May 2

2023 Calendar

May 2 is the 122nd day of the year (123rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 243 days remaining until the end of the year.

This day is the first day of the second third of the year, as well as the one third point of a common year because there are 121 days before and 243 days after it in common years. There are 122 days before and 243 after it in leap years. The exact time the second third of the year starts is 4:00 p.m. In countries that use summer time the actual exact time of the midpoint in a common year is at 5:00 p.m for locations in the northern hemisphere, or 3:00 p.m. for locations in the southern hemisphere; this is when 121 days and 16 hours have elapsed and there are 243 days and 8 hours remaining. In a leap year in those countries, the second third of the year starts at midnight. In countries that use summer time, the second third starts at 1:00 a.m. on May 2, or 11:00 p.m. on May 1 in the southern hemisphere. This is due to summer time having advanced the time by one hour.

Events[change | change source]

Up to 1900[change | change source]

1194 - Richard I of England gives Portsmouth its first Royal Charter.
1335 - Otto, Duke of Austria, known as "Otto the Merry", becomes Duke of Carinthia.
1536 - Anne Boleyn is arrested and imprisoned on charges of adultery, incest, treason and witchcraft.
1559 - John Knox returns from exile to Scotland to become leader of the Scottish Reformation.
1568 – Mary, Queen of Scots escapes from Loch Leven Castle.
1611 – The King James Bible is published.
1670 – King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson's Bay Company, to open up fur trade in Canada.
1808 – The people of Madrid rise up in rebellion against French occupation. This event is later memorised in a painting by Francisco de Goya.
1829 - Charles Fremantle of the HMS Challenger declares the Swan River Colony in present-day Western Australia.
1863 - American Civil War: Confederate General Stonewall Jackson is wounded in the Battle of Chancellorsville. He dies of his injuries on May 10.
1866 - Peruvian defenders fight off the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Callao.
1876 - Start of the April Uprising in Bulgaria. In the Julian calendar used at the time, this date was April 20, which is why the uprising is named after the month of April.
1879 - The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is founded in Madrid by Pablo Iglesias.
1885 - The first issue of Good Housekeeping magazine goes on sale.
1885 - King Leopold II of Belgium creates the Congo Free State, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Central Africa. It is estimated that millions may have died during the colonial rule there.
1889 – Menelik II of Ethiopia signs a treaty that gives Italy control of Eritrea.

1901 – 2000[change | change source]

1906 - Closing ceremony of the 1906 Olympics, which are not officially recognized by the IOC as part of the modern Olympic Games.
1918 - General Motors acquires the Chevrolet Motor Company in Delaware.
1920 - The first Negro National League baseball game is played in Indianapolis.
1933 - Adolf Hitler bans trade unions in Germany.
1945 – The Soviet Union captures Berlin in World War II.
1946 - "Battle of Alcatraz" - In one of the most violent events on the prison island in San Francisco Bay - kills two guards and three inmates.
1952 - The first jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet 1, makes its first flight from London to Johannesburg.
1953 - Hussein of Jordan becomes King, after his father, Talal of Jordan, is declared unfit to rule.
1964 - Vietnam War: An explosion sinks the ship USS Card while it is in the dock at Saigon. The Viet Cong is suspected of having carried out the attack.
1964 - First successful climb of Shishapangma, the 14th-highest mountain in the world, and the smallest of those with a height over 8000 metres.
1969 – The Ocean Liner Queen Elizabeth 2 leaves for its first voyage to New York.
1972 - An early-morning fire at Sunshine Mine between the towns of Kellogg and Wallace, Indiana, kills 91 workers.
1982 – Falklands War: The British nuclear submarine HMS Conqueror sinks the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano.
1986 - Chernobyl is evacuated, six days after the nuclear reactor disaster there.
1989 – Hungary opens its western border.
1994 - A bus crash in Gdansk kills 32 people.
1995 - Croatian War of Independence: Serbian forces fire cluster bombs at Zagreb, killing 7 people and injuring 175.
1997 – Tony Blair takes office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, after his Labour Party won the previous day's General Election with a landslide win over John Major's Conservative Party.
1998 – The European Central Bank is formed in Brussels.
1999 – Mireya Moscoso is elected as the first female President of Panama.

From 2001[change | change source]

2004 - Over 630 Muslim nomads are killed by Christians in religious violence in Nigeria.
2006 – The band Tool releases its 4th album 10,000 Days.
2008 – Tropical Cyclone Nargis makes landfall in Burma, where it kills tens of thousands of people.
2008 - The Chaiten volcano in Chile begins erupting. 4,500 people are evacuated from their homes.
2011 – US President Barack Obama announces the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a US military operation in Pakistan.
2011 - A Europe-wide E. coli outbreak, centred in Germany, begins.
2011 - Stephen Harper's Conservative Party of Canada wins an overall majority in parliament in Canada's election. The Liberal Party of Canada finishes third, behind the New Democratic Party of Jack Layton, who dies a few months later.
2012 – A pastel version of Edvard Munch's The Scream sells for 120 million US Dollars, setting a new record for a work of art sold at auction.
2014 - A landslide in Afghanistan kills at least 350 people, with many reported missing.
2014 - Violent clashes in Odessa during the Ukrainian political crisis lead to a building fire in which at least 31 pro-Russian activists are killed.
2018 - Basque separatist group ETA announces its intention to dissolve.