On This Day - 21st May

1904 - Fats Waller born
1916 - Harold Robbins born
1917 - Dennis Day and Raymond Burr born
1923 - Stanley Baldwin becomes Prime Minister
1924 - Peggy Cass born

1927 - Charles Lindbergh makes the first solo flight across the Atlantic
1950 - Two people die and more are injured as violent storms and a tornado sweep through counties around London.
1958 - Trunk dialling heralds cheaper calls
1961 - Martial law is imposed in the town of Montgomery, Alabama, after violent racial clashes.

1966 - American Cassius Clay beats Britain's Henry Cooper in the sixth round at the Arsenal football ground, North London.
1972 - Notorious B.I.G. born
1974 - Fairuza Balk born
1991 - Rajiv Gandhi, the former Indian prime minister, is assassinated in a bomb attack in Tamil Nadu.
2011 - Bernard Hopkins, 46, becomes the oldest man to win a boxing world title when he defeated Canadian Jean Pascal by unanimous decision to claim the WBC and IBO light-heavyweight belts.

On This Day - 20th May

1900 - Relief of Mafeking
1908 - Jimmy Stewart born
1919 - George Gobel born
1936 - Anthony Zerbe born
1940 - Stan Mikita born
1944 - Joe Cocker born
1946 - Cher born
1958 - Citizens of the English town of High Wycombe witness a unique ceremony at which the mayor is weighed in public.
1959 - Bronson Pinchot born
1965 - Britain's police are to be armed with tear gas guns and grenades to be used against armed criminals or dangerous individuals.
1972 - Busta Rhymes born

1973 - Britain has sent in Royal Navy ships to protect trawlers in the disputed Icelandic 50-mile zone as the so-called "cod war" escalates.
1983 - 17 people are killed and 197 people injured in a car bomb explosion in South Africa's capital city, Pretoria.
2000 - The British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie celebrate the birth of their baby son who will be called Leo. He is the first child to be born to a serving British Prime Minister for more than 150 years and was named after Mr Blair's father.
2012 - 'Bee Gee' singer Robin Gibb dies aged 62 of liver and kidney failure.

On This Day - 19th May

1890 - Ho Chi Minh born
1898 - Former Prime Minister William Gladstone dies
1925 - Malcolm X born
1935 - T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) dies
1939 - James Fox born
1941 - Nora Ephron born

1945 - Pete Townshend born
1946 - Andre the Giant born
1951 - Joey Ramone born
1952 - Grace Jones born
1968 - Kyle Eastwood born
1974 - Valery Giscard d'Estaing is elected President of France, defeating socialist Francois Mitterrand.
1976 - Kevin Garnett born
1980 - 57 people die after the massive eruption of Mount St Helens volcano in Washington State, USA.
1986 - South African troops attack Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana bringing to an end diplomatic efforts to bring a peaceful end to apartheid.
1997 - The sponsorship of sports events by tobacco firms is to be outlawed, says Health Secretary Frank Dobson.
2004 - Security at the House of Commons comes under scrutiny after Fathers 4 Justice protesters attack the prime minister.

On This Day - 18th May

1897 - Frank Capra born
1911 - Composer Gustav Mahler dies
1912 - Perry Como born
1919 - Margot Fonteyn born
1920 - Pope John Paul II born
1930 - Pernell Roberts born
1931 - Robert Morse born
1934 - Dwayne Hickman born
1937 - Brooks Robinson born
1944 - British and Polish forces take control of Monte Cassino, the ancient Italian monastery that was a symbol of German resistance
1946 - Reggie Jackson born
1950 - Almost exactly a year after signing the North Atlantic Treaty, 12 nations have agreed a permanent organisation for the defence of the United States and Europe.
1952 - George Strait born
1955 - Chow Yun-Fat born

1964 - Scores of youths are given prison sentences following a Whitsun weekend of violent clashes between gangs of Mods and Rockers at a number of resorts on the south coast of England.
1970 - Tina Fey born

1972 - The Duke of Windsor was not well enough to attend tea with the Queen when she came to visit his home in Paris this afternoon.
1991 - Britain's first astronaut, 27-year-old Helen Sharman from Sheffield, has blasts into orbit. The Soviet Soyuz TM-12 space capsule made a textbook launch from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the Soviet republic of Kazakhstan at 1350 BST carrying Miss Sharman and fellow cosmonauts Anatoly Artebartsky and Sergei Krikalyov.

On This Day - 17th May

1875 - The first Kentucky Derby is run
1902 - Ayatollah Khomeini born
1911 - Maureen O'Sullivan born
1936 - Dennis Hopper born
1943 - Dambusters raid destorys 3 dams in the Ruhr Valley
1955 - The Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, hosts a ground-breaking half-hour television election programme for the Conservative Party, pitting government ministers against newspaper editors in the first broadcast of its kind. Also Bill Paxton born
1956 - Bob Saget and Sugar Ray Leonard born
1960 - The much-heralded Big Four summit in Paris fails before it even starts, following three days of bitter recrimination over a US spy plane shot down two weeks ago by the Russians.
1961 - Enya born
1965 - Trent Reznor born
1970 - Jordan Knight born
1974 - Three car bombs explod in Dublin, killing 23 people and injuring more than 100 others during rush hour. Also Andrea Corr born

1978 - The coffin containing the body of Charlie Chaplin, missing since his grave was robbed 11 weeks ago is found.
2000 - Two Royal Marine commandos, Corporal Alan Chambers and Marine Charlie Paton are the first Britons to reach the geographical North Pole without outside support, braving severe weather conditions on as little as half a cup of porridge a day.

2011 - The Queen arrives in Dublin for the first visit to the Republic of Ireland by a reigning British monarch, for over 100 years.
2012 - Singer Donna Summer dies of lung cancer aged 63.

On This Day - 16th May

1801 - William Seward born
1905 - Henry Fonda born
1919 - Liberace born
1929 - The first Oscars awarded
1943 - All resistance in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw ends after 28 days of fighting.
1947 - Bob Edwards born
1953 - Pierce Brosnan born
1955 - Debra Winger and Olga Korbut born
1966 - Janet Jackson born

1968 - Four women and a man are killed when an entire corner of a new block of flats at Ronan Point in London's East End came crashing down at dawn.
1969 - Tracey Gold born
1971 - David Boreanaz born
1973 - Tori Spelling born
1974 - Israeli planes bomb seven Palestinian refugee camps and villages in southern Lebanon killing at least 27 people and leaving 138 injured.

1985 - Two South Wales miners,Dean Hancock and Russell Shankland are jailed for life for the murder of taxi driver David Wilkie during the miners' strike last November.
1990 - The government again attempts to reassure the public that British beef is safe, despite growing fears over the cattle disease, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE).
2001 - The Labour Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, punches a protester who threw an egg at him during a visit to Rhyl in north Wales.

On This Day - 15th May

1905 - Joseph Cotten born
1909 - James Mason born
1918 - Eddy Arnold born
1930 - Jasper Johns born
1936 - Anna Maria Alberghetti born
1937 - Trini Lopez and Madeleine Albright born
1954 - The Royal Family returns safely from their six-month tour of the Commonwealth to a rapturous welcome in London.

1953 - George Brett born
1957 - After just two years of development, Britain tests its first hydrogen bomb over Christmas Island, as the arms race begins to escalate.
1969 - Emmitt Smith born
1972 - David Charvet born
1974 - Sixteen teenagers die along with three Palestinians holding them hostage at an Israeli school near the Lebanese border.
1981 - Jamie-Lynn Sigler born
1993 - A hostage crisis at a nursery school in Paris ends when commandos storm the school, the children's teacher is hailed a hero.
2001 - British consumers reap the benefits of cheaper over-the-counter medicine after a court ruling puts an end to the drug industry's price-fixing policy.