This Week In History
May 17, 1510
Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli, whose works such as Primavera (detail shown) embody the Italian Renaissance spirit, died in poverty at the age of 65
1540: Moghul emperor Humayun was defeated at Kanauj and was forced to flee India by Sher Shah of Sur
1890: Mascagni’s opera Cavalleria Rusticana was first performed at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome
2015: The Iraqi city of Ramadi fell to Islamic State fighters after government forces abandoned their positions
May 18, 1980
The eruption of Mount St Helens in the US state of Washington killed 57 people, took 396m off the top of the volcano and created a cloud of ash 762m long
1974: India became the world’s sixth nuclear power when it successfully detonated its first nuclear bomb
1990: East and West Germany signed a monetary union treaty, the first step on the road to unification
2005: It was confirmed that the dwarf planet Pluto had two more moons, Nix and Hydra, making five in total
2009: Sri Lankan government forces defeated the Tamil Tigers, ending a 26-year civil war
May 19, 2018
Britain’s Prince Harry and former actress Meghan Markle were married at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, becoming the Duke and Duchess of Sussex
1845: Captain Sir John Franklin set sail on his ill-fated Arctic expedition to chart and navigate the Northwest Passage
1890: Ho Chi Minh, influential communist leader and president of North Vietnam, was born
1997: The Sierra Gorda Biosphere was established to preserve the wide diversity of plant and animal life in Mexico
2000: Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudry of Fiji was taken hostage in an armed coup
May 20, 1570
Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius issued Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas ,a book of maps for which copper printing plates were engraved
1980: The Canadian province of Quebec voted against a proposal to negotiate independence from Canada
1995: Italian magistrates called for former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi to be tried on charges of corruption
2000: The shuttle Atlantis blasted off to carry out essential repairs to the fledgling International Space Station
2010: US scientists announced the creation of the first artificial lifeform with a synthetic genome
May 21, 1945
Movie legend Humphrey Bogart married his co-star Lauren Bacall. Despite their 25-year age gap they remained happily married until Bogart’s death in 1957
2010: Fears of an environmental catastrophe grew in Louisiana after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion
2010: Saeed al-masri, Al Qaeda’s third-in-command, was killed in a targeted US drone airstrike
2015: Islamic State took control of the ancient ruins of Palmyra, one of the archaeological jewels of the Middle East
2015: A 35,000 year-old wolf bone was found to contain dog DNA, suggesting early domestication
May 22, 2000
Severe famine and drought ravaged the wartorn border region between Ethiopia and Eritrea
337: Constantine the Great was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, baptised on his deathbed
1960: A magnitude 9.5 earthquake, the most powerful ever recorded, struck southern Chile
1990: Former Marxist South Yemen and conservative North Yemen merged into a single state
May 23, 2015
Renowned US mathematician John Nash, the subject of the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind ,was killed in a car crash in New Jersey
1785: Benjamin Franklin invented bifocal spectacles, with lenses split to view bot h distant and near objects
1995: The first version of Java, used by both Google and Android Inc., was released by Sun Microsystems
2003: WHO travel restrictions for Hong Kong and China were lifted as the SARS crisis showed signs of easing
2010: An international flotilla set sail for Gaza with 10,000 tons of aid to break a three-year Israeli blockade