In London, Spencer Perceval, prime minister of Britain since 1809, is shot to death by deranged businessman John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons. Bellingham, who was inflamed by his failure to obtain government compensation for war debts incurred in Russia, gave himself up immediately. Spencer Perceval had a profitable law practice […]

A dismounted Union trooper fatally wounds J.E.B. Stuart, one of the most well-known generals of the South, at the Battle of Yellow Tavern, just six miles north of Richmond, Virginia. The 31-year-old Stuart died the next day. During the 1864 spring campaign in Virginia, Union General Ulysses S. Grant applied constant pressure on Robert E. […]

On May 11, 1947, the B.F. Goodrich Company of Akron, Ohio, announces it has developed a tubeless tire, a technological innovation that would make automobiles safer and more efficient. The culmination of more than three years of engineering, Goodrich’s tubeless tire effectively eliminated the inner tube, trapping the pressurized air within the tire walls themselves. […]

The body of Leon Besnard is exhumed in Loudun, France, by authorities searching for evidence of poison. For years, local residents had been suspicious of his wife Marie, as they watched nearly her entire family die untimely and mysterious deaths. Law enforcement officials finally began investigating Marie after the death of her mother earlier in […]

President John F. Kennedy approves sending 400 Special Forces troops and 100 other U.S. military advisers to South Vietnam. On the same day, he orders the start of clandestine warfare against North Vietnam to be conducted by South Vietnamese agents under the direction and training of the CIA and U.S. Special Forces troops. Kennedy’s orders […]

On May 11, 1981, Bob Marley, the soul and international face of reggae music, died in a Miami, Florida, hospital. He was 36 years old. In what would prove to be the next to the last concert of his tragically short life, Bob Marley shared the bill at Madison Square Garden with the hugely popular […]

Fifty-six people die in a fire in the grandstand at a soccer stadium in Bradford, England, on May 11, 1985. The wooden roof that burned was scheduled to be replaced by a steel roof later that same week. Bradford was playing Lincoln City on the afternoon of May 11. Many fans were there to celebrate […]

On May 11, 1997, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov resigns after 19 moves in a game against Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer developed by scientists at IBM. This was the sixth and final game of their match, which Kasparov lost two games to one, with three draws. Kasparov, a chess prodigy from Azerbaijan, was a skillful […]