Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/May 22

Purge

This is a list of selected May 22 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.

Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.

To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.

← May 21	May 23 →

Staging area

Images

Use only ONE image at a time

King Henry VI of England (also appears on March 4)
Archduke Charles at the Battle of Aspern-Essling (requires undeletion)
Archduke Charles
Blackwall Tunnel under construction
Preston Brooks' attack on Charles Sumner
Lyndon B. Johnson
National emblem of Sri Lanka
HMS Beagle
Lassen Peak eruption
Earthquake damage in Valdivia
Prayut Chan-o-cha

Ineligible

; Unity Day in Yemen (1990)	stub
1455 – Forces led by Richard, Duke of York, and Richard, Earl of Warwick, captured Lancastrian King Henry VI of England, beginning the Wars of the Roses with a Yorkist victory in the First Battle of St Albans.	refimprove section
1809 – War of the Fifth Coalition: Austrian forces under Archduke Charles prevented Napoleon and his French troops from crossing the Danube near Vienna at the Battle of Aspern-Essling.	refimprove
1863 – American Civil War: Union forces began to lay siege to the Confederate-controlled town of Port Hudson, Louisiana.	refimprove section
1915 – Five trains were involved in the United Kingdom's deadliest train crash near Gretna Green, Scotland, killing 227 people and injuring 246 others.	refimprove section
1915 – California's Lassen Peak violently erupted, the only volcanic eruption in the contiguous U.S. in the 20th century until Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980.	Geology of the Lassen volcanic area is TFA for 2022
1942 – United Steelworkers, the largest industrial labor union in North America, was formed.	date not cited
1945 – The United States Army formed a plan to evacuate German scientists and engineers to help in the development of rocket technology.	refimprove
1964 – During a speech at the University of Michigan, U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson presented the goals of his Great Society domestic social reforms to eliminate poverty and racial injustice.	missing page numbers
1990 – The Yemen Arab Republic and the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen merged to become the Republic of Yemen.	refimprove section
2003 – Swedish golfer Annika Sörenstam became the first woman to play in a PGA Tour event in 58 years.	refimprove section

Eligible

853 – Arab–Byzantine wars: The Byzantine navy began a raid on the Nile Delta port city of Damietta, whose garrison was absent at the time.
1629 – Albrecht von Wallenstein and King Christian IV of Denmark signed the Treaty of Lübeck to end Danish intervention in the Thirty Years' War.
1766 – An earthquake registering an estimated 7.1 M_s struck Constantinople and was followed by a tsunami that caused significant damage.
1816 – A riot broke out in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, England, over high unemployment and rising grain costs, spreading to Ely the next day.
1826 – HMS Beagle departed on her first voyage from Plymouth for a hydrographic survey of the Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego regions of South America.
1844 – In Shiraz, Iran, the Báb declared himself to be a messenger of God to Mullá Husayn, leading to the foundation of Bábism, considered to be a precursor to the Baháʼí Faith.
1849 – Abraham Lincoln was issued a patent for an invention to lift boats over obstacles in a river, making him the only U.S. president ever to hold a patent.
1856 – U.S. representative Preston Brooks attacked Senator Charles Sumner in retaliation for a speech in which Sumner fiercely criticized slaveholders.
1958 – Ethnic riots mostly targeting the minority Sri Lankan Tamils broke out in Ceylon, resulting in at least 158 deaths over the next few days.
1960 – The most powerful earthquake ever recorded, registering approximately 9.5 M_w, struck near Valdivia, Chile, generating tsunamis that reached Hawaii and Japan.
1980 – Location testing for Pac-Man, a Japanese arcade game that became an icon of 1980s popular culture, began in Shibuya, Tokyo.
1987 – During Hindu–Muslim rioting in Meerut, India, 19 members of the Provincial Armed Constabulary allegedly massacred 42 Muslims and dumped their bodies in water canals.
2010 – Upon landing in Mangalore, Air India Express Flight 812 overshot the runway and fell down a hillside, killing 158 of the 166 people on board.
2014 – Prayut Chan-o-cha, the commander-in-chief of the Royal Thai Army, launched a coup d'état against the caretaker government following six months of political crisis.
Born/died: | John Forest |d|1538| Magnus Stenbock |b|1665| Martha Washington |d|1802| Richard Wagner |b|1813| Amalia Lindegren |b|1814| Rita Cetina Gutiérrez |b|1846| Fritz von Uhde |b|1848|Tom Driberg|b|1905| Laurence Olivier |b|1907| Apolo Ohno |b|1982| José Enrique Moyal |d|1998| Lee Jong-wook |d|2006

Notes

1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens appears on May 18, so Lassen Peak should not appear in the same year
2010 Thai military crackdown appears on May 19, so 2014 coup should not appear in the same year

May 22: International Day for Biological Diversity

Trevi Fountain

1762 – The Trevi Fountain (pictured) in Rome was officially inaugurated by Pope Clement XIII.
1897 – The first Blackwall Tunnel under the River Thames was opened to improve commerce and trade in the East End of London.
1905 – Sultan Abdul Hamid II established the Ullah Millet, a separate millet for Aromanians within the Ottoman Empire.
1972 – The Dominion of Ceylon changed its name to Sri Lanka, adopted a new constitution, and officially became a republic within the Commonwealth.
2002 – Police announced that the skeletal remains of Federal Bureau of Prisons intern Chandra Levy, who had been missing for a year, had been found in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.

T. Boone Pickens (b. 1928)
Lady Gregory (d. 1932)
Myrtle Bachelder (d. 1997)

More anniversaries: