Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/May 22

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 articleorpicture 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.

Use only ONE image at a time

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  King Henry VI of England (also appears on March 4)
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  Archduke Charles at the Battle of Aspern-Essling (requires undeletion)
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  Archduke Charles
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  Great Chilean Earthquake
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  Preston Brooks' attack on Charles Sumner
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  Lyndon B. Johnson
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  National emblem of Sri Lanka
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  HMS Beagle
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  Lassen Peak eruption of May 22, 1915
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  Blackwall Tunnel under construction, 1895
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  Trevi Fountain

• 853 – Byzantine–Arab Wars: The Byzantine navy began to sack and plunder the port city of Damietta on the Nile Delta, whose garrison was absent at the time.
• 1762 – The Trevi Fountain in Rome was officially inaugurated by Pope Clement XIII.
• 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.
• 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. Congressman Preston Brooks attacked Senator Charles Sumner with a cane for a speech Sumner had made attacking Southerners who sympathized with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas.
• 1897 – The first Blackwall Tunnel under the River Thames was opened to improve commerce and trade in the East End of London.
• 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.
• 1958 – Ethnic rioting broke out in Ceylon, targeted mostly at the minority Sri Lankan Tamils, resulting in up to 300 deaths over the next five days.
• 1972 – Ceylon changed its name to Sri Lanka, adopted a new constitution, and officially became a republic.
• 1987 – During Hindu–Muslim riotinginMeerut, 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 over a cliff, killing 158 of the 166 people on board in the crash and ensuing fire.
• 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: Constantine X Doukas (d. 1067) · Richard Wagner (b. 1813) · Mary Cassatt (b. 1844) · Augusta, Lady Gregory (d. 1932) · Apolo Ohno (b. 1982) · Myrtle Bachelder (d. 1997)

• 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens is listed on May 18, so avoid having Lassen Peak on during the same year for variety's sake.

May 22

Earthquake damage in Valdivia

• 1629 – Albrecht von Wallenstein and King Christian IV of Denmark signed the Treaty of Lübeck to end Danish intervention in the Thirty Years' War.
• 1816 – A riot broke outinLittleport, Cambridgeshire, England, over high unemployment and rising grain costs, spreading to Ely the next day.
• 1960 – An earthquake measuring ~9.5 M_W – the strongest ever recorded – devastated Valdivia, Chile (damage pictured), and generated destructive tsunamis that reached Hawaii and Japan.
• 1980 – Pac-Man, an arcade game that became an icon of 1980s popular culture, made its debut in Japan.
• 2002 – Washington, D.C., police announced that the skeletal remains of Federal Bureau of Prisons intern Chandra Levy, who had been missing for a year, were found in Rock Creek Park.

John Forest (d. 1538) · Rita Cetina Gutiérrez (b. 1846) · Laurence Olivier (b. 1907)