May 31
1279 BC
Ramesses II (The Great) (19th dynasty) becomes pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.
455 Emperor
Petronius Maximus is stoned to death by an angry mob while fleeing Rome.
526 A devastating
earthquake strikes Antioch killing 250,000.
1859 The clock tower at the Houses of Parliament, which houses
Big Ben, starts keeping time.
1864 American Civil War:
Overland Campaign:
Battle of Cold Harbor: The
Army of Northern Virginia under
Robert E. Lee engages the
Army of the Potomac under
Ulysses S. Grant and
George Meade.
1879 Gilmores Garden in New York City is renamed
Madison Square Garden by
William Henry Vanderbilt and is opened to the public at 26th Street and Madison Avenue.
1889
Johnstown Flood: Over 2,200 people die after a dam fails and sends a 60-foot (18-meter) wall of water over the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
1909 The
National Negro Committee, forerunner to the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, convenes for the first time.
1927 The last
Ford Model T rolls off the assembly line after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles.
1929 The first talking Mickey Mouse cartoon,
"The Karnival Kid", is released.
1973 The United States Senate votes to cut off funding for the bombing of
Khmer Rouge targets within Cambodia, hastening the end of the
Cambodian Civil War.
1977 The
Trans-Alaska Pipeline System is completed.
1985
United StatesCanada tornado outbreak: Forty-one tornadoes hit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario, leaving 76 dead.
1989 A group of six members of the guerrilla group
Tϊpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) of Peru, shoot dead eight transsexuals, in the city of Tarapoto.
2005
Vanity Fair reveals that
Mark Felt was
Deep Throat.
2013 The
asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon make their
closest approach to Earth for the next two centuries.
Births
1819 Walt Whitman; 1852 Julius Richard Petri (
Petri dish); 1894 Fred Allen; 1898 Norman Vincent Peale; 1908 Don Ameche; 1922 Denholm Elliott; 1930 Clint Eastwood; 1938 Johnny Paycheck; 1939 Terry Waite; 1943 Sharon Gless, Joe Namath; 1948 John Bonham; 1949 Tom Berenger; 1950 Gregory Harrison; 1955 Tommy Emmanuel; 1960 Chris Elliott; 1961 Lea Thompson; 1962 Corey Hart (he wears his sunglasses at night); 1964 Darryl McDaniels (Run D.M.C.); 1965 Brooke Shields; 1972 Archie Panjabi; 1976 Colin Farrell
Deaths
1809 Joseph Haydn; 1983 Jack Dempsey; 1996 Timothy Leary; 2001 Arlene Francis; 2013 Jean Stapleton; 2015
Slim Richey