• 1497 - Pope Alexander VI excommunicates Girolamo Savonarola.
• 1568 - Battle of Langside: the forces of Mary Queen of Scots are defeated by a confederacy of Scottish Protestants under James Stewart, Earl of Moray, her half-brother.
• 1619 - Dutch statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt is executed in The Hague after having been accused of treason.
• 1648 - Construction of the Red Fort at Delhi is completed.
• 1779 - War of Bavarian Succession: Russian and French mediators at the Congress of Teschen negotiate an end to the war. In the agreement Austria receives the part of its territory that was taken from them (the Innviertel).
• 1787 - Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth, England with eleven ships full of convicts (First Fleet) to establish a penal colony in Australia.
• 1830 - Ecuador gains its independence from Gran Colombia.
• 1846 - Mexican-American War: The United States declares war on Mexico.
• 1848 - First performance of Finland's national anthem.
• 1861 - American Civil War: Queen Victoria of Britain issues a "proclamation of neutrality" which recognizes the breakaway states as having belligerent rights.
• 1861 - The Great Comet of 1861 is discovered by John Tebbutt of Windsor, New South Wales, Australia.
• 1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Resaca – the battle begins with Union General Sherman fighting toward Atlanta, Georgia.
• 1865 - American Civil War: Battle of Palmito Ranch – in far south Texas, more than a month after Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender, the last land battle of the Civil War ends with a Confederate victory.
• 1880 - In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison performs the first test of his electric railway.
• 1888 - With the passage of the Lei Áurea ("Golden Law"), Brazil abolishes slavery.
• 1909 - The first Giro d'Italia takes place in Milan. Italian cyclist Luigi Ganna is the winner.
• 1912 - The Royal Flying Corps (now the Royal Air Force) is established in the United Kingdom.
• 1913 - Igor Sikorsky becomes the first man to pilot a four-engine aircraft.
• 1939 - The first commercial FM radio station in the United States is launched in Bloomfield, Connecticut. The station later becomes WDRC-FM.
• 1940 - World War II: Germany's conquest of France begins as the German army crosses the Meuse River. Winston Churchill makes his "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech to the House of Commons.
• 1940 - Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands flees the Nazi invasion in the Netherlands to Great Britain. Princess Juliana takes her children to Canada for their safety.
• 1941 - World War II: Yugoslav royal colonel Dragoljub Mihailović starts fighting with German occupation troops, beginning the Serbian resistance.
• 1943 - World War II: German Afrika Korps and Italian troops in North Africa surrender to Allied forces.
• 1948 - 1948 Arab-Israeli War: the Kfar Etzion massacre is committed by Arab irregulars, the day before the declaration of independence of the state of Israel on May 14.
• 1950 - The first round of the Formula 1 World Championship is held at Silverstone.
• 1952 - The Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India, holds its first sitting.
• 1954 - The anti-National Service Riots, by Chinese Middle School students in Singapore, take place.
• 1958 - During a visit to Caracas, Venezuela, Vice President Richard Nixon's car is attacked by anti-American demonstrators.
• 1958 - The trade mark Velcro is registered.
• 1960 - Hundreds of UC Berkeley students congregate for the first day of protest against a visit by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Thirty-one students are arrested, and the Free Speech Movement is born.
• 1967 - Dr. Zakir Hussain becomes the third President of India. He is the first Muslim President of Indian Union. He holds this position till August 24, 1969.
• 1969 - Race riots, later known as the May 13 Incident, take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• 1972 - Faulty electrical wiring ignites a fire underneath the Playtown Cabaret in Osaka, Japan. Blocked exits and non-functional elevators cause 118 fatalities, with many victims leaping to their deaths.
• 1980 - An F3 tornado hits Kalamazoo County, Michigan. President Jimmy Carter declares it a federal disaster area.
• 1981 - Mehmet Ali Ağca attempts to assassinate Pope John Paul II in St. Peter's Square in Rome. The Pope is rushed to the Agostino Gemelli University Polyclinic to undergo emergency surgery and survives.
• 1985 - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, police storm MOVE headquarters to end a stand-off, killing 11 MOVE members and destroying the homes of 250 city residents.
• 1989 - Large groups of students occupy Tiananmen Square and begin a hunger strike.
• 1994 - Johnny Carson makes last television appearance on The David Letterman Show.
• 1996 - Severe thunderstorms and a tornado in Bangladesh kill 600 people.
• 1998 - Race riots break out in Jakarta, Indonesia, where shops owned by Indonesian of Chinese descendants are looted and women raped.
• 1998 - India carries out two nuclear tests at Pokhran, in addition to the three conducted on May 11. The United States and Japan impose economic sanctions on India.
• 2000 - In Enschede, the Netherlands, a fireworks factory explodes, killing 22 people, wounding 950, and resulting in approximately €450 million in damage.
• 2001 - Silvio Berlusconi's House of Freedoms coalition wins the Italian general elections.
• 2005 - The Andijan Massacre occurs in Uzbekistan.
• 2006 - 2006 São Paulo violence: a major rebellion occurs in several prisons in Brazil.
• 2007 - Construction of the Calafat-Vidin Bridge between Romania and Bulgaria begins.
• 2007 - Republic Protests in Turkey.

Births