Batman Appears!
May 1 Batman first appears in Detective Comics #27
- May 1 Pulitzer Prize awarded to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings for "The Yearling"
Sports History
May 2 New York Yankee Lou Gehrig ends 2,130 consecutive game streak when he sits out as the Yankees beat the Tigers 22-2 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit, Michigan [1]
- May 3 The All India Forward Bloc is formed by Subhash Chandra Bose
- May 6 65th Kentucky Derby: James Stout aboard Johnstown wins in 2:03.4
- May 8 Archaeologist James Brown begins excavating at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, goes on to find a royal 7th century Anglo-Saxon burial ship - the great archeological discovery on British soil [1]
Battle of Interest
May 11 Joseph Stalin orders Soviet troops to invade Manchuria, resulting in a 4-month battle that inflicted heavy losses on Japan
- May 13 64th Preakness: George Seabo aboard Challedon wins in 1:59.8
- May 13 SS St Louis departs Hamburg, Germany with 937 Jewish refugees, bound for Havana, Cuba; authorities refused to admit them, and most of the passengers returned to Europe [1]
- May 14 Lina Medina of Peru becomes the world's youngest confirmed mother in medical history at the age of five
- May 16 1st AL night game, Philadelphia Shribe Park (Indians 8, Athletics 3 in 10)
- May 16 US food stamps are 1st issued in Rochester, New York
- May 17 1st televised baseball game is broadcast on NBC, with Princeton University defeating Columbia University 2-1
Glenn Miller Orchestra
May 17 The Glenn Miller Orchestra begins a three month engagement at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York
- May 20 "3 Little Fishies" by Kay Kyser swam to #1
- May 20 1st regular transatlantic airmail (Pan Am: NY to Marsseille France)
Pact of Steel
May 22 Germany's Adolf Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini sign the "Pact of Steel" formalizing the 1936 alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis
Hitler's Plans for Poland
May 23 Adolf Hitler proclaims he wants to move into Poland
- May 23 British parliament plans to make Palestine independent by 1949
Shostakovich Becomes a Professor
May 23 Composer Dmitri Shostakovich appointed professor at conservatory of Leningrad
- May 23 Submarine USS Squalus sinks in the Gulf of Maine, drowning 26, 33 remaining crew rescued from a depth of 243 ft (74 m) by divers using newly developed heliox air systems (divers later awarded the Medal of Honor)
- May 25 Carl Storck becomes 2nd NFL president
- May 30 Indianapolis 500: Reigning champion Floyd Roberts is killed in crash on lap 109; Wilbur Shaw wins his second of 3 Indy 500 titles
Authors
Dictators
Explorers
Outlaws
Queens
Spies