On May 11, 973, a landmark event in English history unfolded at Bath Abbey: the formal coronation of King Edgar, known to posterity as Edgar the Peaceful. Though he had already ruled England since 959, this ceremony was not simply a public confirmation of…
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On May 10, 1775, delegates from across the American colonies gathered in Philadelphia for the opening of the Second Continental Congress, a meeting that began as an emergency response to war and soon became the central political body of the American Revolution. The Congress…
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On May 10, 1869, in the arid expanse of Utah Territory at a place called Promontory Summit, two locomotives faced each other across a polished laurel tie as dignitaries and railroad workers looked on. Then, with the ceremonial tapping of a golden spike into…
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On May 9, 1926, American aviator Richard E. Byrd and pilot Floyd Bennett returned to Spitsbergen, Norway, with one of the most dramatic claims in the history of polar exploration: they had flown over the North Pole. The flight, made in a three-engine Fokker…
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On the morning of May 9, 1671, the Tower of London played host to one of the most improbable crimes in British history—a heist so brazen, so theatrical, it defied the line between treason and performance. Colonel Thomas Blood, an Irishman of Protestant birth…
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On May 8, 1980, the World Health Organization made one of the most extraordinary announcements in the history of medicine: smallpox, a disease that had killed hundreds of millions of people across centuries, had been eradicated. The declaration did not mean that smallpox had…
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It didn’t start as a soft drink. On May 8, 1886, in the heart of Atlanta, a morphine-addicted Confederate veteran turned pharmacist poured the first glass of what he claimed could cure headaches, exhaustion, indigestion—even impotence. His name was Dr. John Stith Pemberton, and…
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On May 7, 1940, the British House of Commons began one of the most consequential parliamentary debates in modern history. It was formally a debate over Norway, a campaign that had exposed the failures of British military planning in the early months of World…
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In the blood-soaked spring of 1794, as guillotines claimed heads by the dozen and the French Revolution threatened to devour itself, Maximilien Robespierre unveiled his most audacious experiment yet—not in law or terror, but in theology. On May 7, standing before the National Convention,…
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On May 7, 1915, during World War I, the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine, U-20, off the coast of Ireland. The attack resulted in the loss of over 1,100 lives, including civilians and neutral passengers, triggering…
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