EVENTS:
- 1830 – Mary Had a Little Lamb by Sarah Josepha Hale is published.
- 1930 – Amy Johnson lands in Darwin, Northern Territory, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).
- 1940 – Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.
- 1958 – United Press International is formed through a merger of the United Press and the International News Service.
- 1962 – Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.
- 1993 – Eritrea gains its independence from Ethiopia.
- 2001 – Mountain climbing: Temba Tsheri, a 15-year-old Sherpa, becomes the youngest person to climb to the top of Mount Everest.
- 2014 – A 6.4 magnitude earthquake occurs in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey, injuring 324 people.
- 2019 – 19 students died in a fire in Surat (India).
- 2019 – Under pressure over her handling of Brexit, British Prime Minister Theresa May announces her resignation as Leader of the Conservative Party, effective as of June 7.
- 2022 – A mass shooting occurs at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, United States, resulting in the deaths of 21 people, including 19 children.
BIRTHS:
- 1686 – Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Polish-German physicist and engineer, developed the Fahrenheit scale (d. 1736)
- 1895 – Samuel Irving Newhouse, Sr., American publisher, founded Advance Publications (d. 1979)
- 1902 – Lionel Conacher, Canadian football player and politician (d. 1954)
- 1905 – Mikhail Sholokhov, Russian author, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1984)
- 1940 – Joseph Brodsky, Russian-American poet, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1996)
- 1942 – Ali Bacher, South African cricketer
- 1963 – Rich Rodriguez, American football player and coach
- 1966 – Eric Cantona, French footballer, manager, and actor
- 1973 – Shirish Kunder, Indian director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1980 – Jason Babin, American football player
- 1992 – Ryan Leonard, English footballer
- 1994 – Jarell Martin, American basketball player
- 2001 – Emily Austin, journalist and social media influencer
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
