| | 1204 - Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders is crowned first Emperor of the Latin Empire. |
| | 1527 - The Florentines drive out the Medici for a second time and Florence re-establishes a republic. |
| | 1532 - Sir Thomas More resigns as Lord Chancellor of England. |
| | 1568 - Mary Queen of Scots flees to England. |
| | 1605 - Paul V becomes Pope. |
| | 1770 - 14-year old Marie Antoinette marries 15-year-old Louis-Auguste who later becomes king of France. |
| | 1777 - Lachlan McIntosh and Button Gwinnett shoot each other during a duel near Savannah, Georgia. Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, dies three days later. |
| | 1811 - Peninsular War - Allies (Spain, Portugal & Britain) defeat French at the Battle of Albuera. |
| | 1836 - Edgar Allan Poe marries his 13-year-old cousin Virginia. |
| | 1843 - The first major wagon train heading for the Northwest sets out with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri on the Oregon Trail. |
| | 1866 - The U.S. Congress eliminates the half dime coin and replaces it with the five cent piece, or nickel. |
| | 1866 - Charles Elmer Hires invents root beer. |
| | 1868 - President Andrew Johnson is acquitted during his impeachment trial, by one vote in the United States Senate. |
| | 1874 - A flood on the Mill River in Massachusetts destroyed much of four villages and killed 139 people. |
| | 1877 - May 16, 1877 political crisis in France. |
| | 1910 - The U.S. Congress authorizes the creation of the United States Bureau of Mines. |
| | 1918 - The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government a jailable offense. |
| | 1919 - US Navy Naval Curtiss aircraft NC-4 commanded by Albert Cushing Read leaves Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight. |
| | 1920 - In Rome, Pope Benedict XV canonizes Joan of Arc as a saint. |
| | 1929 - In Hollywood, California, the first Academy Awards are handed out. |
| | 1938 - A fire at the Terminal Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, kills 35 people. |
| | 1943 - Holocaust: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ends. |
| | 1943 - World War II: The Dambuster Raids by No. 617 Squadron RAF on German dams. |
| | 1948 - Chaim Weizmann is elected as the first President of Israel. |
| | 1960 - Nikita Khrushchev demands an apology from US President Dwight D. Eisenhower for U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union thus ending a Big Four summit in Paris. |
| | 1960 - Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser, at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California. |
| | 1965 - Campbell Soup Company introduces SpaghettiOs under its Franco-American brand. |
| | 1966 - The Communist Party of China issued the "May 16 Notice", marking the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. |
| | 1969 - Venera program: Venera 5, a Soviet spaceprobe, lands on Venus. |
| | 1972 - Decimal currency introduced in Malta. The Pound sterling is henceforth divided into 100 cents. |
| | 1975 - India annexes Sikkim after the mountain state held a referendum where popular vote was in favour of merging with India. |
| | 1975 - Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest. |
| | 1988 - A report by United States' Surgeon General C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine. |
| | 1992 - STS-49: Space Shuttle Endeavour lands safely after a successful maiden voyage. |
| | 2003 - In Casablanca, Morocco, 33 civilians are killed and more than 100 people are injured in the Casablanca terrorist attacks. |
| | 2004 - The Day of Mourning at Bykivnia forest, just outside of Kiev, Ukraine. Here during 1930s and early 1940s communist bolsheviks executed over 100.000 Ukrainian civilians. |
| | 2005 - Kuwait permits women's suffrage in a 35-23 National Assembly vote. |
| | 2006 - A large magnitude 7.4 earthquake occurs near New Zealand. |