May 15th Events |
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| May 15th, 2008 (May 15 2008) | Event | California becomes the second U.S. state after Massachusetts in 2004 to legalize same-sex marriage after the state s own Supreme Court rules a previous ban unconstitutional. | |
| May 15th, 1997 (May 15 1997) | Event | The United States government acknowledges the existence of the "Secret War" in Laos and dedicates the Laos Memorial in honor of Hmong and other "Secret War" veterans. | |
| May 15th, 1991 (May 15 1991) | Event | Edith Cresson becomes France s first female prime minister. | |
| May 15th, 1990 (May 15 1990) | Event | Portrait of Doctor Gachet by Vincent van Gogh is sold for a record $82.5 million, the most expensive painting at the time. | Vincent Van Gogh Quotes |
| May 15th, 1988 (May 15 1988) | Event | Soviet war in Afghanistan: After more than eight years of fighting, the Red Army begins its withdrawal from Afghanistan. | |
| May 15th, 1987 (May 15 1987) | Event | The Soviet Union launches the Polyus prototype orbital weapons platform. It fails to reach orbit. | |
| May 15th, 1972 (May 15 1972) | Event | The island of Okinawa, under U.S. military governance since its conquest in 1945, reverts to Japanese control. | |
| May 15th, 1972 (May 15 1972) | Event | In Laurel, Maryland, Arthur Bremer shoots and paralyzes Alabama Governor George Wallace while he is campaigning to be become President. | |
| May 15th, 1970 (May 15 1970) | Event | President Richard Nixon appoints Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington the first female United States Army Generals. | |
| May 15th, 1970 (May 15 1970) | Event | Philip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green are killed at Jackson State University by police during student protests. | |
| May 15th, 1963 (May 15 1963) | Event | Project Mercury: The launch of the final Mercury mission, Mercury-Atlas 9 with astronaut L. Gordon Cooper on boardied in He becomes the first American to spend more than a day in space. | |
| May 15th, 1960 (May 15 1960) | Event | The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 4. | |
| May 15th, 1958 (May 15 1958) | Event | The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 3. | |
| May 15th, 1957 (May 15 1957) | Event | At Malden Island in the Pacific, Britain tests its first hydrogen bomb in Operation Grapple. The device fails to detonate properly. | |
| May 15th, 1955 (May 15 1955) | Event | The Austrian Independence Treaty is signed. | |
| May 15th, 1955 (May 15 1955) | Event | The first ascent of Makalu, the world s fifth highest mountain. | |
| May 15th, 1951 (May 15 1951) | Event | The Polish cultural attache in Paris, Czeslaw Milosz, asks the French government for political asylum. | |
| May 15th, 1948 (May 15 1948) | Event | Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia attack Israel. | |
| May 15th, 1945 (May 15 1945) | Event | World War II: The final skirmish in Europe is fought near Prevalje, Slovenia. | |
| May 15th, 1943 (May 15 1943) | Event | Joseph Stalin dissolves the Comintern (or Third International). | Joseph Stalin Quotes |
| May 15th, 1942 (May 15 1942) | Event | World War II: in the United States, a bill creating the Women s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) is signed into law. | |
| May 15th, 1941 (May 15 1941) | Event | Baseball player Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees starts his record-breaking 56-game hitting streak. | |
| May 15th, 1940 (May 15 1940) | Event | World War II: After fierce fighting, the poorly trained and equipped Dutch troops surrender to Germany, marking the beginning of five years of occupation. | |
| May 15th, 1940 (May 15 1940) | Event | McDonald s opens its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California. | |
| May 15th, 1936 (May 15 1936) | Event | Amy Johnson arrives back in England after a record-breaking return flight to Cape Town | |
| May 15th, 1935 (May 15 1935) | Event | The Moscow Metro is opened to public. | |
| May 15th, 1934 (May 15 1934) | Event | Karlis Ulmanis establishes an authoritarian government in Latvia. | |
| May 15th, 1932 (May 15 1932) | Event | The May 15 Incident: in an attempted Coup d etat, the Prime Minister of Japan Inukai Tsuyoshi is killed. | |
| May 15th, 1929 (May 15 1929) | Event | A fire at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio kills 123. | |
| May 15th, 1920 (May 15 1920) | Event | Council of Lithuania adjourns as the newly elected Constituent Assembly of Lithuania meets for the first time in Kaunas. | |
| May 15th, 1919 (May 15 1919) | Event | The Winnipeg General Strike begins. By 11:00 a.m., almost the whole working population of Winnipeg, Manitoba had walked off the job. | |
| May 15th, 1919 (May 15 1919) | Event | Greek invasion of Izmir. During the invasion, the Greek army kills or wounds 350 Turks. The responsible are punished by the Greek Commander Aristides Stergiades. Hasan Tahsin fires the first shot of the Turkish War of Independence. | |
| May 15th, 1918 (May 15 1918) | Event | The Finnish Civil War ends. | |
| May 15th, 1914 (May 15 1914) | Event | Bolivia becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty. | |
| May 15th, 1911 (May 15 1911) | Event | The United States Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an "unreasonable" monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up. | |
| May 15th, 1911 (May 15 1911) | Event | The Georgios Averof cruiser is bought by Greece. | |
| May 15th, 1910 (May 15 1910) | Event | The last time a major earthquake happened on the Elsinore Fault Zone. | |
| May 15th, 1905 (May 15 1905) | Event | Las Vegas, Nevada, is founded when 110 acres (0.4 km?), in what later would become downtown, are auctioned off. | |
| May 15th, 1897 (May 15 1897) | Event | The Greek army retreats with heavy losses in the Greco-Turkish War. | |
| May 15th, 1891 (May 15 1891) | Event | Rerum Novarum, the first document of the Catholic Social Teaching tradition, is published by Pope Leo XIII. | |
| May 15th, 1869 (May 15 1869) | Event | Woman s suffrage: in New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman s Suffrage Association. | Susan B. Anthony Quotes |
| May 15th, 1864 (May 15 1864) | Event | American Civil War: Battle of Resaca, Georgia ends. | |
| May 15th, 1864 (May 15 1864) | Event | American Civil War: Battle of New Market, Virginia - students from the Virginia Military Institute fight alongside the Confederate Army to force Union General Franz Sigel out of the Shenandoah Valley. | |
| May 15th, 1862 (May 15 1862) | Event | President Abraham Lincoln signs a bill into law creating the United States Bureau of Agriculture. it is later renamed the United States Department of Agriculture. | Abraham Lincoln Quotes |
| May 15th, 1858 (May 15 1858) | Event | Opening of the present Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London. | |
| May 15th, 1851 (May 15 1851) | Event | Rama IV is crowned King of Thailand. | |
| May 15th, 1849 (May 15 1849) | Event | Troops of the Two Sicilies take Palermo and crush the republican government of Sicily. | |
| May 15th, 1836 (May 15 1836) | Event | Francis Baily observes "Baily s beads" during an annular eclipse. | |
| May 15th, 1817 (May 15 1817) | Event | Opening of the first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. | |
| May 15th, 1811 (May 15 1811) | Event | Paraguay declares independence from Spain. | |
| May 15th, 1800 (May 15 1800) | Event | George III survives two assassination attempts in one day. | |
| May 15th, 1796 (May 15 1796) | Event | First Coalition: Napoleon enters Milan in triumph. | |
| May 15th, 1793 (May 15 1793) | Event | Diego Marin Aguilera flies a glider for "about 360 meters", at a height of 5-6 meters, during one of the first attempted flights. | |
| May 15th, 1792 (May 15 1792) | Event | War of the First Coalition: France declares war on Kingdom of Sardinia. | |
| May 15th, 1791 (May 15 1791) | Event | Maximilien Robespierre proposes the Self-denying Ordinance. | Maximilien Robespierre Quotes |
| May 15th, 1776 (May 15 1776) | Event | American Revolution: the Virginia Convention instructs its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain, paving the way for the United States Declaration of Independence. | |
| May 15th, 1756 (May 15 1756) | Event | The Seven Years War begins when England declares war on France. | |
| May 15th, 1718 (May 15 1718) | Event | James Puckle, a London lawyer, patents the world s first machine gun. | |
| May 15th, 1701 (May 15 1701) | Event | The War of the Spanish Succession begins. | |
| May 15th, 1618 (May 15 1618) | Event | Johannes Kepler confirms his previously rejected discovery of the third law of planetary motion (he first discovered it on March 8 but soon rejected the idea after some initial calculations were made). | |
| May 15th, 1602 (May 15 1602) | Event | Bartholomew Gosnold becomes the first European to see Cape Cod. | |
| May 15th, 1567 (May 15 1567) | Event | Mary Queen of Scots marries James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, her third husband. | |
| May 15th, 1525 (May 15 1525) | Event | The battle of Frankenhausen ends the Peasants War. | |
| May 15th, 1514 (May 15 1514) | Event | Jodocus Badius Ascensius publishes Christiern Pedersen s Latin version of Saxo s Gesta Danorum, the oldest known version of that work. | |
| May 15th, 1252 (May 15 1252) | Event | Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad exstirpanda, which authorizes, but also limits, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition. | |
