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- 1223 Mongol invasion of the Cumans: Battle of the Kalka River - Mongol armies of Genghis Khan lead by Subutai defeat Kievan Rus and Cumans.
- 1279 BC - Rameses II (The Great) (19th dynasty) becomes pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.
- 1417 Jacoba van Bavarian becomes countess of Holland/Zealand/Henegouwen
- 1495 Emperor Maximilian, Pope Alexander VI, Milan, King Ferdinand, Isabella & Venice sign anti-French Saint League
- 1531 "Women's Revolt" in Amsterdam: wool house in churchyard aborted
- 1564 Battle on Gotland: Lübeck & Denmark beat Sweden
- 1578 Martin Frobisher sails from Harwich, England to Frobisher Bay, Canada, eventually to mine fool's gold, used to pave streets in London.
- 1621 Sir Francis Bacon thrown into Tower of London for 1 night
- 1634 US colony Massachusetts Bay annexes Maine colony
- 1665 Jerusalem's rabbi Sjabtai Tswi proclaims himself Messiah
- 1669 Citing poor eyesight, Samuel Pepys records the last event in his diary.
- 1678 Lady Godiva rides naked through Coventry in a protest of taxes
- 1678 The Godiva procession through Coventry begins.
- 1696 John Salomonsz elected chief of Saint-Eustatius
- 1759 The Province of Pennsylvania bans all theater productions.
- 1790 Alferez Manuel Quimper explores the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
- 1790 The United States enacts its first copyright statute, the Copyright Act of 1790.
- 1790 US copyright law enacted
- 1821 Cathedral of Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary, first US Catholic cathedral, is dedicated in Baltimore
- 1836 HMS Beagle anchors in Simons Bay, Cape of Good Hope
- 1837 Astor Hotel (most elaborate in US) opens in NYC, it later becomes the Waldorf-Astoria
- 1847 Rotterdam-Hague Railway opens
- 1853 Elisha Kane's Arctic expedition leaves New York aboard the Advance
- 1861 General Beauregard is given command of Confederate Alexandria Line
- 1861 Mint at New Orleans closes
- 1862 Battle of Seven Pines VA (Fair Oaks); North defeats South
- 1864 Raid at Morgan's Kentucky
- 1866 In the Fenian Invasion of Canada, John O'Neill leads 850 Fenian raiders across the Niagara River at Buffalo, New York/Fort Erie, Ontario, as part of an effort to free Ireland from the English. Canadian militia and British regulars repulse the invaders in over the next three days, at a cost of 9 dead and 38 wounded to the Fenian's 19 dead and about 17 wounded.
- 1868 First Memorial Day parade held in Ironton OH
- 1870 E J DeSemdt patents asphalt pavement
- 1878 German battleship Grosser Kurfürst sinks, 284 killed
- 1878 US Congress accept decrease in dollar circulation
- 1879 First electric railway opens at Berlin Trades Exposition
- 1879 Madison Square Garden opens its doors
- 1883 French fleet under Pierre begins siege of Tamatave, Madagascar
- 1884 Dr John Harvey Kellogg patents "flaked cereal"
- 1884 John Harvey Kellogg patents corn flakes.
- 1889 Johnstown Flood: Over 2,200 people die after a dam break sends a 60-foot (18-meter) wall of water over the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
- 1889 Johnstown Flood; 2,209 die in Pennsylvania
- 1889 The Johnstown Flood kills 2,000 to 5,000 Pennsylvanians in a city of 30,000
- 1891 Work on trans-Siberian railway begins
- 1899 Conference of Bloemfontein fails
- 1900 Piet de Law captures Lieutenant-Colonel Spragges Irish Yeomanry
- 1900 Tom Hayward scores 1,000th cricket run of season (sets record 1074)
- 1902 Australia Cricket all out 36 vs England, Edgbaston, their lowest ever
- 1902 Boer War Ends; Treaty of Vereeniging signed, Britain annexes Transvaal
- 1902 Second Boer War: The Treaty of Vereeniging ends the war and ensures British control of South Africa.
- 1905 Emperor Wilhelm II lands in Tanger
- 1906 Attack on King Alfonso XIII & Victoria von Battenberg in Madrid
- 1907 Taxis first began running in NYC
- 1908 Miss Pottelsberghe de la Pottery is first female airplane passenger (Belgium)
- 1909 First NAACP conference (United Charities Building, NYC)
- 1910 Cape of Good Hope becomes part of the Union of South Africa
- 1910 Creation of the Union of South Africa.
- 1910 Glenn Curtiss flies from Albany to NYC
- 1911 R.M.S. Titanic launched.
- 1912 US marines land on Cuba
- 1913 17th amendment (direct election of senators) declared ratified
- 1915 An LZ-38 Zeppelin makes an air raid on London fortelling the future
- 1916 Battle of Skagerrak: British-German sea battle at Jutland (10,000 dead)
- 1916 During WWI British & German fleets fight Battle of Jutland
- 1917 1First jazz record released (Dark Town Strutters Ball)
- 1918 General Monash succeeds Birdwood as GOC Australian Corps
- 1918 HMS Fairy, Built by Fairfields at Govan, Glasgow this 'C' Class destroyer of about 400 tons rammed the German submarine UC75 off the Yorkshire coast. The Uboat had previously been rammed by the steamer Blaydonian, damaging the casing. The Uboat then surfaced and at first the Commanding Officer of Fairy thought the submarine must be Royal Navy but the normal challenge was not replied to. Fairy then rammed the uboat at the stern because if the boat was British the crew would have time to get out. It then became quite quite clear the boat was German so HMS Fairy rammed her hard just forward of the conning tower. Two of the men from the submarine jumped on to the forecastle of the destroyer and the other twelve crew were rescued from the water. The submarine sank but the bows of the destroyer were seriously damaged as the submarine was a much bigger vessel than HMS Fairy and she, herself, later sank.
- 1919 First wedding held in an aircraft (over Houston TX)
- 1919 NC-4 aircraft commanded by AC Read completes first crossing of Atlantic
- 1919 NC-4's transatlantic flight ends at Plymouth, England
- 1921 Comedian Buster Keaton marries actress Natalie Talmadge.
- 1921 Tulsa Race Riot: A civil unrest in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA, the official death toll is 39, but recent investigations suggest the actual toll may be much higher.
- 1923 China & USSR exchange diplomats
- 1926 Portuguese President Bernardino Machedo resigns after coup
- 1926 Sesquicentennial Exposition opens in Philadelphia
- 1927 The last Ford Model T rolls off the assembly line after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles.
- 1929 Atlantic City Convention Center opens
- 1930 Bradman gets his 1,000th run of the English Cricket season
- 1930 Building begins on Albert Canal in Belgium
- 1930 Comet 73P/1930 (Schwassmann-Wachmann 3) approaches 0.0617 AUs of Earth
- 1931 7.1 magnitude Earthquake destroys Quetta in modern-day Pakistan: 40,000 dead.
- 1935 Quake kills 50,000 in Quetta Pakistan
- 1937 German battleships shell Almeria Spain
- 1938 Bill Edrich scores his 1,000th run of cricket season, all at Lord's
- 1940 General-Major Bernard Montgomery leaves Duinkerken
- 1941 32.0 cm rain falls on Burlington KS (state record)
- 1941 German occupiers forbids Jews access to beach & swimming pools
- 1942 Japanese midget submarines raid Sydney Harbour
- 1942 Luftwaffe bombs Canterbury
- 1942 World War II: Imperial Japanese Navy midget submarines begin a series of attacks on Sydney, Australia.
- 1943 "Archie" comic strip first broadcast on radio
- 1944 Allied breakthrough in Italy
- 1944 USS England sank a record 6th Japanese submarine in 13 days.
- 1947 Communists grab power in Hungary
- 1947 Eastern DC-4 crashes between Port Deposit & Perryville MD, kills 53
- 1949 Charley Lupica begins stay on 4-foot-square platform platform atop a 60' pole, vowing to stay until Indians clinch pennant. (They don't, and he comes down 117 days later)
- 1951 Netherlands & South Africa sign cultural accord
- 1953 Lebanese President Camille Shamun disbands government
- 1955 Great Britain proclaims emergency crisis due to railroad strike
- 1955 Supreme Court orders school integration "with all deliberate speed"
- 1961 Chuck Berry's amusement park, Berryland in St Louis, opens
- 1961 JFK visits Charles de Gaulle in Paris
- 1961 Judge Irving Kaufman orders Board of Education of New Rochelle, to integrate
- 1962 "Tell It To Groucho" last airs on CBS-TV
- 1964 Charles Schmid kills first Pied Piper victim
- 1965 May 31, 1965 Brooke Shields was born
- 1967 Bayern München wins 7th Europe Cup II at Neurenberg
- 1967 Visitor posting - Marc David Chacon was born in LA - USA
- 1969 "Gitarzan" by Ray Stevens peaks at #8
- 1970 At 03:23 PM, Yungay Peru levelled by 7.75 earthquake (50-70,000 die)
- 1970 The Ancash earthquake causes a landslide that buries the town of Yungay, Peru; more than 47,000 people are killed.
- 1971 In accordance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1968, observation of Memorial Day occurs on the last Monday in May for the first time, rather than on the traditional Memorial Day of May 30.
- 1972 Ajax wins Europe Cup 1 in Rotterdam
- 1973 Glenn Turner scores his 1,000th cricket run of English season
- 1974 Israel & Syria sign an agreement concerning Golan Heights
- 1977 "Beatlemania" opens at Winter Garden Theater NYC for 920 performances
- 1977 Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani becomes heir apparent to throne of Qatar
- 1977 Trans Alaska oil pipeline completed
- 1978 Visitor posting - May 31 1978 Kumar Brajesh was born in Patna, INDIA
- 1978 Visitor posting - Dragos birthday - Romania
- 1979 Zimbabwe proclaims independence
- 1980 "Love Stinks" by J Geils Band peaks at #38
- 1980 Number one hit on UK music charts - Mash - Suicide Is Painless (Theme from M*A*S*H)
- 1980 Police & youthful rebels battle in Zurich
- 1984 57th National Spelling Bee: Daniel Greenblatt wins spelling luge
- 1984 Viv Richards hits 189 (170 balls) vs England, ODI cricket record
- 1985 41 Tornados in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York & Canada kill 88 & injure more than 1,000
- 1985 Guatemala adopts constitution
- 1985 Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) became a Schedule I drug in the United States.
- 1985 New Orleans Saints are sold for $70,204,000
- 1985 United States-Canadian Outbreak: Forty-one tornadoes hit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario, leaving 76 dead.
- 1986 Visitor posting - Dr.suyog born - India
- 1987 Athena 98.4 FM, the first legal private radio station starts broadcasting in Greece.
- 1988 Visitor posting - Hottie Kristen Nicole Jones was born
- 1988 Visitor posting - Mary Smelser was born - USA
- 1989 First International Rock Awards
- 1989 Speaker of the House Jim Wright resigns
- 1990 63rd National Spelling Bee: Amy Marie Dimak wins spelling fibranne
- 1990 Seinfeld starring Jerry Seinfeld, debuts on NBC as Seinfeld Chronicles
- 1990 The pilot episode of Seinfeld premieres.
- 1991 "These Are the Days of Our Lives", the last Queen video with Freddie Mercury, is shot.
- 1991 Oldest bride - Minnie Munro, 102, weds Dudley Reid, 83, in Australia
- 1991 Sides in Angola sign a treaty ending 16 year civil war
- 1992 5th Children's Miracle Network Telethon raises $1,060,000
- 1993 President Dobrica Cosic of little Yugoslavia flees
- 1996 Mark Van Thillo & Abigail Alling, former biospherian win $100,000 lawsuit against Biospheric Development for Space Biospheres Ventures
- 1997 The Confederation Bridge opens, linking Prince Edward Island with mainland New Brunswick.
- 2002 A series of major storms blew through Western Pennsylvania, killing 1 person when the Whip pavilion at Kennywood collapses.
- 2002 The United States Secretary of the Navy issued Instruction 10520.6 directing all United States Navy ships to fly the First Navy Jack in honor of those killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. The ensign will be flown for the duration of the War on Terrorism.
- 2003 1996 Atlanta Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph is captured in Murphy, North Carolina.
- 2004 A foul-up during routine software update at the Royal Bank of Canada leads to a three-day misplacement of 10 million account balances.
- 2005 W. Mark Felt admits in the magazine Vanity Fair that he is the anonymous source Deep Throat in the Watergate scandal.
- 2009 Visitor posting - May 31 2009 Jack William Ruddick was born
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