History of the Day for:
May 22
- 1455: The opening battle in England's 30-year War of the Roses took place at St. Albans, when the Lancastrians defeated the Yorkists.
- 1761: The first life insurance policy in the U.S. was issued in Philadelphia.
- 1813: Richard Wagner, German composer notably of "Der Ring des Nibelungen" and "Lohengrin," was born.
- 1841: Henry Kennedy of Philadelphia received a patent for the reclining chair.
- 1859: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, British novelist who created the detective character Sherlock Holmes, was born in Edinburgh.
- 1868: Near Marshfield, Ind., seven gang members held up a train, detaching the engine and stealing $96,000. The heist became known as the "Great Train Robbery."
- 1907: Laurence Olivier, English actor, director and producer, was born.
- 1908: The Wright Brothers patented their first flying machine.
- 1939: The "Pact of Steel" was signed between Hitler and Mussolini, committing Germany and Italy to support each other in times of war.
- 1947: Congress approved aid for Greece and Turkey as part of the Truman Doctrine.
- 1958: Rocker Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13-year-old cousin, Myra.
- 1967: "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," the Public Broadcasting System's longest?running children's program, premiered; the last original episode of "To Tell The Truth" aired on CBS.
- 1969: In a lead-up to the first moon landing, astronauts on Apollo X orbited the moon while the lunar module "Snoopy" separated from the command module "Charlie Brown" and flew to within 9 miles of the moon's surface.
- 1972: Ceylon became the republic of Sri Lanka; President Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit the Soviet Union.
- 1979: In Canada, the 11-year premiership of Pierre Trudeau ended when the Liberal Party was efeated in a general election by the Progressive Conservative Party led by Joe Clark.
- 1981: In Britain, Peter Sutcliffe (the Yorkshire Ripper) was jailed for life after being convicted of 13 counts of murder.
- 1992: After hosting "The Tonight Show" for nearly 30 years, Johnny Carson signed off.
- 1997: Kelly Flinn, the Air Force's first female bomber pilot certified for combat, accepted a general discharge and avoided a court-martial on charges of adultery, lying and disobeying an order.
- 1998: Lewinsky scandal: a federal judge rules that United States Secret Service agents can be compelled to testify before a grand jury concerning the scandal, involving President Bill Clinton.
- 2002: In Washington, D.C., the remains of the missing Chandra Levy are found in Rock Creek Park.
- 2002: American civil rights movement: a jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicts former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murders of four girls in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.
- 2003: In Fort Worth, Texas, Annika Sörenstam becomes the first woman to play the PGA Tour in 58 years.
- 2004: The U.S. town of Hallam, Nebraska, is wiped out by a powerful F4 tornado (part of the May 2004 tornado outbreak sequence) that broke a width record at an astounding 2.5 miles (4.0 km) wide, which kills one resident.
- 2008: The Late-May 2008 tornado outbreak sequence unleashes 235 tornadoes, including an EF4 and an EF5 tornado, between 22 May and 31 May 2008. The tornadoes struck 19 states and one Canadian province.