• 1152 – Henry II of England weds Eleanor of Acquitaine
• 1565 – Ottoman forces unsuccessfully attempt to conquer Malta, starting the Siege of Malta
• 1631 – John Winthrop becomes the first Governor of Massachusetts
• 1756 – Great Britain declares war on France, starting the Seven Years’ War
• 1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte is named Emperor of the French by the French Senate
• 1860 – Abraham Lincoln wins the Republican presidential nomination
• 1980 – Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington, US, causing $3 bil in damage and killing 57 people
• 2012 – Mitt Romney releases his first positive presidential TV advertisement, outlining what he would do on his first day in the White House if elected President

• 1204 – The first Emperor of the Latin Empire is crowned, Baldwin IX
• 1843– The first major wagon train leaves on the Oregon Trail, heading for the Pacific Northwest
• 1866 – Congress introduces the nickel as a replacement for the half dime coin
• 1868 – President Andrew Johnson is acquitted in his impeachment trial
• 1929 – The first Academy Awards take place
• 1951 – The first regularly scheduled transatlantic flights occur between JFK and London Heathrow
• 1991 – Queen Elizabeth II is the first British monarch to address US Congress
• 2012 – The trial of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb Army chief, begins. He faces 11 counts of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

• 1483 – Charles VIII of France (Charles l’Affable) has his coronation
• 1643 – Upon the death of Louis XIII, his son, four year old Louis XIV, becomes King of France
• 1804 – The Lewis and Clark Expedition departs from Camp Dubois
• 1863– Battle of Jackson takes place (Civil War)
• 1925 – Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway is published
• 1948 – Israel is attacked by its neighboring Arab states (starting the 1948 Arab-Israeli war) after it gains its independence
• 1984 – Mark Zuckerberg, co-creator of Facebook, is born in White Plains, NY.
• 2012 – Iran resumed talks with the United Nations’ nuclear agency in Vienna

• 912 – Alexander becomes the Emperor of the Byzantine Empire
• 1812 – John Bellingham assassinates the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, in the House of Commons, London
• 1908 – America celebrates its first Mother’s Day in Grafton, West Virginia
• 1867 – Luxembourg gains its independence
• 1904 – Salvador Dali is born in Figueres, Spain
• 1927 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded
• 1949 – Israel joins the United Nations
• 1987 – The first heart-lung transplant is completed by Dr. Bruce Reitz in Baltimore, Maryland
• 2012 – Rebekah Brooks (former newspaper editor and News Corp. exec) testifies at a press ethics inquiry in London

• 1503 – The Cayman Islands are visited by Christopher Columbus and named Las Tortugas thanks to their numerous turtles
• 1774 – Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette become king and queen of France
• 1908 – America celebrates its firth Mother’s Day in Grafton, West Virginia
• 1940 – Winston Churchill becomes the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
• 1960 – The first underwater circumnavigation of the earth is completed by the nuclear submarine USS Triton
• 1994 – Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa’s first black president
• 2002 – Robert Hanssen, an FBI agent, is sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for selling US secrets to Moscow for payment of $1.4 million in cash and diamonds
• 2012 – Putin cancels US Summit visit and meeting with Obama

• 1502 – Christopher Columbus left Cadiz, Spain, on his fourth and final trip to the Western Hemisphere
• 1688 – Transylvania became part of the kingdom of Hungary
• 1914 – Woodrow Wilson issued a presidential proclamation that officially established the first national Mother’s Day holiday to celebrate America’s mothers
• 1974 – The House Judiciary Committee opened hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Richard Nixon
• 1994 – South Africa’s newly-elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country’s first black president
• 2004 – Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov and 23 other people were killed in a bombing in the capital Grozny
• 2012 – North Carolina OKs constitutional gay marriage ban

1792 – Militia Act establishes conscription under federal law

1945 – V-E Day is celebrated in American and Britain

1956 – Henry Ford II leaves post at Ford Foundation

1970 – Nixon defends invasion of Cambodia

1984 – Soviets announce boycott of 1984 Olympics

1988 – Woman convicted for tampering with Excedrin

2010 – Betty White becomes oldest Saturday Night Live host

2012 – ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ author Maurice Sendak dead at age 83

1789 – George Washington attends inaugural ball

1902 - Martinique’s Mount Pele begins the deadliest volcanic eruption of the 20th century.

1915 – German submarine sinks Lusitania

1960 – Brezhnev becomes president of the USSR

1994 – Munch’s The Scream recovered

1998 – Daimler-Benz announces purchase of Chrysler Corp.

1626 – Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on what is now Manhattan

1704 – The British seized Gibraltar from Spain

1929 – Actress Audrey Hepburn was born

1994 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat reached agreement in Cairo on the first stage of Palestinian self-rule

1990 – A botched execution of Jesse Tafero in Florida, caused many states to cease the use of the electric chair and adopt lethal injection as their means of capital punishment

1998 – Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was given four life sentences plus 30 years by a federal judge in Sacramento, Calif., under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty

1469 – Niccolo Machiavelli was born

1810 – Washington, D.C., was incorporated

1921 – West Virginia imposed the first state sales tax in the US

1947 – Japan’s post WWII constitution went into effect

1937 – Margaret Mitchell won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel “Gone with the Wind”

1980 – MADD founder’s 13 year old daughter was killed by a drunk driver

2005 – Iraq’s first democratically elected government was sworn in