History of the Day for:
May 12
- 1820: Florence Nightingale, English nurse and founder of the modern nursing profession, was born in Italy.
- 1870: The Dominion of Canada purchased Manitoba from the Hudson's Bay Company and made it a province.
- 1932: The body of the kidnapped infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was found in Hopewell, N.J.
- 1937: King George VI of England was crowned at Westminster Abbey in London.
- 1943: All organized Axis resistance in Tunisia ended and the German commander in North Africa surrendered.
- 1949: The Russian blockade of Berlin ended after 11 months with a food convoy driving into the city.
- 1955: Sam Jones of the Chicago Cubs became the first African American to pitch a major league no-hitter, against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
- 1970: The Senate voted unanimously to confirm Harry A. Blackmun as a Supreme Court justice; Ernie Banks of the Chicago Cubs smacked his 500th home run.
- 1975: President Ford ordered the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea into the Gulf of Thailand after the Cambodian navy seized the American merchant ship Mayaguez.
- 1978: The Commerce Department said hurricanes would no longer be named exclusively after women.
- 1989: Retired British pilot Jack Mann was kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists in Beirut.
- 1994: A token force of Palestinian police crossed the Jordan River in preparation for the end of 27 years of Israeli military rule in a West Bank enclave around Jericho.
- 1997: Australian Susie Maroney became the first woman to swim all the way from Cuba to Florida, covering the 118-mile distance in 24 1/2 hours.
- 1999: David Steel becomes the first Presiding Officer (speaker) of the modern Scottish Parliament.
- 2002: Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro becoming first President of the United States, in or out of office, to visit the island since Castro's 1959 revolution.
- 2003: The Riyadh compound bombings, carried out by Al Qaeda, kill 26.
- 2003: Fifty-nine Democratic lawmakers bring the Texas Legislature to a standstill by going into hiding in a dispute over a Republican congressional redistricting plan.
- 2006: Mass unrest by the Primeiro Comando da Capital begins in São Paulo, Brazil, leaving at least 150 dead.
- 2007: Karachi riots , which killed over 50 people in Karachi and above 100 injured, on the arrival of Chief Justice of Pakistan; Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry in Karachi city.
- 2008: Wenchuan earthquake (measuring around 8.0 magnitude) occurs in Sichuan, China, killing over 69,000 people.