The Easter uprising began when some 1,600 Irish nationalists seized several key sites in Dublin.

1942 ~ Birthday of Barbra Streisand, American Singer & Actress.

1967 ~ Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died in Soyuz 1.

1974 ~ Death of Bud Abbott, Actor & Comedian (Abbott and Costello).

1986 ~ Death of Wallis Simpson, Mistress & Wife of The Duke of Windsor.

1990 ~ The Hubble Space Telescope was launched by Space Shuttle Discovery.

1996 ~ The main assembly of the Palestine Liberation Organization voted to revoke clauses in its charter that called for an armed struggle to destroy Israel.

2004 ~ Death of Estée Lauder, Cosmetics pioneer.

April 25th
 

1719 ~ Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was published.

1792 ~ The French national anthem, “La Marseillaise” was composed.

1900 ~ Birthday of Wolfgang Pauli, Physicist. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1945.

1906 ~ Birthday of William J. Brennan, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice.

1915 ~ Allied soldiers invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to remove the Ottoman Turkish Empire from WWI.

1917 ~ Birthday of Ella Fitzgerald, Jazz Singer.

1945 ~ The United Nations was organized in San Francisco, California, by 50 nations.

1953 ~ Francis Crick and James Watson published MOLECULAR STRUCTURE OF NUCLEIC ACIDS: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid describing the double helix structure of DNA.

1974 ~ Birthday of Dean Phoenix, Porn Actor.

1980 ~ Tehran hostage rescue mission failed.

Feastdays & Holidays

Australia, New Zealand ~ ANZAC Day

April 26th
 

1711 ~ Birthday of David Hume, Philosopher & Historian.

1785 ~ Birthday of John Audubon, Naturalist & Illustrator.

1865 ~ Death of John Wilkes Booth, Actor & Assassin. Buried in Green Mount Cemetery.

1935 ~ Birthday of Carol Burnett, Singer, Actress & Comedienne.

1937 ~ Planes from the Condor Legion, an adjunct of the Luftwaffe, bombed the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

1945 ~ The Battle of Bautzen: The last successful German armoured offensive of WWII.

1986 ~ The world's worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union.

1989 ~ Death of Lucille Ball, Actress & Comedienne.

1994 ~ South Africa held its first multiracial elections.

2005 ~ Syria's 29-year military presence in Lebanon ended.

April 27th
 

1521 ~ Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed in the Philippines.

1667 ~ John Milton sold the copyright of Paradise Lost for £10.

1791 ~ Birthday of Samuel Morse, inventor of Morse code.

1822 ~ Birthday of Ulysses S. Grant, 18th U.S. President.

1891 ~ Birthdayof Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet composer.

1904 ~ The Australian Labor Party became the first such party to gain national government, under Chris Watson.

1945 ~ Soviet and American armies link up at the Elbe.

1981 ~ Xerox PARC introduced the first commercially available computer mouse.

1999 ~ Death of Al Hirt, Musician.

2007 ~ Death of Mstislav Rostropovich, Russian cellist and conductor.

April 28th
 

1789 ~ Mutiny on the HMS Bounty. Captain William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift.

1906 ~ Birthday of Kurt Gödel, mathematician.

1937 ~ Birthday of Saddam Hussein, former leader of Iraq.

1941 ~ Birthday of Ann-Margret, Swedish-born actress.

1945 ~ Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were killed by members of the Italian resistance movement while trying to flee Italy.

1947 ~ Thor Heyerdahl and five crewmates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki.

1952 ~ The U.S. occupation of Japan ended.

1994 ~ C.I.A. official Aldrich Ames pleaded guilty to selling U.S. secrets to the USSR.

2001 ~ Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist.

2003 ~ Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store launched.

April 29th
 

1893 ~ Birthday of Harold Urey, American chemist, awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

1945 ~ Start of Operation Manna.

1945 ~ American soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

1951 ~ Death of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-born philosopher.

1958 ~ The Broadway musical, My Fair Lady, opened in London.

1980 ~ Death of Alfred Hitchcock, director.

1992 ~ Rioting broke out in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four police officers accused of beating Rodney King.

1997 ~ The Chemical Weapons Convention, a worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons, went into effect.

1936 ~ Death of John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist.

2008 ~ Death of Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who first synthesized LSD.

April 30th
 

1877 ~ Birthday of Alice B. Toklas, Muse and Brownie Chef.

1883 ~ Death of Édouard Manet, Impressionist Painter.

1916 ~ Birthday of Claude Shannon, the "Father of Information Theory”.

1938 ~ Birthday of Larry Niven, Science Fiction author.

1945 ~ Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide after being married for one day.

1948 ~ The Land Rover was introduced.

1973 ~ President Nixon took responsibility for the Watergate scandal.

1975 ~ The South Vietnamese government in Saigon fell to Communist forces.

1985 ~ Birthday of Ashley Alexandra Dupré, Singer & Call Girl.

1993 ~ CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to everyone.

May 1st
 

1840 ~ The Penny Black postage stamp put on sale in the UK.

1869 ~ The Folies Bergères opened in Paris. Edouard Manet’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” recalls the lot of one of the employees.

1904 ~ Death of Antonín Dvořák, Czech Composer.

1939 ~ Birthday of Judy Collins, American folk singer.

1941 ~ Orson Welles's Citizen Kane premiered in New York City.

1944 ~ Birthday of Rita Coolidge, Singer.

1960 ~ Gary Powers was shot down in a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union.

1978 ~ Death of Aram Khachaturian, Armenian composer.

1982 ~ RAF aircraft attack two airstrips near Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands.

2004 ~ Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined the European Union.

May 2nd
 

1519 ~ Death of Leonardo da Vinci, inventor, painter.

1729 ~ Birthday of Empress Catherine II of Russia.

1892 ~ Birthday of "The Red Baron", Manfred von Richthofen.

1933 ~ The first modern sighting of the Loch Ness monster was reported.

1945 ~ The Soviet Union announced the capture of Berlin.

1952 ~ The De Havilland Comet 1, the world's first jet airliner, launched the jet age.

1955 ~ Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

1972 ~ Death of J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI.

1982 ~ The British submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano.

1997 ~ The Tony Blair became Prime Minister of the UK.

May 3rd
 

1469 ~ Birthday of Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian Historian & Political Author.

1844 ~ Birthday of Richard D'Oyly Carte, English Impresario.

1898 ~ Birthday of Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel.

1937 ~ Gone With the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

1945 ~ Indian forces captured Rangoon, Burma, from the Japanese.

1946 ~ The International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo against Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

1971 ~ Anti-war protesters began four days of demonstrations intended to shutting down Washington, D.C.

1972 ~ Birthday of Suzi Suzuki, Japanese Porn Actress.

1990 ~ The Latvian parliament met to declare independence from the USSR.

2006 ~ Zacarias Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison.

May 4th
 

1825 ~ Birthday of Thomas Henry Huxley, "Darwin's Bulldog", English Scientist.

1852 ~ Birthday of Alice Liddell, for whom Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland.

1929 ~ Birthday of Audrey Hepburn, Film & Stage Actress Extraordinaire.

1942 ~ The Battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval clash fought with carrier aircraft, began during World War II.

1953 ~ Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for "The Old Man and the Sea".

1970 ~ The Ohio National Guard opened fire on Kent State University students protesting the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.

1975 ~ Death of Moe Howard, actor, comedian; member of the Three Stooges.

1979 ~ Margaret Thatcher became the UK’s first female Prime Minister.

1980 ~ Death of Josip Tito, President of Yugoslavia.

1982 ~ The HMS Sheffield was sunk by an Exocet missile during the Falklands War.

May 5th
 

1807 ~ Death of P.D.Q. Bach, fictitious Composer.

1818 ~ Birthday of Karl Marx, Political Philosopher.

1925 ~ Biology teacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin's Theory of Evolution in Dayton, Tennessee.

1944 ~ Birthday of John Rhys-Davies, Welsh actor (Gimli).

1948 ~ Birthday of Bill Ward, British Musician (Black Sabbath).

1961 ~ Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space.

1967 ~ First all-British satellite 'Ariel 3' launched into orbit.

1980 ~ Great Britain’s SAS stormed the Iranian embassy in London after a six day siege.

1992 ~ Wolfenstein 3D was released, the first-ever first-person shooter computer game.

1995 ~ Death of Mikhail Botvinnik, world chess champion.

May 6th
 

1856 ~ Birthday of Sigmund Freud, psychiatrist, founder of Psychoanalysis.

1915 ~ Birthday of T.H. White, Writer.

1915 ~ Birthday of Orson Welles, Director.

1931 ~ Birthday of Willie Mays, baseball player.

1937 ~ The German zeppelin Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey.

1940 ~ John Steinbeck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Grapes of Wrath.

1953 ~ Birthday of Tony Blair, ex-Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1954 ~ Roger Bannister became the first man to run the mile in under four minutes.

1994 ~ Queen Elizabeth and French President François Mitterrand opened the Chunnel.

1994 ~ Paula Jones filed suit against President Clinton, alleging he'd sexually harassed her in 1991.

May 7th
 

1825 ~ Death of Antonio Salieri, Composer.

1840 ~ Birthday of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Composer.

1915 ~ World War I: A German U-boat sank the RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people.

1919 ~ Birthday of Eva Peron, wife of Argentine President Juan Peron.

1933 ~ Birthday of Johnny Unitas, American football star.

1945 ~ General Alfred Jodl signed unconditional surrender terms at Reims, France, ending Germany's participation in World War II.

1954 ~ The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ended in a French defeat (the battle began on March 13).

1975 ~ Birthday of Nicole Sheridan, Porn Actress.

1999 ~ Kosovo War: Three Chinese embassy workers were killed and 20 wounded when a NATO aircraft “mistakenly” bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. President Clinton called the attack a “tragic mistake”.

2007 ~ The tomb of Herod the Great was discovered.

May 8th
 

1794 ~ French chemist Antoine Lavoisier was tried, convicted, and guillotined all on one day in Paris.

1873 ~ Death of John Stuart Mill, Empiricist Philosopher.

1895 ~ Birthday of Fulton J. Sheen, bishop and television personality.

1968 ~ Birthday of Jamie Summers, American porn star.

1973 ~ The Second Battle of Wounded Knee ended.

1978 ~ David Berkowitz pleaded guilty to the ''Son of Sam'' killings.

1984 ~ The Soviet Union announced that it would boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics.

1985 ~ Death of Theodore Sturgeon, Science Fiction writer.

1988 ~ Death of Robert Heinlein, Science Fiction writer.

1999 ~ The Citadel, South Carolina's formerly all-male military school, graduated its first female cadet.

May 9th
 

1874 ~ Birthday of Howard Carter, British archaeologist.

1901 ~ Australia opened its first parliament in Melbourne.

1903 ~ Death of Paul Gauguin, French Post-Impressionist painter.

1931 ~ Death of Albert Michelson, Physicist, awarded the 1907 Nobel Prize in Physics.

1949 ~ Birthday of Billy Joel, American musician.

1961 ~ Jim Gentile of the Baltimore Orioles became the first player in baseball history to hit grand slams in consecutive innings.

1972 ~ Israeli commandos liberated a hijacked Sabena airliner at Lod airport in Tel Aviv.

1974 ~ The U.S. Congress’s House Judiciary Committee opened hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

1986 ~ Death of Tenzing Norgay, Mountaineer.

1994 ~ Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.

May 10th
 

1818 ~ Death of Paul Revere, engraver, American Patriot.

1838 ~ Birthday of John Wilkes Booth, Actor, assassin of Abraham Lincoln.

1857 ~ The Indian Mutiny began when the Sepoys revolted against the British Army.

1869 ~ The first transcontinental railroad in the U.S. was completed at Promontory, Utah.

1899 ~ Birthday of Fred Astaire, Singer, Dancer & Actor.

1924 ~ J. Edgar Hoover became director of the FBI.

1940 ~ British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned, and Winston Churchill formed a new government.

1960 ~ The USS Triton completes the first underwater circumnavigation of the earth.

1981 ~ François Mitterrand became the first Socialist President of France..

2002 ~ FBI agent Robert Hanssen was given a life sentence without the possibility of parole for selling American secrets to Russia.

May 11th
 

1904 ~ Birthday of Salvador Dalí, Spanish painter.

1918 ~ Birthday of Richard Feynman, American Physicist.

1973 ~ Charges against Daniel Ellsberg for his role in the Pentagon Papers case were dismissed.

1981 ~ Death of Bob Marley, Reggae musician.

1987 ~ The first heart-lung transplant took place in Baltimore, Maryland.

1988 ~ Death of Kim Philby, Spy.

1997 ~ IBM's Deep Blue chess-playing supercomputer defeated Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player.

1998 ~ India announced that it had tested a group of nuclear weapons.

2001 ~ Death of Douglas Adams, Science Fiction author.

2003 ~ Death of Noel Redding, the bass guitarist for The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

May 12th
 

1820 ~ Birthday of Florence Nightingale, Nurse.

1845 ~ Birthday of Gabriel Fauré, Composer.

1884 ~ Death of Bedrich Smetana, Composer.

1889 ~ Death of John Cadbury, Chocolate Entrepreneur.

1918 ~ Birthday of Julius Rosenberg, Spy.

1942 ~ The start of Second Battle of Kharkov: During the battle the Soviets recapture the city of Kharkov from the German Army, then were encircled and destroyed.

1943 ~ Axis forces in North Africa surrendered.

1962 ~ Douglas MacArthur delivered his famous "Duty, Honor, Country" valedictory speech at West Point.

1971 ~ Mick Jagger married Bianca Perez Morena de Macias in St Tropez.

2003 ~ Al Qaeda killed 26 people in the Riyadh compound bombings.

May 13th
 

1787 ~ Captain Arthur Phillip left Portsmouth, England with eleven ships of convicts to establish a penal colony in Australia.

1842 ~ Birthday of Sir Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert & Sullivan, Composer.

1861 ~ Queen Victoria issued a "proclamation of neutrality" which recognized the breakaway Confederate states as having belligerent rights.

1888 ~ Brazil abolished slavery.

1912 ~ The Royal Flying Corps (now the Royal Air Force) was established in the U.K.

1937 ~ Birthday of Roger Zelazny, Science Fiction author.

1940 ~ Winston Churchill made his "blood, tears, toil and sweat" speech to the House of Commons.

1979 ~ Birthday of Lauren Phoenix, Canadian Porn Actress.

1981 ~ Mehmet Ali Agca attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II at St. Peter's Square in Rome.

1995 ~ Alison Hargreaves became the first woman to climb Everest without oxygen or the help of sherpas.

May 14th
 

1787 ~ Delegates began gathering in Philadelphia for a convention to draw up the U.S. Constitution.

1925 ~ Death of H. Rider Haggard, Author.

1948 ~ The independent state of Israel was proclaimed.

1955 ~ The USSR and seven other communist bloc countries signed a mutual defense treaty called the Warsaw Pact.

1969 ~ Birthday of Cate Blanchett, Australian actress (Galadriel).

1973 ~ Skylab 1, the first American space station, was launched.

1978 ~ Death of Robert Menzies, twelfth Prime Minister of Australia.

1987 ~ Death of Rita Hayworth, American actress.

1998 ~ Death of Frank Sinatra, Singer & Actor.

2004 ~ Piers Morgan was fired as editor of the Daily Mirror for publishing photographs of alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners by British soldiers that were shown to be fake.

May 16th
 

1868 ~ The U.S. Senate failed to convict President Andrew Johnson of the articles of impeachment against him.

1943 ~ The Jewish Warsaw ghetto uprising ended.

1955 ~ Birthday of Olga Korbut, gymnast.

1966 ~ Birthday of Janet Jackson, Super Bowl Half Time Flasher.

1966 ~ The Chinese Cultural Revolution started when The Communist Party issued the "May 16 Notice".

1969 ~ The Soviet space probe Venera 5 landed on Venus.

1990 ~ Death of Sammy Davis, Jr., Entertainer.

1990 ~ Death of Jim Henson, Puppeteer.

2002 ~ Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones opened in theaters.

2005 ~ Newsweek magazine retracted its Koran abuse story that started protests in Afghanistan.

I seem to remember once before the question was raised, Were Sammy Davis jr and Jim Henson the same person? You never saw them together, makeup can do wonders AND the both "died" on the same day. Jim made funny little people, probably drawn from his Sammy experiences as a funny little person. It's compelling.

May 17th
 

1749 ~ Birthday of Edward Jenner, inventor of vaccination.

1838 ~ Death of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, French diplomat.

1935 ~ Death of Paul Dukas, French composer.

1936 ~ Birthday of Dennis Hopper, Actor & Director.

1943 ~ The RAF carried out the Dambusters raid.

1954 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court issued their decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

1974 ~ Thirty-three people were killed by terrorist bombings in Ireland.

1992 ~ Death of Lawrence Welk, American musician.

1996 ~ President Bill Clinton signed a measure requiring neighborhood notification when sex offenders move in - Megan's Law.

2004 ~ Same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts.

May 18th
 

1872 ~ Birthday of Bertrand Russell, Logician & Philosopher, awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature 1950.

1910 ~ The Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet.

1911 ~ Death of Gustav Mahler, Austrian Composer.

1919 ~ Birthday of Dame Margot Fonteyn, Ballet dancer.

1937 ~ Birthday of Brooks Robinson, Baseball Hall of Famer.

1944 ~ Monte Cassino fell to the Allies.

1974 ~ India became the sixth nuclear nation by successfully detonated its first nuclear weapon.

1975 ~ Death of Leroy Anderson, American Composer.

1980 ~ Mount St. Helens in Washington state exploded, leaving 57 people dead or missing.

2004 ~ Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage.

May 19th
 

1536 ~ Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England was beheaded for adultery.

1795 ~ Birthday of Johns Hopkins, Philanthropist.

1890 ~ Birthday of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese leader.

1921 ~ The U.S. Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, which established national quotas for immigrants.

1925 ~ Birthday of Pol Pot, Khmer Rouge leader.

1935 ~ Death of T. E. Lawrence, English soldier ("Lawrence of Arabia").

1965 ~ Tui Malila, the longest living animal known, died in Tonga at the age of either 188 or 192.

1983 ~ Birthday of Eve Angel, Hungarian Porn Actress.

2001 ~ Sun Zhonghua was killed by People's Republic of China government officials because she refused to be sterilized under the "One child" policy.

2004 ~ PM Blair hit with a purple flour filled condom.

May 20th
 

1806 ~ Birthday of John Stuart Mill, English philosopher.

1873 ~ Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis received a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.

1883 ~ The eruption of Krakatoa began, leading ultimately to the volcano's destruction three months later.

1896 ~ Death of Clara Schumann, German Pianist and Composer.

1901 ~ Birthday of Max Euwe, Dutch world chess champion.

1927 ~ Charles Lindbergh took off from Long Island, New York, on the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, arriving in Paris the next day.

1940 ~ The first prisoners arrive at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1961 ~ U.S. marshals were sent to restore order in Montgomery, Alabama.

2000 ~ Death of Jean Pierre Rampal, French flutist.

2002 ~ Death of Stephen Jay Gould, American paleontologist.

May 21st
 

1881 ~ Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross.

1921 ~ Birthday of Andrei Sakharov, physicist and human rights activist, awarded the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize.

1924 ~ Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in a "thrill killing".

1933 ~ Birthday of Maurice André, trumpeter.

1956 ~ The U.S. detonated the first airborne hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

1978 ~ Birthday of Briana Banks, Porn Actress.

1979 ~ Birthday of Jesse Capelli, Canadian Porn Actress.

1991 ~ Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a female suicide bomber.

2000 ~ Death of Sir John Gielgud, British actor.

2004 ~ Stanislav Petrov was awarded the World Citizen Award for averting a potential World War III in 1983.

May 22nd
 

1813 ~ Birthday of Richard Wagner, Composer.

1840 ~ Transporting British convicts to the New South Wales colony was abolished.

1856 ~ In one of the more impressive expressions of American democracy, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the U.S. Senate because of a speech Sumner had made which attacked Southerners who sympathized with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas.

1859 ~ Birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Physician & Writer.

1885 ~ Death of Victor Hugo, French author.

1907 ~ Birthday of Sir Laurence Olivier, Actor & Director.

1907 ~ Birthday of Hergé, comic book creator.

1947 ~ The Truman Doctrine was enacted.

1969 ~ The lunar module of Apollo 10 separated from the command module and flew to within nine miles of the moon's surface in a dress rehearsal for the first lunar landing.

1972 ~ Ceylon became the republic of Sri Lanka, adopted a new constitution, and joined the British Commonwealth.

May 23rd
 

1430 ~ Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English.

1701 ~ Captain William Kidd was hanged in London after being convicted of piracy and murder.

1848 ~ Birthday of Otto Lilienthal, aviation pioneer.

1873 ~ Canada's North West Mounted Police force was established.

1906 ~ Death of Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian writer.

1908 ~ Birthday of John Bardeen, the only man to have been awarded the Nobel prize in Physics twice; 1956 & 1972.

1934 ~ Death of Bonnie and Clyde, Outlaws.

1951 ~ The Tibetan government is forced to sign the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet with the People's Republic of China.

1951 ~ Birthday of Anatoly Karpov, Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion.

1962 ~ Raoul Salan, the leader of the Secret Army Organisation (OAS) was sentenced to life imprisonment.

May 24th
 

1819 ~ Birthday of Queen Victoria.

1844 ~ The first telegram was sent by Samuel Morse, from Baltimore, Maryland to Washington, D.C., saying "What hath God wrought?".

1883 ~ The Brooklyn Bridge was opened.

1941 ~ The German battleship Bismarck sank the battlecruiser HMS Hood in the North Atlantic, killing all but three crewmen.

1941 ~ Death of Lancelot Holland, British admiral, died in sinking of the HMS Hood.

1941 ~ Birthday of Bob Dylan, Singer and Songwriter.

1969 ~ Death of Willy Ley, rocket scientist.

1976 ~ BOAC and Air France opened trans-Atlantic Concorde service to Washington.

2001 ~ 23 people were killed and hundreds injured at a wedding party in Jerusalem when the floor collapsed.

2001 ~ Democrats gained control of the U.S. Senate for when Sen. Jeffords of Vermont declared himself an independent.

May 25th
 

1803 ~ Birthday of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Quotable Individual.

1889 ~ Birthday of Igor Sikorsky, developer of the helicopter.

1895 ~ Playwright Oscar Wilde was convicted of a morals charge in London and sentenced to prison.

1925 ~ John T. Scopes was indicted in Tennessee for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution.

1926 ~ Birthday of Miles Davis, Jazz Musician

1929 ~ Birthday of Beverly Sills, Soprano.

1953 ~ The U.S. conducted its only nuclear artillery test.

1961 ~ President Kennedy set the US goal to put the first man on the moon by the end of that decade.

1963 ~ The Organisation of African Unity was set up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

1982 ~ HMS Coventry was sunk during the Falklands War.

May 26th
 

1703 ~ Death of Samuel Pepys, English civil servant, famous for his diary.

1868 ~ The Senate impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson ended with his acquittal.

1896 ~ The first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average published

1897 ~ Bram Stoker's novel Dracula went on sale in London.

1907 ~ Birthday of Rachel Carson, Environmental writer.

1908 ~ The first commercial oil strike in the Middle East was made at Masjid-al-Salaman in southwest Iran.

1928 ~ Birthday of Jack Kevorkian, Physician.

1948 ~ Birthday of Stevie Nicks, Songwriter.

1951 ~ Birthday of Sally Ride, Astronaut.

2002 ~ The Mars Odyssey found signs of water ice deposits on the planet Mars.

May 27th
 

1877 ~ Birthday of Isadora Duncan, Dancer.

1923 ~ Birthday of Henry Kissinger, American diplomat, recipient of The Nobel Peace Prize 1973.

1933 ~ The Walt Disney Co. released the cartoon The Three Little Pigs, with its hit song Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

1934 ~ Birthday of Harlan Ellison, Science Fiction author.

1941 ~ The German battleship Bismarck was sunk.

1963 ~ Jomo Kenyatta led his party, Kenya African Nation Union, to victory in the Kenya’s first general election.

1964 ~ Death of Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first PM.

1976 ~ Birthday of Anita Blonde, Hungarian Porn Actress.

1995 ~ Actor Christopher Reeve (Superman) was paralyzed when he was thrown from his horse during a jumping event.

1997 ~ The Supreme Court ruled that Paula Jones could pursue her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton while he was in office.

May 28th
 

1908 ~ Birthday of Ian Fleming, author of James Bond books.

1925 ~ Birthday of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, German baritone.

1934 ~ Birthday of The Dionne quintuplets, the world's first surviving quintuplets.

1936 ~ Alan Turing submitted On Computable Numbers for publication.

1964 ~ The Palestine Liberation Organization was formed.

1971 ~ Death of Audie Murphy, American actor & war hero.

1987 ~ Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot, landed a private plane in Moscow's Red Square after evading Soviet air defenses.

1984 ~ President Reagan led a state funeral at Arlington National Cemetery for an unidentified American soldier killed in the Vietnam War.

1996 ~ President Clinton's former business partners in the Whitewater land deal, James & Susan McDougal, and Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, were convicted of fraud.

1998 ~ Pakistan matched India with five nuclear test blasts.

May 29th
 

1903 ~ Birthday of Bob Hope, British-born Comedian & Actor.

1906 ~ Birthday of T.H. White, English author.

1913 ~ Igor Stravinsky's ballet score “The Rite of Spring” premiered in Paris.

1917 ~ Birthday of John Kennedy, U.S. President.

1919 ~ Arthur Eddington's observation of shifted star positions during a solar eclipse confirmed Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

1953 ~ Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1972 ~ Three Japanese Red Army gunmen opened fire on crowds at Lod (now Ben Gurion) International Airport, Israel, killing 26 people and injuring dozens more.

1998 ~ Death of Barry Goldwater, U.S. senator & presidential candidate.

1999 ~ The Discovery Space Shuttle completed the first docking with the International Space Station.

2005 ~ French voters rejected the European Union's proposed constitution.

May 30th
 

1431 ~ Death of Joan of Arc, Condemned Heretic (burned at the stake in Rouen, France).

1778 ~ Death of Voltaire, French philosopher & Author.

1912 ~ Death of Wilbur Wright, aviation pioneer, the elder of the Wright Brothers.

1926 ~ Birthday of Christine Jorgensen, transsexual activist.

1942 ~ 1,047 British bombers launched a 90-minute attack on Cologne, Germany.

1964 ~ Death of Leó Szilárd, Hungarian-American nuclear physicist.

1982 ~ Baseball player Cal Ripken, Jr played the first of 2,632 consecutive games. His streak ended on September 20, 1998.

1989 ~ The 33-foot high "Goddess of Democracy" statue was unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators.

1997 ~ Child molester Jesse K. Timmendequas was convicted in Trenton, N.J., of raping and strangling a 7-year-old neighbor, Megan Kanka - a case that inspired ''Megan's Law',' which requires that communities be notified when sex offenders move in.

2001 ~ Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas was convicted of corruption.