- May 2 79th Kentucky Derby: Hank Moreno aboard Dark Star wins in 2:02
- May 2 Feisal II installed as King of Iraq
- May 2 Hussein I installed as King of Jordan
- May 2 KYTL (now KPNX) TV channel 12 in Mesa/Phoenix, Arizona AZ (NBC) begins broadcasting with a telethon to benefit United Cerebral Palsy
- May 3 Westchester conference of American Library Association proclaims "Freedom to Read"
- May 3 WTVO TV channel 17 in Rockford, IL (NBC) begins broadcasting
Pulitzer to Hemingway
May 4 Pulitzer Prize for Literature awarded to Ernest Hemingway for "The Old Man and The Sea"
Can-Can
May 7 Cole Porter's musical "Can-Can", starring Gwen Verdon and Hans Conried, opens at the Shubert Theatre, NYC, ; runs for 892 performances and wins a Tony Award for Verdon
Event of Interest
May 11 Winston Churchill criticizes US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles' domino theory
- May 12 KUHT TV channel 8 (PBS) in Houston, TX, begins broadcasting
Marciano KOs Walcott
May 15 In his first world heavyweight title defense, Rocky Marciano KOs former champion Jersey Joe Walcott in the 1st round at Chicago Stadium
- May 15 Osip Zadkine's monument to "The destroyed city" unveiled in Rotterdam
- May 15 The Urey-Miller experiment using primordial soup to show how life of earth might have originated, written by Stanley Miller, is published in the journal "Science" [1]
- May 16 Philadelphia Phillies Curt Simmons gives up a lead-off single, then retires next 27 in a row in 3-0 win over Braves at County Stadium in Milwaukee
- May 17 Yanks & Browns use record 41 players in a game
- May 18 American Jacqueline Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier
- May 19 Nuclear explosion in Nevada (fall-out in St George, Utah)
- May 19 US House of Representatives votes to ratify the state constitution and admit Ohio to the Union retroactively as of March 1, 1803, 150 years after overlooking the paperwork [1]
- May 21 French government of René Mayer resigns
Event of Interest
May 22 US President Eisenhower signs Offshore Oil Bill
- May 22 Yankee Irv Noren hits into a triple-play, Yanks beat Wash 12-4
- May 23 78th Preakness: Eric Guerin aboard Native Dancer wins in 1:57.8
- May 23 WHIZ TV channel 18 in Zanesville, OH (NBC/ABC) begins broadcasting
- May 25 1st atomic cannon electronically fired at Frenchman Flat, Nevada
- May 25 1st non-commercial educational television station - Houston, Texas
- May 25 Braves Max Surkont strikes out record 8 Reds in a row
- May 26 Dutch Convair crashes at Schipholweg, 2 die
- May 27 Dutch social democratic/Dutch Liberal Party win municipal elections
- May 28 Premier of 1st animated 3-D cartoon in Technicolor-"Melody"
Mount Everest Conquered
May 29 Edmund Hillary (NZ) and Tenzing Norgay (Nepal) are first to reach the summit of Mount Everest as part of a British Expedition
- May 30 1st major league network baseball game-Cleveland 7, Chicago 2
French Open Men's Tennis
May 30 French Championships Men's Tennis: Ken Rosewall of Australia wins his 2nd Grand Slam title, beating American Vic Seixas 6-3, 6-4, 1-6, 6-2
French Open Women's Tennis
May 30 French Championships Women's Tennis: Maureen Connolly beats fellow American Doris Hart 6-2, 6-4 for the 2nd leg of her Grand Slam
- May 30 Indianapolis 500: Labelled "Hottest 500" due to high temperatures, Bill Vukovich wins first of 2 consecutive Indy 500 victories; Carl Scarborough drops out of race, and later dies of heat prostration
- May 31 Lebanese president Camille Shamun disbands government
- May 31 WSUN TV channel 38 in St Petersburg-Tampa, FL (IND) 1st broadcast
Authors
Dictators
Explorers
Outlaws
Queens
Spies