On May 16
On May 16, the Human Saga records one pivotal event: Sykes-Picot Agreement partitions the Ottoman Middle East (1916).
On this day
The Sykes-Picot Agreement was a secret wartime convention concluded on 16 May 1916 between Britain and France, with the assent of Imperial Russia, to define their respective spheres of influence and control in the Arab lands of the Ottoman…
Also this week in history (May 13 – May 19)
On 14 May 1796, the English physician Edward Jenner performed a landmark experiment in Berkeley, Gloucestershire, that established the practice of vaccination.
On 14 May 1948, as the British Mandate over Palestine expired, David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel in Tel Aviv.
On 14 May 1607 roughly a hundred settlers sent by the Virginia Company of London established a fort on Jamestown Island in the Chesapeake Bay, founding the first permanent English settlement in North America.
On 13 May 1888 Princess Isabel, acting as regent for her father Emperor Pedro II, signed the Lei Áurea, or Golden Law, which declared slavery abolished in Brazil with immediate effect and without compensation to slaveholders.
On 14 May 1955 the Soviet Union and seven Eastern European communist states signed the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance in Warsaw, creating the Warsaw Pact.
The Frankfurt National Assembly, which first met in the Paulskirche on 18 May 1848, was the first freely elected parliament for all of Germany and the boldest attempt of the 1848 revolutions to create a unified, constitutional German…