Events

• 1096 – First Crusade: Around 800 Jews are massacred in Worms, Germany.
• 1268 – The Principality of Antioch, a crusader state, falls to the Mamluk Sultan Baibars in the Siege of Antioch.
• 1291 – Fall of Acre, the end of Crusader presence in the Holy Land.
• 1302 – Bruges Matins, the nocturnal massacre of the French garrison in Bruges by members of the local Flemish militia.
• 1388 – During the Battle of Buyur Lake, General Lan Yu leads a Chinese army forward to crush the Mongol hordes of Tögüs Temür, the Khan of Northern Yuan.
• 1499 – Alonso de Ojeda sets sail from Cádiz on his voyage to what is now Venezuela.
• 1565 – The Great Siege of Malta begins, in which Ottoman forces attempt and fail to conquer Malta.
• 1756 – The Seven Years’ War begins when Great Britain declares war on France.
• 1783 – First United Empire Loyalists reach Parrtown (later called Saint John, New Brunswick), Canada, after leaving the United States.
• 1794 – Battle of Tourcoing during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition.
• 1803 – Napoleonic Wars: The United Kingdom revokes the Treaty of Amiens and declares war on France.
• 1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of the French by the French Senate.
• 1811 – Battle of Las Piedras: The first great military triumph of the revolution of the Río de la Plata in Uruguay led by José Artigas.
• 1860 – Abraham Lincoln wins the Republican Party presidential nomination over William H. Seward, who later becomes the United States Secretary of State.
• 1863 – American Civil War: The Siege of Vicksburg begins.
• 1900 – The United Kingdom proclaims a protectorate over Tonga.
• 1917 – World War I: The Selective Service Act of 1917 is passed, giving the President of the United States the power of conscription.
• 1944 – World War II: Battle of Monte Cassino: Conclusion after seven days of the fourth battle as German paratroopers evacuate Monte Cassino.
• 1955 – Operation Passage to Freedom, the evacuation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam following the end of the First Indochina War, ends.
• 1974 – Nuclear weapons testing: Under project Smiling Buddha, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon becoming the sixth nation to do so.
• 1991 – Northern Somalia declares independence from the rest of Somalia as the Republic of Somaliland but is not recognised by the international community.
• 1993 – Riots in Nørrebro, Copenhagen, caused by the approval of the four Danish exceptions in the Maastricht Treaty referendum.
  • Police open fire against civilians for the first time since World War II and injure 11 demonstrators.
• 1994 – Israeli troops finish withdrawing from the Gaza Strip, ceding the area to the Palestinian National Authority to govern.
• 2009 – The LTTE are defeated by the Sri Lankan government, ending almost 26 years of fighting between the two sides.
  • Victory Day (Sri Lanka).
  • Mullivaikkal Remembrance Day (Sri Lankan Tamils).
• Victoria Day (Canada) (Earliest possible date of the last Monday preceding 25 May).
• Baltic Fleet Day (Russia).
• Battle of Las Piedras Day (Uruguay).
• Independence Day (Somaliland) (unrecognised).

People (Births)

• 1778 – Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, Irish soldier and diplomat, British Ambassador to Austria (d. 1854).
• 1862 – Josephus Daniels, American publisher and politician, 41st United States Secretary of the Navy (d. 1948).
• 1878 – Johannes Terwogt, Dutch rower (d. 1977).
• 1895 – Augusto César Sandino, Nicaraguan rebel leader (d. 1934).
• 1896 – Eric Backman, Swedish runner (d. 1965).
• 1904 – Jacob K. Javits, American colonel and politician, 58th New York Attorney General (d. 1986).
• 1905 – Hedley Verity, English cricketer and soldier (d. 1943).
• 1930 – Warren Rudman, American soldier, lawyer, and politician (d. 2012).
• 1930 – Fred Saberhagen, American soldier and author (d. 2007).
• 1939 – Gordon O’Connor, Canadian general and politician, 38th Canadian Minister of Defence.
• 1950 – Rod Milburn, American hurdler and coach (d. 1997).
• 1952 – David Leakey, English general and politician.
• 1978 – Charles Kamathi, Kenyan runner.
• 1984 – Niki Terpstra, Dutch cyclist.

People (Deaths)

• 932 – Ma Shaohong, general of Later Tang.
• 1780 – Charles Hardy, English-American admiral and politician, 29th Colonial Governor of New York (b. 1714).
• 1781 – Túpac Amaru II, Peruvian-Indian rebel leader (b. 1742).
• 1795 – Robert Rogers, English colonel (b. 1731).
• 1800 – Alexander Suvorov, Russian general (b. 1729).
• 1999 – Betty Robinson, American runner (b. 1911).
• 2009 – Velupillai Prabhakaran, Sri Lankan rebel leader, founded the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (b. 1954).
• 2013 – Jo Benkow, Norwegian soldier and politician (b. 1924).