Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/May 15

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This is a lists selected May 15 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Before doing so, please review the selected anniversaries guidelines. If your suggestion is potentially controversial or relates to a day currently or soon to appear on the Main Page, post it on the talk page instead.

Please note:

Events listed on the Main Page are selected based on article quality and to provide a diverse range of topics, rather than solely on the importance or significance of the events.
Only four or five events are featured each day; therefore, not all important or significant events can be included.
An event is generally excluded if it is already the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.

To report an error in content currently on the Main Page, see Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors. If a listed event is inaccurate, please first seek consensus and update the corresponding article before making changes here.

← May 14	May 16 →

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Images

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Inukai Tsuyoshi
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
and Susan B. Anthony
Van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet
USCAR Building
Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign
"Cadets at [the Battle of] New Market"
Baily's beads observed during a solar eclipse in 1999
Robert Fico

Ineligible

Blurb	Reason
; Constituent Assembly Day in Lithuania	no footnotes
Teachers' Day in Mexico and South Korea;	refimprove
Independence Day in Paraguay (1814);	outdated, multiple issues section
1793 – Inventor Diego Marín Aguilera, the "father of aviation" in Spain, flew one of the first gliders for about 300 yd (270 m).	heavily reliant on unreliable sources
1850 – Members of the United States 1st Cavalry Regiment massacred at least 135 Pomo in Lake County, California.	Conflicts with lead and infobox. The body says 60 Pomo on the island and 75 Indians on the Russian River
1891 – Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Rerum novarum, which addressed the condition of the working classes and is considered to be the foundation of modern Catholic social teaching.	primary sources
1905 – Las Vegas was established as a railroad town, after 110 acres (0.45 km²) owned by the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad was auctioned off.	refimprove section
1928 – Mickey and Minnie Mouse made their film debuts in the animated cartoon Plane Crazy.	M/M both: refimprove section; Plane Crazy: refimprove section
1934 – Latvian Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis dissolved the Saeima and established an authoritarian rule.	needs expert attention, refimprove
1932 – Japanese Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated in an attempted coup d'état by radical elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy.	refimprove section, expansion
1935 – The first line of the Moscow Metro opened to the public, connecting Sokolniki to Park Kultury with a branch from Okhotny Ryad to Smolenskaya.	outdated
1941 – Playing for the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball, Joe DiMaggio began a 56-game hitting streak, setting a record that still stands today.	trivial pop culture references
1948 – One day after the End of the British Mandate for Palestine, Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia joined the ongoing conflict to begin the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.	lots of CN tags (11)
1955 – The Austrian State Treaty was signed in Vienna, re-establishing an independent Austria.	needs more footnots
1974 – A unit of the Golani Brigade assaulted an elementary school in Ma'alot, Israel, where three armed members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine had taken 115 people hostage, resulting in 28 deaths.	refimprove section
1991 – Édith Cresson became the only female prime minister of France.	unreferenced section
1997 – During the dedication of the Laos Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, the United States first publicly acknowledged its role in the Laotian Civil War, which had ended 22 years earlier.	lots of CN tags (14)
Mleh, Prince of Armenia \|d\|1175	missing page numbers
* 1525 – Insurgent peasants led by preacher Thomas Müntzer were defeated at the Battle of Frankenhausen, ending the German Peasants' War.	Tagged for lack of page numbers

Eligible

1252 – Pope Innocent IV issued the papal bull Ad extirpanda, authorizing the use of torture on heretics during the Medieval Inquisition.
1602 – Early English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold arrived on Cape Cod in present-day Massachusetts.
1836 – English astronomer Francis Baily observed Baily's beads (example pictured), a phenomenon during a solar eclipse in which the rugged topography of the lunar limb allows sunlight to shine through.
1862 – Fertilisation of Orchids, the first book by Charles Darwin which demonstrated the power of natural selection in detail, was published.
1869 – Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, breaking away from the American Equal Rights Association which they had also previously founded.
1904 – Russo-Japanese War: The Japanese battleships Hatsuse and Yashima sank after striking several mines off Port Arthur, China.
1911 – Mexican Revolution: A force of Maderistas captured Torreón and proceeded to massacre 303 of the city's Chinese residents.
1912 – During a match, baseball star Ty Cobb enters the stands and assaults a fan who had heckled him, leading to his suspension.
1945 – The British Army directed fleeing Croatian soldiers to surrender to the Yugoslav Partisans, beginning the Bleiburg repatriations.
1953 – Don Murphy organized the first pinewood derby, an event for Cub Scouts of the Boy Scouts of America where wooden cars built by the scouts are raced.
1957 – The United Kingdom tested its first hydrogen bomb over Malden Island in Operation Grapple.
1966 – Disapproving of General Tôn Thất Đính's handling of the Buddhist Uprising, South Vietnamese prime minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ ordered an attack on his forces and ousted Đính from his post.
1970 – Police opened fire during a confrontation with a group of Jackson State College students, killing two students and injuring twelve others.
1972 – The Ryukyu Islands were returned to Japan by the United States, and the U.S. occupation government was abolished.
1990 – Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold at auction at Christie's in New York for US$82.5 million, making it the world's most expensive painting at the time.
2004 – Arsenal became the first football team in England's top flight to finish a season undefeated since Preston North End did so in 1888–1889.
2010 – Three days before her seventeenth birthday, Jessica Watson arrived in Sydney after sailing non-stop and unassisted around the world.
2024 – Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico (pictured) is hospitalised after an assassination attempt.
Born/died: |Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban |baptised|1633| Levi Lincoln Sr. |b|1749| Klemens von Metternich |b|1773| Élie Metchnikoff |b|1845| Williamina Fleming |b|1857| E. Urner Goodman |b|1891| Ida Freund |d|1914| Jakucho Setouchi |b|1922| Lawrence Sabatini |b|1930| D. H. Turner |b|1931| Esther Fischer-Homberger |b|1940| Mohamed Brahmi |b|1955| Patrice Evra |b|1981| Andy Murray |b|1987| Ousmane Dembélé |b|1997| Jean-Luc Dehaene |d|2014 Elisabeth Bing |d|2015

Notes

Kent State shootings appears on May 4, so Jackson State killings should not appear in the same year
Israeli Declaration of Independence appears on May 14, so Arab–Israeli War should not appear in the same year
Allied-occupied Austria appears on July 27, so Austrian State Treaty should not appear in the same year

May 15: Feast day of Saint Carthage (Catholicism); Nakba Day in Palestinian communities; Peace Officers Memorial Day in the United States

Statue of Valentinian II

392 – Roman emperor Valentinian II (pictured) was found hanged in his residence in Vienne, in present-day France.
1725 – Bach led the first performance of his cantata Ich bin ein guter Hirt, BWV 85, about Jesus as the Good Shepherd.
1855 – Thieves stole 224 pounds (102 kg) of gold from a train travelling from London to Folkestone, England.
1864 – American Civil War: A small Confederate force, which included cadets from the Virginia Military Institute, forced the Union army out of the Shenandoah Valley.
1916 – Jesse Washington, a teenage African-American farmhand, was lynched in Waco, Texas.

Hilary of Galeata (d. 558)
Emily Dickinson (d. 1886)
K. M. Cariappa (d. 1993)

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