1902 – 2 deaf-mutes face each other for 1st time as Dummy Hoy leads off for the Reds against Dummy Taylor of the Giants, Reds win 5-3
1943 – Operation Chastise: No. 617 Squadron RAF begins the famous Dambusters Raid, bombing the Möhne and Eder dams in the Ruhr valley with bouncing bombs
1945 – Violent battles around Sugar Loaf and Half Moon, Okinawa
1955 – Rocky Marciano beats Don Cockell by TKO in the 9th round at Kezar Stadium, San Francisco to retain his world heavyweight boxing title
1956 – Great Britain performs nuclear Test at Monte Bello Is Australia
1956 – England cricket spin bowler Jim Laker takes 10-88 for Surrey v Australia in tour match at The Oval, London
1989 – Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping meet in Beijing and formally end a 30-year rift
1990 – Eugene Stoner and Mikhail Kalashnikov, the creators of the M16 rifle and the AK-47 rifle respectively, meet in Washington, D.C.
1993 – Farmer Sugeng finds 1.2 million year old Pithecanthropus IX skull
2023 – ChatGPT developer OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, supports oversight of AI, in appearance before US Senate Committee saying they “might consider a combination of licensing and testing requirements”
Category: Historical Events
Historical Events for 15th May 2025
1876 – 2nd Kentucky Derby: Bobby Swim aboard Vagrant wins in 2:38.25
1940 – German armoured division moves into Northern France
1941 – New York Yankees Joe DiMaggio starts 56-game hitting streak, with the only RBI, in a 13-1 loss to visiting Chicago White Sox
1943 – Halifax bombers sinks U-463
1953 – Osip Zadkine’s monument to “The destroyed city” unveiled in Rotterdam
1957 – Evangelist Billy Graham launches his “crusade” in front of 18,000 people at Madison Square Garden in NYC
1964 – US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1991 – US President George H. W. Bush takes Queen Elizabeth to Oakland A’s-Baltimore Oriole game
1992 – Part of Cruger Avenue in Bronx renamed Regis Philbin Avenue
1995 – China performs nuclear test at Lop Nor, PRC
Historical Events for 14th May 2025
1796 – English country doctor Edward Jenner administers his revolutionary cowpox-based vaccine for smallpox in Berkeley, Gloucestershire
1832 – Felix Mendelssohn’s concert overture “Hebrides” premieres in London, England
1879 – The first group of 463 Indian indentured labourers arrive in Fiji aboard the Leonidas
1894 – Fire in Boston bleachers spreads to 170 adjoining buildings
1918 – Sunday baseball is made legal in Washington, D.C.
1942 – World premiere performance of Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” with: Andre Kostelanetz conducting the Cincinnati Symphony in Cincinnati, Ohio
1957 – Bob Merrill’s musical “New Girl in Town”, starring Gwen Verdon and Thelma Ritter, opens at 46th St Theater, NYC; runs for 432 performances and wins 2 Tony Awards
2000 – 46th British Academy Television Awards: “The League of Gentlemen” Best Comedy, “The Cops” Best Drama
2010 – The 51,700 seat Aviva Stadium is officially opened on the site of the famous old Lansdowne Road Stadium in Dublin by Irish Prime Minister, Brian Cowan
2018 – United States moves its Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem
Historical Events for 13th May 2025
1559 – Exhumed corpse of heretic David Jorisz burned in Basel
1638 – Construction of the Red Fort begins at Shahjahanabad, Mughal Empire (now Dehli, India)
1884 – Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) forms in New York
1916 – Lafayette Escadrille, an American air force unit under French command comprised of volunteers to fight for France, see first combat at the Battle of Verdun
1923 – Pulitzer Prize awarded to Willa Cather for her World War I-based novel “One of Ours”
1989 – Minnesota Twin Kirby Puckett becomes 35th to hit 4 doubles in a game
1992 – Three astronauts simultaneously walk in space for the first time
1995 – Team New Zealand beats Team Dennis Conner 5-0 to win the America’s Cup for the first time
1998 – Chelsea of England win 38th European Cup Winner’s Cup against Stuttgart of Germany 1-0 in Stockholm
2001 – 47th British Academy Television Awards: “Da Ali G Show” Best Comedy, “Clocking Off” Best Drama
Historical Events for 12th May 2025
1215 – English barons serve an ultimatum on King John which eventually leads to the creation and signing of the Magna Carta
1891 – Riot against tax increase in Paramaribo, Suriname
1908 – George Bernard Shaw’s play “Getting Married” premieres in London
1948 – Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands abdicates due to ill health
1956 – Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Carl Erskine’s throws 2nd career no-hitter, beats NY Giants, 3-0, at Ebbetts Field in Brooklyn, NYC
1965 – Israel and West Germany establish diplomatic relations with an exchange of letters
1989 – Retired British pilot Jack Mann is kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists
1997 – Russia and Chechnya sign peace deal after 400 years of conflict
2001 – 46th Eurovision Song Contest: Tanel Padar, Dave Benton and 2XL for Estonia wins singing “Everybody” in Copenhagen
2008 – Wenchuan earthquake, measuring 7.8 in magnitude occurs in Sichuan, China, killing over 87,000, injuring 374,643 and leaving homeless between 4.8 million and 11 million people
Historical Events for 11th May 2025
1752 – 1st US fire insurance policy issued, in Philadelphia
1864 – Battle of Yellow Tavern, Virginia (Sheridan’s Raid, South Anna Bridge)
1881 – Bedřich Smetana’s opera “Libuše” premieres at the National Theate, in Prague, Kingdom of Bohemia
1918 – 44th Kentucky Derby: William Knapp on Exterminator wins in 2:10.8
1919 – Cincinnati Reds pitcher Hod Eller no-hits St Louis Cardinals, 6-0 at Redland Field, Cincinnati
1928 – 63rd British Open Men’s Golf Championship, Royal St George’s GC: Walter Hagen wins 3rd of his 4 Open Championship titles, 2 strokes ahead of fellow American Gene Sarazen
1959 – Mary Rodgers and Marshall Barer’s musical “Once Upon A Mattress”, starring Carol Burnett and directed by George Abbott, opens at Phoenix Theatre, NYC, later transferring to the Alvin Theater; runs for 244 performances
1968 – Toronto Transit Commission opens the largest expansion of its Bloor-Danforth Line, going to Scarborough in the east, Etobicoke in the west
1985 – Dave Concepcion becomes 4th Cincinnati Red teammate to get 2,000 hits, others include Pete Rose, Tony Perez and César Cedeño
2009 – An American soldier in Iraq opened fire on a counseling center at Camp Liberty in Bagdhad, leaving 5 other US soldiers dead and 3 soldiers wounded
Historical Events for 10th May 2025
1796 – Riot after disagreement of patriotic demand in Amsterdam
1870 – Jem Mace defends his heavyweight crown against Irish champ Joe Coburn; the match lasts 1 hour and 17 minutes, and neither is struck by a punch
1894 – Hong Kong government declares port is infected with the plague. The outbreak will go on to kill 20,489 over 29 years.
1929 – 54th Preakness: Louis Schaefer aboard Dr Freeland wins in 2:01.6
1932 – Government declares “Wilhelmus” as the Netherlands’ national anthem
1948 – 1st attack by Egyptian irregular forces at Kfar Darom Israel
1973 – Establishment of Frente Polisario in Mauritania
1992 – “Hamlet” closes at Criterion Theater NYC after 45 performances
1994 – Musical sequel “The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public” opens at Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, NYC; runs for 16 performances
1994 – Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa’s first Black president
Historical Events for 9th May 2025
1899 – John Burr patents an improved rotary blade lawn mower in the US
1922 – International Astronomical Union formally adopts Annie Jump Cannon’s stellar classification system, which, with only minor changes, is still used today
1960 – Nigeria becomes a member of British Commonwealth
1965 – The Beatles attend a Bob Dylan concert, at the Royal Albert Hall in London
1969 – Following his release from prison Ian Paisley, North Ireland Loyalist holds a ‘victory’ meeting
1971 – Friends of Earth return 1500 non-returnable bottles to Schweppes
1979 – Iranian-Jewish businessman Habib Elghanian is the 1st Jew executed by the Islamic government firing squad in Tehran, prompting the mass exodus of the once 100,000-strong Jewish community of Iran
1987 – 183 die aboard a Polish jetliner that crashes in Warsaw
1993 – Landslide in Nambija Ecuador, kills 300
2012 – Mark Rothko’s “Orange, Red, Yellow” becomes the most expensive contemporary art piece sold at auction for $86.9 million
Historical Events for 8th May 2025
1907 – Canadian Tommy Burns retains his world heavyweight boxing title after beating Philadelphia Jack O’Brien on points in 20 rounds in Los Angeles, California
1959 – Little Caesars Pizza is founded by Mike Ilitch and his wife Marian Ilitch in Garden City, Michigan
1969 – Cambodia recognizes the German Democratic Republic (East Germany)
1970 – Thousands of students protest against the Vietnam War following the Kent State University shootings in Ohio
1973 – Wounded Knee Occupation ends after 10 weeks as 200 Oglala Lakota of the American Indian Movement surrender the South Dakota hamlet
1976 – The rollercoaster Revolution (roller coaster), the first steel coaster with a vertical flip, opens at Six Flags Magic Mountain
1988 – François Mitterrand elected President of France
2013 – 33 people are killed after an overloaded bus falls into a river in Himachal Pradesh, India
2018 – President Trump pulls the US out of the multilateral Iran nuclear deal
2024 – New York has more millionaires than any other city in the world, one in 24, with 744 centi-millionaires worth more than 100 million and 60 billionaires according to new ranking
Historical Events for 7th May 2025
1771 – Samuel Hearne explores Copper Mine River of Canada
1800 – Indiana Territory organized
1862 – Battle of West Point, Virginia at Eltham’s Landing, Barnhamsville
1934 – Princess Juliana of the Netherlands opens Juliana Canal between Maastricht and Maasbracht
1960 – Webster and Fain’s musical “Christine”, based on Hilda Wernher’s novel “My Indian Family”, closes at 46th St Theater, NYC, after 12 performances
1992 – US space shuttle STS-49 launched, the maiden voyage of Endeavour
1992 – Champion Puerto Rican jockey Ángel Cordero Jr. retires after winning 7,057 thoroughbred horse races
2007 – Ehud Netzer of Hebrew University announces he has discovered the tomb of Herod the Great at Herodium, West Bank
2011 – 137th Kentucky Derby: John Velazquez aboard Animal Kingdom wins in 2:02.04
2013 – 4 people are killed after the Mayon Volcano erupts in the Philippines