• 193 - Roman Emperor Didius Julianus assassinated.
• 987 - Hugh Capet is elected king of France.
• 1204 - King Philip Augustus of France conquers Rouen.
• 1215 - Beijing, then under the control of the Jurchen ruler Emperor Xuanzong of Jin, is captured by the Mongols under Genghis Khan, ending the Battle of Beijing.
• 1252 - Alfonso X is elected King of Castile and León.
• 1283 - Treaty of Rheinfelden: Duke Rudolph II of Austria waives his right to the Duchies of Austria and Styria.
• 1485 - Matthias of Hungary takes Vienna from Frederick III
• 1495 - Friar John Cor records the first known batch of scotch whisky.
• 1533 - Anne Boleyn crowned Queen of England.
• 1660 - Mary Dyer hanged for defying a law banning Quakers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
• 1779 - American Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold court-martialed for malfeasance.
• 1792 - Kentucky admitted as the 15th state of the United States.
• 1796 - Tennessee admitted as the 16th state of the United States.
• 1812 - War of 1812: U.S. President James Madison asks the Congress to declare war on the United Kingdom.
• 1813 - James Lawrence, the mortally-wounded commander of the USS Chesapeake, cries out "Don't give up the ship!"
• 1815 - Napoleon swears fidelity to the Constitution of France.
• 1831 - James Clark Ross discovers the North Magnetic Pole.
• 1855 - American adventurer William Walker conquers Nicaragua.
• 1857 - Charles Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal is published.
• 1862 - American Civil War Peninsula Campaign: Battle of Seven Pines or (Battle of Fair Oaks) - Engagement ends inconclusively, with both sides claiming victory.
• 1868 - Treaty of Bosque Redondo signed allowing the Navajos to return to their lands in Arizona and New Mexico.
• 1869 - Thomas Edison receives a patent for his electric voting machine.
• 1879 - Napoleon Eugene killed in the Anglo-Zulu War.
• 1886 - The railroads of the Southern United States convert 11,000 miles of track from a five foot rail gauge to standard gauge, beginning May 31.
• 1890 - The United States Census Bureau begins using Herman Hollerith's tabulating machine to count census returns.
• 1910 - Robert Falcon Scott's South Pole expedition leaves England.
• 1918 - World War I Western Front: Battle for Belleau Wood - Allied Forces under John J. Pershing & James Harbord engage Imperial German Forces under Wilhelm, German Crown Prince.
• 1920 - Adolfo de la Huerta becomes president of Mexico.
• 1921 - Tulsa Race Riot: Civil unrest in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
• 1922 - Royal Ulster Constabulary founded .
• 1925 - Lou Gehrig plays the first game in his streak of 2,130 consecutive games; it was the longest such streak until broken by Cal Ripken Jr. in 1995.
• 1935 - The first driving tests are introduced in the United Kingdom.
• 1939 - Maiden flight of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 Würger (D-OPZE) fighter aeroplane
• 1940 - The Leninist Communist Youth League of the Karelo-Finnish SSR holds its first congress.
• 1941 - World War II: Battle of Crete ends as Crete capitulates to Germany.
• 1941 - The Farhud, a pogrom in Iraqi Jews, took place in baghdad.
• 1942 - World War II: The Warsaw paper Liberty Brigade publishes the first news of the concentration camps.
• 1943 - British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777 is shot down over the Bay of Biscay by German Junkers Ju 88s, killing actor Leslie Howard and leading to speculation the downing was an attempt to kill British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
• 1946 - Ion Antonescu executed.
• 1956 - First international flight (to YUL) from the Atlanta Municipal Airport (ATL; now Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and currently the world's busiest airport)
• 1958 - Charles de Gaulle brought out of retirement to lead France by decree for six months.
• 1962 - Adolf Eichmann is hanged in Israel.
• 1963 - Kenya gains internal self-rule (Madaraka Day).
• 1967 - The Groundbreaking Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album by The Beatles is released
• 1974 - Flixborough disaster: Explosion at a chemical plant kills 28 people.
• 1974 - Heimlich maneuver for rescuing choking victims published in the journal Emergency Medicine.
• 1978 - FIFA World Cup kicks off in Argentina with a match held in Buenos Aires between cup holder West Germany and Poland
• 1978 - The first international applications under the Patent Cooperation Treaty filed.
• 1979 - Vizianagaram district is formed in Andhra Pradesh, India.
• 1979 - The first black-led government of Rhodesia in 90 years takes power.
• 1980 - Cable News Network (CNN) begins broadcasting.
• 1985 - Alan García is proclaimed President of Peru.
• 1990 - George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev sign a treaty to end chemical weapon production.
• 1997 - Hugo Banzer wins the Presidential elections in Bolivia.
• 2000 - The Patent Law Treaty (PLT) signed.
• 2001 - Dipendra of Nepal slaughters his family during dinner.
• 2001 - Dolphinarium massacre: A Hamas suicide bomber kills 21 at a disco in Tel Aviv.
• 2003 - The People's Republic of China begins filling the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam.
• 2005 - The Dutch referendum on the European Constitution results in its rejection.
• 2005 - The longest oil/natural gas explosion in the Houston, Texas area occurred in Crosby, Texas. The drill was owned by the Louisiana Oil and Gas Company.
• 2007 - Jack Kevorkian was released from prison after serving eight years of his 10-25 year prison term for second-degree murder in the 1998 death of Thomas Youk, 52, of Oakland County, Michigan.

Births