May 5

• May 5, 311
  Galerius, emperor of Rome, dies at about age 50, which triggers Maximinus to mobilize forces against Licinius and break stability in the tetrarchy
• May 5, 553
  Second Council of Constantinople, fifth ecumenical council, opens
• May 5, 1494
  During his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus discovers Jamaica
• May 5, 1646
  King Charles I surrenders at Newark, Scotland
• May 5, 1762
  Prussophile Russian Emperor Peter III and the Prussian king Frederick the Great conclude the Treaty of Saint Petersburg, ended the fighting in the Seven Years War between Prussia and Russia
• May 5, 1764
  Smolny Institute forms in Saint Petersburg for noble girls
• May 5, 1780
  American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Second oldest learned society in US, forms in Boston
• May 5, 1789
  In France the Estates General, summoned by King Louis XVI, convene to repair the national finances
• May 5, 1789
  Great Britain and Spain begin to dispute the Nootka Sound during the Nootka Crisis
• May 5, 1802
  In Saint-Domingue, later Haiti, General Toussaint Louverture surrenders to French forces, but many of his generals continued to wage a guerrilla campaign against the French
• May 5, 1821
  Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, dies in exile on the island of Saint Helena at age 52 of stomach cancer or poisoning
• May 5, 1835
  King Leopold opens Brussels-Mechelen railway in Belgium, the second country in Europe to open a railway
• May 5, 1862
  French troops sent by Napoleon III attempt to capture Puebla de los Ángeles, a small town in east-central Mexico, but the battle represents a great moral victory for the Mexican government, symbolizing the country's ability to defend sovereignty
• May 5, 1864
  The Battle of Wilderness begins as Robert E. Lee caught U.S. Grant's forces in the Virginia woods, the first in a series of clashes fought as Grant's army advanced on Richmond, Virginia
• May 5, 1881
  Anti-Jewish rioting take place in Kiev during Anti-Semitic pogroms in Southern Russia, triggered by the assassination of Tsar Alexander II
• May 5, 1893
  Panic hits the New York Stock Exchange triggering a severe depression in the country with the failure of 642 banks and over 16,000 businesses
• May 5, 1912
  Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda begins publishing as a central organ of the Central Committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
• May 5, 1949
  In London, England, the Statute of the Council of Europe is signed by representatives of ten countries to create greater unity in Europe and promote co-operation in the areas of legal standards, human rights, democratic development
• May 5, 1950
  Bhumibol Adulyadej is crowned as King Rama IX of Thailand
• May 5, 1955
  The Allied occupation of West Germany ends and the Federal Republic of Germany becomes an independent sovereign state with the ratification of Paris agreements in Bonn, Germany
• May 5, 1961
  Alan Shepard, an American naval officer, becomes the second person and the first American to travel into space after a 15-minute suborbital flight
• May 5, 1965
  First large-scale US Army ground units arrive in South Vietnam
• May 5, 1984
  Itaipu Dam, the second largest hydroelectric facility in terms of annual energy generation, opens on the border between Brazil and Paraguay
• May 5, 2002
  In the second round of the French presidential election, Jacques Chirac outpoll controversial far right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen of National Front
• May 5, 2014
  A Sunni militant group called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant begins an offensive through northern Iraq, aiming to capture the Iraqi capital city of Baghdad and overthrow the Shiite government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki