1626 - Dutch explorer Peter Minuit arrives in New Netherland (present day Manhattan Island) aboard the See Meeuw.
1686 - Municipality of Ilagan is founded in the Philippines.
1799 - Fourth Anglo-Mysore War: The Battle of Seringapatam: The siege of Seringapatam ends when the city is assaulted and the Tipu Sultan killed by the besieging British army, under the command of General George Harris.
1855 - American adventurer William Walker departs from San Francisco with about 60 men to conquer Nicaragua.
1859 - The Cornwall Railway opens across the Royal Albert Bridge linking the counties of Devon and Cornwall in England.
1863 - American Civil War: The Battle of Chancellorsville ends with a Union retreat.
1869 - The Naval Battle of Hakodate takes place in Japan.
1871 - The National Association, the first professional baseball league, opens its first season in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
1886 - Haymarket Square Riot: A bomb is thrown at policemen trying to break up a labor rally in Chicago, Illinois, United States, killing eight and wounding 60. The police fire into the crowd.
1904 - Construction begins by the United States on the Panama Canal.
1904 - Charles Stewart Rolls meets Frederick Henry Royce at the Midland Hotel in Manchester, England.
1919 - May Fourth Movement: Student demonstrations take place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, protesting the Treaty of Versailles, which transferred Chinese territory to Japan.
1930 - British police arrest Mahatma Gandhi and place him in Yeravda Central Prison.
1932 - In Atlanta, Georgia, mobster Al Capone begins serving an eleven-year prison sentence for tax evasion.
1942 - World War II: The Battle of the Coral Sea begins with an attack by aircraft from the United States aircraft carrier Yorktown on Japanese naval forces at Tulagi Island in the Solomon Islands. The Japanese forces had invaded Tulagi the day before.
1945 - World War II: The liberation of the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg by the British Army.
1945 - World War II: The surrender of the North Germany Army to Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery.
1946 - In San Francisco Bay, U.S. Marines from the nearby Treasure Island Navy Base stop a two-day riot at Alcatraz federal prison. Five people are killed in the riot.
1949 - The entire Torino football (soccer) team (except for one player who did not take the trip due to an injury) is killed in a plane crash at the Superga hill at the edge of Turin, Italy.
1953 - Ernest Hemingway is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea.
1961 - American civil rights movement: The "Freedom Riders" begin a bus trip through the South.
1970 - Vietnam War: Kent State shootings: the Ohio National Guard, sent to Kent State University after disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, open fire killing four students and wounding nine others. The students were protesting the United States' invasion of Cambodia.
1972 - The Don't Make A Wave Committee, a fledgling environmental organization founded in Canada in 1971, officially changes its name to "Greenpeace Foundation".
1974 - An all-female Japanese team reaches the summit of Manaslu, becoming the first women to climb an 8,000-meter peak.
1979 - Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1980 - President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia dies in Ljubljana at the age of 87.
1982 - Twenty sailors are killed when the British Type 42 destroyer HMS Sheffield (D80) is hit by an Argentinian Exocet missile during the Falklands War.
1988 - The PEPCON disaster rocks Henderson, Nevada, as tons of space shuttle fuel detonates during a fire.
1989 - Iran-Contra Affair: Former White House aide Oliver North is convicted of three crimes and acquitted of nine other charges. The convictions, however, are later overturned on appeal.
1990 - Latvia proclaims the renewal of its independence after the Soviet occupation.
1994 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat sign a peace accord regarding Palestinian autonomy granting self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.
1998 - A federal judge in Sacramento, California, gives "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski four life sentences plus 30 years after Kaczynski accepts a plea agreement sparing him from the death penalty.
2000 - Ken Livingstone becomes the first Mayor of London.
2001 - The Milwaukee Art Museum addition, the first Santiago Calatrava-designed structure in the United States, opens to the public.
2002 - An EAS Airlines BAC 1-11-500 crashes in a suburb of Kano, Nigeria shortly after takeoff killing more than 148 people.
2007 - Greensburg, Kansas is almost completely destroyed by a 1.7m wide EF-5 tornado.
2007 - The Scottish National Party wins the Scottish general election and becomes the largest party in the Scottish Parliament for the first time ever.
2009 - The President of Niger, Tandja Mamadou, holds peace talks with the Tuareg rebel groups in north Niger.
