Historical Events
- May 3 Charles XV of Sweden-Norway is crowned king of Sweden
Garibaldi's Mille Sets Sail
May 6 Giuseppe Garibaldi's Mille sets sail from Genoa to the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies
- May 6 San Francisco Olympic Club, 1st US athletic club forms
Republican Convention
May 16 -18] Chicago: Republican convention selects Abraham Lincoln as candidate
- May 17 German football club TSV 1860 München is founded
- May 18 US Republican Party nominates Abraham Lincoln for president
- May 26 Giuseppe Garibaldi occupies Palermo, Italy
Famous Birthdays
- May 2 D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, Scottish zoologist and classicist (On Growth & Form), born in Edinburgh, Scotland (d. 1948)
Theodor Herzl (1860-1904)
May 2 Austrian journalist and founder (Zionist movement), born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary
- May 2 William Maddock Bayliss, British physiologist, co-discoverer of hormones, born in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire (d. 1924)
- May 3 John Scott Haldane, Scottish physiologist, born in Edinburgh, Scotland (d. 1936)
- May 3 Vito Volterra, Italian mathematician and physicist, born in Ancona, Italy (d. 1940)
- May 4 Emil Nikolaus von Reznicek, Austrian composer (Donna Diana), born in Vienna, Austria (d. 1945)
- May 9 J.M. [James Matthew] Barrie, Scottish novelist and playwright (Peter Pan), born in Kirriemuir, Angus (d. 1937)
- May 15 Ellen Axson Wilson (née Ellen Louise Axson), American artist and First Lady (US, 1913-14; New Jersey, 1911-13), 1st wife of US President Woodrow Wilson, born in Savannah, Georgia (d. 1914)
- May 17 Austin Lane Crothers, American politician (Governor of Maryland, 1908-12), born in Conowingo, Maryland (d. 1912)
- May 19 Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, Prime Minister of Italy (1917-19) who represented Italy at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, born in Palermo, Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (d. 1952)
- May 20 Eduard Buchner, German chemist, Nobel laureate (d. 1917)
- May 21 Willem Einthoven, Dutch physiologist and inventor of the electrocardiodiogram (Nobel Prize in Medicine 1924), born in Semarang, Dutch East Indies (d. 1927)
- May 25 James McKeen Cattell, American psychologist, born in Easton, Pennsylvania (d. 1944)
- May 27 Manuel Teixeira Gomes, Portuguese politician and writer (7th President of Portugal 1923-25), born in Portimão, Portugal (d. 1941)
- May 29 Isaac Albéniz, Spanish pianist and composer (Suite española, Tango in D), born in Camprodon, Spain (d. 1909)
- May 31 Walter Sickert, Danish-English painter (The Miner), born in Munich (d. 1942)
Famous Weddings
George McClellan
May 22 US Major General George McClellan (33) weds Mary Ellen Marcy at Calvary Church in NYC, New York
Famous Deaths
- May 12 Charles Barry, British architect (rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, dies at 64
- May 13 Christian Gmelin, German chemist, dies at 67
- May 14 Ludwig Bechstein, German writer (b. 1801)
- May 21 Johannes Frederik Fröhlich, Danish violinist and composer, dies at 53
- May 23 Albert Richard Smith, author/lecturer, dies
- May 31 Peter Vivian Daniel, American jurist, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1841-60), dies at 76
