History of the Day for:
May 5
- 1813: Theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard was born.
- 1818: Political philosopher Karl Marx was born in Prussia.
- 1821: Napoleon Bonaparte died a British prisoner on the island of St. Helena.
- 1847: The American Medical Association was organized in Philadelphia.
- 1867: In the Mexican-French Wars, the French, with 7,000 men under Comte de Lorencez, were defeated by the Mexicans at the battle of Puebla, marking the celebration of Cinco de Mayo; Nellie Bly, the U.S. reporter who pioneered investigative journalism, was born. Attempting to beat the fictional Phileas Fogg, she traveled around the world in 72 days.
- 1891: The Music Hall in New York City was dedicated. It was later renamed Carnegie Hall.
- 1925: John T. Scopes was arrested for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution.
- 1930: Mahatma Gandhi was arrested by the British in India after his campaign of disobedience.
- 1961: Alan Shepard became the first American to travel in space with a 15-minute sub-orbital flight in a Mercury spacecraft.
- 1981: Bobby Sands became the first of the 10 IRA hunger strikers to die in the Maze prison in Northern Ireland.
- 1987: The Iran-Contra hearings began.
- 1988: Eugene Antonio Marino became the nation's first black Roman Catholic archbishop.
- 1994: Singapore carried out a controversial caning sentence imposed for vandalism on U.S. teenager Michael Fay.
- 1994: The signing of the Bishkek Protocol between Armenia and Azerbaijan effectively freezes the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
- 2005: A United Kingdom general election results in the re-election of Tony Blair's Labour Party for a third consecutive term.
- 2006: The government of Sudan signs an accord with the Sudan Liberation Army.
- 2007: Kenya Airways Flight KQ 507 crashes in Cameroon.