On May 5
No pivotal events are recorded on exactly May 5 in the Human Saga — here is the surrounding week in history.
This week in history (May 2 – May 8)
On 8 May 1980 the World Health Assembly officially declared that smallpox had been eradicated, the first and so far only human disease to be eliminated worldwide through deliberate effort.
On 3 May 1491, the ManiKongo (king) Nzinga a Nkuwu was baptised as João I at Mbanza Kongo, marking the first conversion of a sub-Saharan African monarch to Roman Catholicism.
On 6 May 1682 King Louis XIV formally established the seat of the French monarchy at the Palace of Versailles, transforming his father's hunting lodge into the most magnificent royal residence in Europe and the operational centre of the…
On 4 May 1799 a British East India Company army and its allies stormed the island fortress of Seringapatam (Srirangapatna), capital of the Kingdom of Mysore, ending the fourth and final Anglo-Mysore War.
On 7 May 1824 Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125, received its first performance at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna.
On 4 May 1919, around three thousand students gathered in Tiananmen Square in Beijing to protest the decision at the Paris Peace Conference to transfer Germany's former concessions in Shandong to Japan rather than return them to China.
In late 2009 Greece revealed that its budget deficits were far larger than previously reported, and by April 2010 credit-rating agencies had downgraded Greek bonds to junk status, freezing the country out of private capital markets and…
On 2 May 2011 (1 May in the US), US Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaeda and architect of the September 11 attacks, during a covert night raid on his fortified compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.