In the opening battle of England’s War of the Roses, the Yorkists defeat King Henry VI’s Lancastrian forces at St. Albans, 20 miles northwest of London. Many Lancastrian nobles perished, including Edmund Beaufort, the duke of Somerset, and the king was forced to submit to the rule of his cousin, Richard of York. The dynastic struggle between the House of York, whose badge was a white rose, and the House of Lancaster, later associated with a red rose, would stretch on for 30 years.

Hearing arguments in the case of the Zong, a slave ship, the Chief Justice of the King’s Bench in London states that a massacre of enslaved African “was the same as if Horses had been thrown over board” on May 22, 1783. The crew of the Zong had thrown at least 130 captive Africans into the sea, but the question before the court was not who had committed this atrocity but rather whether the lost “cargo” was covered by insurance. The trial laid bare the horror and inhumanity of the Atlantic slave trade and galvanized the nascent movement to abolish it.

Southern Congressman Preston Brooks savagely beats Northern Senator Charles Sumner in the halls of Congress as tensions rise over the expansion of slavery.

It’s the birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of master sleuth Sherlock Holmes.

The arrival in the United Kingdom of one of the biggest figures in rock and roll was looked forward to with great anticipation in May of 1958. Nowhere in the world were the teenage fans of the raucous music coming out of America more enthusiastic than they were in England, and the coming tour of the great Jerry Lee Lewis promised to be a rousing success. “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls Of Fire” had both been massive hits in the UK, and early demand for tickets was great enough that 27 appearances were booked in what promised to be the biggest tour yet by an American rock-and-roll star. There was just one problem: Unbeknownst to the British public and the organizers of the coming tour, Jerry Lee Lewis would be traveling to England as a newly married man, with his young wife in tow. Just how young that wife really was would be revealed on May 22, 1958, when Jerry Lee “The Killer” Lewis arrived at Heathrow Airport.

On May 22, 1981, police staking out a bridge over the Chattahoochee River near Atlanta, Georgia, hear a loud splash, and begin chasing Wayne Williams as he attempts to drive away in a station wagon. After questioning him about his involvement in the unprecedented string of child murders in Atlanta over the two previous years, Williams was released. He was arrested one month later, on June 21, 1981.

After 150 years apart, Marxist South Yemen and conservative North Yemen are unified as the Republic of Yemen. Ali Abdullah, president of North Yemen, became the new country’s president, and Ali Salem Al-Baidh, leader of the South Yemeni Socialist Party, vice president. The first free elections were held in 1993.

On May 22, 2004, President George Bush is in a bicycle accident. Bush had taken up mountain biking for exercise at the suggestion of physicians.

Just moments after Ariana Grande finished the final song of her May 22, 2017 concert at Manchester Arena, a suicide bomber detonated an explosion on the premises, killing 22 concertgoers and injuring 116 more. ISIS claimed responsibility for what was the deadliest act of terrorism in Britain since the 2005 London metro bombings.