1498 Christopher Columbus embarked on his third voyage of discovery.

1536 King Henry VIII of England married Jane Seymour, lady-in-waiting to Anne Boleyn whom Henry had beheaded just eleven days before (May 19).

1539 New World: In what is now called  Florida, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto landed at Tampa Bay with 600 soldiers with the goal of finding gold.  

De Soto archaeological site

1574 Henry III ascended the throne of France.

1588 The last ship of the Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon, heading for the English Channel.

1593 English dramatist and poet Christopher Marlowe was killed in a tavern fight, possibly as a result of his secret political activity while a student at Cambridge.

The Coroner's Inquisition on the Death of Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe's Works    More    And more

1640 Death of Peter Paul Rubens, painter.

1741 Thirteen American black men were burned at the stake; as well, between May 11 and August 29, 17 black men, two white men, and two white women were hanged, for their roles in planning a slave revolt in New York City.

Source: The Daily Bleed    Slavery in New York

1744 English poet Alexander Pope died in Twickenham, London.

More  and More

1806 Andrew Jackson killed a man in a duel after the man had accused Jackson's wife of bigamy. Later Jackson ('Old Hickory') became the seventh President of the United States, holding the office from 1829 - 1837.

1814 The First Treaty of Paris was signed, returning French borders to their 1792 extent. Napoleon I of France was exiled to Elba on the same day.

1842 John Francis attempted to assassinate Britain's Queen Victoria as she drove down Constitution Hill with her husband, Prince Albert. It was one of about eight attempts on the queen's life.

1848 Edmund Kennedy began his expedition to Cape York Peninsula, northern Australia.

1854 The Kansas-Nebraska Act became law, establishing the US territories of Nebraska and Kansas.

1868 Memorial Day (then known as 'Decoration Day') was observed in the United States for the first time (it was proclaimed on May 5 by General John Logan).

1872 Queensland, Australia, annexed the islands of Torres Strait within 100 km (about 60 miles) of the Queensland coast. These included Prince of Wales Island, Thursday Island. The latter was only about one square mile in area but was valuable for its excellent harbour.

1876 Ottoman sultan Abd-ul-Aziz was deposed and succeeded by his nephew, Murat V.

1879 New York City's Gilmores Garden was renamed Madison Square Garden by William Vanderbilt and opened to the public at 26^th Street and Madison Avenue.

1883 In New York City, a rumour that the Brooklyn Bridge was going to collapse caused a stampede that crushed twelve people.

1883 Australia: The Durack family of Queensland set out to drive their herds of cattle across the 'Top End' of Australia to the last remaining empty grasslands in the country, the Ord River region in the far north-west.

1886 Australia: At about 9 pm, SS Ly-ee-Moon (Captain Webber) was wrecked on a reef off Green Cape Lighthouse in southern New South Wales. En route to Sydney from Melbourne, 71 lives were lost, with the lighthouse keepers only able to save 15 people. One of the victims was Mrs Flora Hannah MacKillop of St Kilda, Melbourne, mother of Mary MacKillop, the woman likely to be Australia's first saint. Another was a Mr Griffen, who apparently boarded the Ly-ee-Moon instead of his intended vessel. An inquest was held on June 1 before the Coroner, Mr Magnus, JP, of Eden, NSW.

"The Ly-ee-Moon was built as a paddle steamer in 1859 by the Thames Shipbuilding Company of Blackall, London, England. She was designed by J. Ash specifically for use in the opium trade. The ship was just over 282 feet long and 27 feet wide. She displaced 1,202 tons and was powered by a coal powered steam engine which turned paddle wheels. She was also rigged with three masts and sails. At trials, the new ship attained 17 knots, an amazing speed for the time and the fastest speed ever attained to that time by a British built vessel. Not only was she the fastest steamer around, she was also lavishly furnished. It is stated that she was built for Dent and Company. It is also said she was a sistership to the Royal Yacht, Victoria and Albert ... In 1860 or 1861, the Ly-ee-Moon was used as a blockade runner during the American Civil War. Apparently she ran in and out of Charleston, South Carolina and this was far more profitable (and one imagines, dangerous) than her intended trade. At the end of the war in 1865, she moved to Hong Kong."   Source

1910 Mahatma Gandhi founded Tolstoy Farm.

1913 First Balkan War: A peace treaty was signed in London, ending the war. Albania became an independent nation.

1922 USA: The famous Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, designed by Henry Bacon and housing the huge statue of Abraham Lincoln by Daniel Chester French, was dedicated.

1941 World War II: Germany captured Crete.

1942 World War II: 1000 British bombers launched a 90-minute attack on Cologne, Germany.

1948 USA: A dike along the flooding Columbia River broke, obliterating Vanport, Oregon within minutes. Fifteen people died and tens of thousands were left homeless.

1958 USA: The bodies of several unidentified American soldiers killed in action during World War II and the Korean War were buried at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery.

1959 The first hovercraft was launched at Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK.

1959 Official opening of the Auckland harbour Bridge, New Zealand.

1960 Boris Pasternak (b. 1890), Russian winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize for Literature, died.

Did the Communists starve the Nobel-laureate author of Dr Zhivago?

Boris Pasternak, in the years leading up to his death on May 30, 1968, suffered appalling persecution by his own government. He had won the Nobel Prize, but, like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov after him, was not permitted to leave the USSR to attend the awards ceremony and expect to return. He was even expelled from the union of Soviet writers.

Evidence that the Communist regime of the Soviet Union might have wilfully starved Boris Pasternak to death emerged in a book, Moscow: Under the Skin, written by an Italian journalist, Viro Roberti.

Roberti interviewed the great author of Dr Zhivago several times during the ordeal. On March 15, 1960, Roberti met Pasternak, who was emaciated and sickly looking. The novelist told the interviewer, "I have been expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers so that I shall starve. No one publishes my poetry or my translations anymore, which was my daily bread. The first payments from my editor have been confiscated by order of the authorities …"

"In a February 21, 1966 newsletter, I wrote,

"'Communism may be defined as government by potential starvation. I have frequently tried to illustrate this power by the case of Boris Pasternak … I have repeatedly raised the question of whether he starved to death … I have never stated that the communists did starve him to death but have insisted that their sys­tem gave them the power to starve him and have questioned whether they did so. The same power controls all employment, all banks, all stores, all law courts, and all communications. The plight of an individual who falls foul of this power is obvi­ous. Once dismissed from his job, he cannot secure another; if he has savings in the bank, he cannot withdraw them; he has no prospect of legal redress; he cannot sell his possessions; and he has no free press to publicize his condition. He retains the freedom to starve.'

"There is now evidence from his own statements that Pasternak himself was vitally concerned with this possibility. This evidence is presented in a book, Moscow Under the Skin, written by an Italian journalist, Viro Roberti, who interviewed Pasternak sev­eral times during his ordeal."
Schwarz, Dr Fred, The Three Faces of Revolution, Prospect House, Washington, USA, 1972, pp. 43 - 48

"Suddenly (Pasternak's) eyes lit up and in a harsh voice he exclaimed: 'They have taken away this money in the hope that I will go down on my knees and disown my novel and my poetry. But nothing will ever make me yield  … I yield only to death!'

"Two days later the same friend, whose name I cannot reveal, came to see me at the Central Telegraph Office and told me that Boris Pasternak was 'gol kak sokol' (hungry as a hawk), extremely poor and had to borrow money to exist. 'All his works have been ostracised. Boris Leonidovich is unaware that his brother Alexander helps him and seeks help for him from his friends. If he knew this he would rather starve to death. He is also very ill!'"
Viro, Roberti, Moscow: Under the Skin, Geoffrey Bles, London, 1961, pp. 212 - 216

From Wikipedia: All media in the Soviet Union were controlled by the state including television and radio broadcasting, newspaper, magazine and book publishing. This was achieved by ownership of all production facilities, thus making all those employed in media state employees. This extended to the fine arts including the theater, opera and ballet. Art and Music was controlled by ownership of distribution and performance venues.

Like a beast in a pen, I'm cut off
From my friends, freedom, the sun,
But the hunters are gaining ground.
I've nowhere else to run.

Dark wood and the bank of a pond,
Trunk of a fallen tree.
There's no way forward, no way back.
It's all up with me.

Am I a gangster or murderer?
Of what crime do I stand
Condemned? I made the whole world weep
At the beauty of my land.

Even so, one step from my grave,
I believe that cruelty, spite,
The powers of darkness will in time
Be crushed by the spirit of light.

The beaters in a ring close in
With the wrong prey in view,
I've nobody at my right hand,
Nobody faithful and true.

And with such a noose on my throat
I should like for one second
My tears to be wiped away
By someone at my right hand.

Boris Pasternak, 1959

More on Pasternak

1967 At the Ascot Speedway in Gardena, California, daredevil Evel Knievel jumped his motorcycle over 16 cars lined-up in a row.

1967 The Nigerian state of Biafra seceded, sparking a civil war.

Wilson's Almanac Book of Days hip list    CounterCulture Wiki

1971 Mariner program: Mariner 9 was launched towards Mars.

1971 Thirty-six Grateful Dead fans were treated for hallucinations caused by LSD they unwittingly ingested from a spiked apple drink served at San Francisco's Winterland. Although group members were suspected of supplying the drug, they were not accused.     

Source: The Daily Bleed   Grateful Dead Almanac

1972 The Angry Brigade went on trial.

1972 Members of the Japanese Red Army carried out the Lod Airport Massacre at Lod Airport in Tel Aviv on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The three terrorists killed twenty-four people and injured seventy-eight others.

1980 The beginning of the Switzerland's 'movement of the discontented', a youth rebellion in Zurich. It spread throughout the country, involving thousands – young and not so young – in demonstrations and confrontations with police, demanding places where they would be free to meet and share counter-cultural experiences. It escalated into a movement with broader demands, one being 'No Leaders!', and another being: "Make Cucumber Salad Out of the State!"

1982 Spain became the 16^th member of NATO and the first nation to enter the alliance since West Germany's admission in 1955.

1989 Tiananmen Square protests of 1989: The 33-foot high 'Goddess of Democracy' statue was unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators. The demonstrations culminated in the June 4 Massacre.  

"Six weeks into their protest, and ten days into the Martial Law that was declared by the Chinese government, the college students of China were still occupying Tiananmen Square. During this time, the population of Beijing was holding off the military by blocking convoys of soldiers, who were unwilling to open fire and shoot the Chinese population in their way. On this day, May 30, students erected a 30-foot Goddess of Democracy statue, similar to the Statue of Liberty, in the middle of Tiananmen Square.

"With that statue, the students achieved a feat of symbolism that reached out beyond Chinese culture, and made it evident to Westerners that the students were reaching for Western-style democracy, or a constitutional republic that would protect rights with checks and balances on power while allowing democratic elections for the leadership. The students had done their homework, and images of this Goddess of Democracy statue were flashed around the world and into the living rooms of ordinary people.

"The statue was situated facing north, so that it was in a face-off with the image of Chairman Mao, whose visage peered from a very large portrait at the gates of the Forbidden City.

"Students from the Central College of Fine Arts are credited with creating the goddess statue, that was destined to stand only five days in Beijing, at which point it was run over by a tank from the People's Liberation Army as the army retook Tiananmen Square while killing 3,000 civilians in the infamous 'June 4' massacre."   Source

1989 Food riots erupted in Argentina.

1990 France banned the import of British beef in case it carried the BSE ('mad cow') virus.

1998 A 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit northern Afghanistan, killing up to 5,000.

1998 Geri Halliwell announced she was leaving the Spice Girls.

2003 The final flight of an Air France Concorde took place.

Tomorrow: Timothy Leary takes his last trip

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