May 21: What Happened on This Day in History (High_school Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1502 - The island of Saint Helena is discovered by the Portuguese explorer João da Nova.
2. 1881 - The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton inWashington, D.C..
3. 1904 - The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) is founded in Paris.
4. 1932 - Bad weather forces Amelia Earhart to land in a pasture in Derry, Northern Ireland, and she thereby becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
5. 1934 - Oskaloosa, Iowa, becomes the first municipality in the United States to finger print all of its citizens.
6. 1937 - A Soviet station, North Pole-1, becomes the first scientific research settlement to operate on the drift ice of the Arctic Ocean.
7. 1951 - The opening of the Ninth Street Show, otherwise known as the 9th Street Art Exhibition - a gathering of a number of notable artists, and the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde, collectively known as the New York School.
8. 1961 - American civil rights movement: Alabama Governor John Malcolm Patterson declares martial law in an attempt to restore order after race riots break out.
9. 1972 - Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is damaged by avandal, the mentally disturbed Hungarian geologist Laszlo Toth.
10. 2011 - Radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted that the end of the world would occur on this day, a prophecy that would prove incorrect.
11. Famous Birthdays: Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis (French mathematician and engineer), Mary Anning (English paleontologist), Charles Albert Gobat (Swiss lawyer and politician, Nobel Prize laureate), Willem Einthoven (Indonesian-Dutch physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate ), Günter Blobel (Polish-American biologist, Nobel Prize laureate)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: May 20

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: May 22

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.