May 5

553 – Concerned with the rise of Nestorianism in the Church, the Second Council of Constantinople, called by Emperor Justinian I, convenes.

1215 – Rebel barons renounce their allegiance to King John of England  beginning a chain of events leading to the signing of Magna Carta.

1260 – Kublai Khan becomes the 5th Khagan emperor of Mongolia, and then decrees a stately pleasure dome be built in Xanadu.

1494 – On his 2nd voyage to New World, Christopher Columbus sights Jamaica, landing at Discovery Bay

1809 – Mary Kies becomes the first woman awarded a U.S. patent, for a technique of weaving straw with silk and thread.

1821 – Napoleon dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.

1862 – Mexican troops led by Ignacio Zaragoza halt a French invasion in the Battle of Puebla.

1865 – The government of The Confederate States of America is declared dissolved at Washington, Georgia.

1866 – Memorial Day is first celebrated at Waterloo, New York.

1877 – Sitting Bull leads his band of Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux into North- Western Territory  -now Saskatchewan- Canada to evade surrender to U.S. forces.

1893 – The financial Panic of 1893 causes a large crash on the New York Stock Exchange

1891 – The Music Hall in New York City (later Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance with Pyotr Tchaikovsky as guest conductor.

1904 – Pitching against the Philadelphia Athletics at the Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston, Cy Young of the Boston Americans throws the first perfect game – basically 9 innings with no batter from the opposing team reaching any base-  in the modern era of baseball.

1908 – Arthur Pickens riding aboard Stone Street wins the Kentucky Derby in 2 minutes, 15 1/5 seconds, setting a new, and to date unbeaten, record for the slowest winning time

1945 – A Fu-Go balloon bomb launched by the Japanese Army during World War II kills 6 people near Bly, Oregon.
Admiral Karl Dönitz, leader of Germany after Hitler’s death, orders all U-boats to cease offensive operations and return to their bases.

1946 – The International Military Tribunal for the Far East begins in Tokyo with 28 Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

1955 – Under terms of The General Treaty, France, Britain and the United States return and recognize the sovereignty of West Germany.

1961 – Aboard Mercury Freedom 7, on a sub-orbital flight, Alan Shepard becomes the first American to travel into outer space.

1973 – Ron Turcotte aboard Secretariat wins the Kentucky Derby in 1 minute, 59 2/5th seconds, setting a new, and to date unbeaten, record for the fastest winning time

1987 – The Congressional  hearings on the Iran–Contra affair begin being televised.

1994 – American teenager Michael P. Fay is caned in Singapore for theft and vandalism.

2013– 5 members of a bridal party are killed after their limousine catches fire on the San Mateo-Hayward bridge in Hayward, California

2018 – The first death from a vaping product occurs when an electric cigarette explodes, penetrating his head and killing Tallmadge D’Elia, age 38, in his apartment in St. Petersburg, Florida,