• 1491 - Kongo monarch Nkuwu Nzinga is baptised by Portuguese missionaries, adopting the baptismal name of João I.
• 1494 - Christopher Columbus first sights land that will be called Jamaica.
• 1715 - "Edmund Halley's" total solar eclipse (the last one visible in London, United Kingdom for almost 900 years).
• 1791 - The Constitution of May 3 (the first modern constitution in Europe) is proclaimed by the Sejm of Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
• 1802 - Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city.
• 1808 - Finnish War: Sweden loses the fortress of Sveaborg to Russia.
• 1808 - Peninsular War: The Madrid rebels who rose up on May 2 are fired upon near Príncipe Pío hill.
• 1815 - Neapolitan War: Joachim Murat, King of Naples is defeated by the Austrians at the Battle of Tolentino, the decisive engagement of the war.
• 1830 - The Canterbury and Whitstable Railway is opened. It is the first steam hauled passenger railway to issue season tickets and include a tunnel.
• 1837 - The University of Athens is founded.
• 1849 - The May Uprising in Dresden begins - the last of the German revolutions of 1848.
• 1860 - Charles XV of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Sweden.
• 1867 - The Hudson's Bay Company gives up all claims to Vancouver Island.
• 1901 - The Great Fire of 1901 begins in Jacksonville, Florida.
• 1916 - The leaders of the Easter Rising are executed in Dublin.
• 1921 - West Virginia imposes the first state sales tax.
• 1924 - Aleph Zadik Aleph is formed in Omaha, Nebraska by Sam Beber.
• 1928 - Japanese atrocities in Jinan, China.
• 1933 - Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first woman to head the United States Mint.
• 1937 - Gone with the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
• 1939 - The All India Forward Bloc is formed by Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.
• 1942 - World War II: Japanese naval troops invade Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands during the first part of Operation Mo that results in the Battle of the Coral Sea between Japanese forces and forces from the United States and Australia.
• 1945 - World War II: Sinking of the prison ships Cap Arcona, Thielbek and Deutschland by the Royal Air Force in Lübeck Bay.
• 1946 - The International Military Tribunal for the Far East begins in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
• 1947 - New post-war Japanese constitution goes into effect.
• 1948 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks and other minorities are legally unenforceable.
• 1951 - London's Royal Festival Hall opens.
• 1951 - The Festival of Britain opens.
• 1951 - The United States Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees begin their closed door hearings into the dismissal of General Douglas MacArthur by U.S. President Harry Truman.
• 1951 - The Kentucky Derby is televised for the first time.
• 1952 - Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict of the United States land a plane at the North Pole.
• 1957 - Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team from Brooklyn, New York, to Los Angeles, California.
• 1960 - The Off-Broadway musical comedy, The Fantasticks, opens in New York City's Greenwich Village, eventually becoming the longest-running musical of all time.
• 1960 - The Anne Frank House opens in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
• 1963 - The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responds with violent force to stop the "Birmingham campaign" protesters. Images of the violent suppression are transmitted worldwide, bringing newfound attention to the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
• 1973 - The Sears Tower in Chicago is topped out as the world's tallest building.
• 1978 - The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (which would later become known as "spam") is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.
• 1979 - Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher becomes the United Kingdom's first female prime minister as the Labour government is ousted in parliamentary elections.
• 1986 - Twenty-one people are killed and forty-one are injured after a bomb explodes in an airliner (Flight UL512) at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka.
• 1987 - A crash by Bobby Allison at the Talladega Superspeedway, Alabama fencing at the start-finish line would lead NASCAR to develop restrictor plate racing the following season both at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega.
• 1991 - The Declaration of Windhoek is signed.
• 1999 - Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is slammed by an F5 tornado killing forty-two people, injuring 665, and causing $1 billion in damage. The tornado was one of 66 from the 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak.
• 1999 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes above 11,000 for the first time in its history at 11,014.70.
• 1999 - Stephen Hendry defeats Mark Williams 18-11 to win the World Snooker Championship for a record seventh time.
• 2000 - The sport of geocaching begins, with the first cache placed and the coordinates from a GPS posted on Usenet.
• 2001 - The United States loses its seat on the U.N. Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947.
• 2002 - A military MiG-21 aircraft crashes into the Bank of Rajasthan in India, killing eight.
• 2003 - New Hampshire's famous Old Man of the Mountain collapses.
• 2006 - Armavia Flight 967 crashes into the Black Sea, killing 113 people on board, with no survivors.
• 2006 - Zacarias Moussaoui is sentenced to life in prison in Alexandria, Virginia.

Births