Haile Selassie Escapes
May 1 Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie leaves Ethiopia as Italy invades
Hoover Arrests Karpis
May 1 FBI's J. Edgar Hoover arrests gangster Alvin "Creepy" Karpis
- May 2 62nd Kentucky Derby: Ira Hanford aboard Bold Venture wins in 2:03.6
- May 2 Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie and family flee Abyssinia
Peter and the Wolf
May 2 Sergei Prokofiev's musical "Peter and the Wolf" premieres in Moscow
- May 3 French People's Front win elections
Joe DiMaggio Debuts
May 3 NY Yankee Joe DiMaggio makes his major-league debut, gets 3 hits
- May 4 Pulitzer prize for the novel awarded to Harold L. Davis for "Honey in the Horn"
- May 5 Edward Ravenscroft patents screw-on bottle cap with a pour lip
- May 5 Italian troops occupy Addis Ababa
- May 8 Jockey Ralph Neves unexpectedly revived after being declared dead after a fall. His wife faints when he returned to track
- May 9 1st KLM airplane to land on Bonaire
- May 9 Italy takes Addis Abba, annexing Absynnia (Ethiopia)
Azaña Elected President
May 10 Manuel Azaña elected the second President of the Spanish Republic
Johnson's Record Flight
May 15 Amy Johnson arrives in Croydon, England having flown from South Africa in a record 4 days and 16 hours
- May 16 1st British air hostess Daphne Kearley flies to France
- May 16 61st Preakness: George Woolf aboard Bold Venture wins in 1:59
- May 21 Sada Abe is arrested after wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with her dead lover's severed genitals in her hand. Her story soon becomes one of Japan's most notorious scandals.
- May 22 Aer Lingus (Aerloingeas) is incorporated as the national airline of the Republic of Ireland
- May 24 Dutch bishops forbid membership of Nazi party
- May 24 Tony Lazerri 2 grand slams (11 RBIs); Ben Chapman sets record by reaching 1st 7 times safely, Yanks beat A's 25-2
- May 25 The Remington Rand strike, led by the American Federation of Labor, begins
- May 26 1st government of Zealand in Belgium ends
- May 27 First flight of Irish airline Aer Lingus, a six-seater de Havilland DH.84 Dragon biplane between Baldonnel Airfield in Clondalkin, County Dublin and Bristol (Whitchurch) Airport, England
- May 27 RMS Queen Mary leaves Southampton for NY on maiden voyage
On Computable Numbers
May 28 Alan Turing submits "On Computable Numbers" for publication, in which he set out the theoretical basis for modern computers.
- May 30 Indianapolis 500: Louis Meyer becomes first 3-time winner of the race; Lawson Harris is first 2-time riding mechanic; famous tradition of serving milk in victory lane commences
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