Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/May 15

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This is a list of selected May 15 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 14	May 16 →

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Images

Use only ONE image at a time

Statue of Valentinian II
Kārlis Ulmanis

Kārlis Ulmanis
Inukai Tsuyoshi
width=x180
title=Van Gogh's "Portrait of Dr. Gachet"
USCAR Building
Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign
"Cadets at [the Battle of] New Market"

Ineligible

Blurb	Reason
; Constituent Assembly Day in Lithuania	no footnotes
Teachers' Day in Mexico and South Korea;	refimprove
Independence Day in Paraguay (1814);	outdated, multiple issues section
392 – Roman emperor Valentinian II was found hanged in his residence in Vienne, Gaul.	lead too short, refimprove section
1252 – Pope Innocent IV issued the papal bull Ad extirpanda, authorizing the use of torture on heretics during the Medieval Inquisition.	short
1793 – Inventor Diego Marín Aguilera, the "father of aviation" in Spain, flew one of the first gliders for about 300 yd (270 m).	heavily reliant on unreliable sources
1891 – Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Rerum novarum, which addressed the condition of the working classes and is considered to be the foundation of modern Catholic social teaching.	primary sources
1905 – Las Vegas was established as a railroad town, after 110 acres (0.45 km²) owned by the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad was auctioned off.	refimprove section
1928 – Mickey and Minnie Mouse made their film debuts in the animated cartoon Plane Crazy.	M/M both: refimprove section; Plane Crazy: refimprove section
1934 – Latvian Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis dissolved the Saeima and established an authoritarian rule.	needs expert attention, refimprove
1932 – Japanese Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated in an attempted coup d'état by radical elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy.	refimprove section, expansion
1935 – The first line of the Moscow Metro opened to the public, connecting Sokolniki to Park Kultury with a branch from Okhotny Ryad to Smolenskaya.	outdated
1941 – Playing for the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball, Joe DiMaggio began a 56-game hitting streak, setting a record that still stands today.	trivial pop culture references
1955 – The Austrian State Treaty was signed in Vienna, re-establishing an independent Austria.	needs more footnots
1974 – A unit of the Golani Brigade assaulted an elementary school in Ma'alot, Israel, where three armed members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine had taken 115 people hostage, resulting in 28 deaths.	refimprove section
1991 – Édith Cresson became the only female prime minister of France.	unreferenced section
1997 – During the dedication of the Laos Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, the United States first publicly acknowledged its role in the Laotian Civil War, which had ended 22 years earlier.	lots of CN tags
Mleh, Prince of Armenia (d. 1175)	missing page numbers

Eligible

1602 – English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold led the first recorded European expedition to visit Cape Cod in present-day Massachusetts.
1850 – Members of the 1st Cavalry Regiment of the United States Cavalry massacred at least 135 Pomo in Lake County, California.
1864 – American Civil War: A small Confederate force, which included cadets from the Virginia Military Institute, forced the Union Army out of the Shenandoah Valley.
1869 – Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton (both pictured) founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, breaking away from the American Equal Rights Association which they had also previously founded.
1904 – Russo-Japanese War: After striking several mines off Port Arthur, the Japanese battleships Hatsuse and Yashima sank.
1911 – Mexican Revolution: A force of Maderistas captured Torreón and proceeded to massacre 303 of the city's Chinese residents.
1916 – Jesse Washington, a teenage African-American farmhand, was lynched in Waco, Texas, U.S., in what became a well-known example of racially motivated lynching.
1948 – One day after the Israeli Declaration of Independence, Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia invaded Israel to begin the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
1953 – Don Murphy organized the first pinewood derby, an event for Cub Scouts of the Boy Scouts of America where wooden cars built by the scouts are raced.
1957 – The United Kingdom tested its first hydrogen bomb over Malden Island in Operation Grapple.
1966 – Disapproving of his handling of the Buddhist Uprising, South Vietnamese prime minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ ordered an attack on the forces of General Tôn Thất Đính and ousted him from the position.
1972 - The Ryukyu Islands were returned to Japan by the United States, and the U.S. occupation government was abolished.
1990 – Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold at auction in Christie's New York office for US$82.5 million, at the time the world's most expensive painting.
2004 – Arsenal became the first football team in England's top flight to finish a season undefeated since Preston North End did so in 1888–1889.
Born/died: Levi Lincoln Sr. (b. 1749) | Klemens von Metternich (b. 1773) | Élie Metchnikoff (b. 1845) | Emily Dickinson (d. 1886) | Jakucho Setouchi (b. 1922) | Mohamed Brahmi (b. 1955) | Patrice Evra (b. 1981) | Elisabeth Bing (d. 2015)

Notes

Kent State shootings appears on May 4, so Jackson State killings should not appear in the same year
Israeli Declaration of Independence appears on May 14, so Arab–Israeli War should not appear in the same year
Allied-occupied Austria appears on July 27, so Austrian State Treaty should not appear in the same year

May 15: Feast day of Saint Carthage (Irish Catholicism); Nakba Day in Palestinian communities; Sanja Matsuri begins in Tokyo (2020)

Baily's beads observed during a solar eclipse in 1999

1525 – Insurgent peasants led by preacher Thomas Müntzer were defeated at the Battle of Frankenhausen, ending the German Peasants' War.
1836 – English astronomer Francis Baily observed Baily's beads (example pictured), a phenomenon during a solar eclipse in which the rugged topography of the lunar limb allows sunlight to shine through.
1945 – The British Army directed fleeing Croatian soldiers to surrender to the Yugoslav Partisans, beginning the Bleiburg repatriations.
1970 – Police opened fire during a confrontation with a group of Jackson State College students, killing two students and injuring twelve others.
2010 – Upon her return to Sydney three days before her 17th birthday, Jessica Watson became the youngest person to sail non-stop and unassisted around the world.

Williamina Fleming (b. 1857)
Ida Freund (d. 1914)
Esther Fischer-Homberger (b. 1940)

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