15 May 762
A Tuesday in history
Weekday
Tuesday
Season
Spring (N. Hemisphere)
Century
8th century
Records
401

2010Three days before her seventeenth birthday, Jessica Watson arrived in Sydney after sailing non-stop and unassisted around the world.
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2004Arsenal became the first football team in England's top flight to finish a season undefeated since Preston North End did so in 1888–1889.
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2001A runaway train loaded with hazardous chemicals traveled driverless for 66 miles (106 km) through Ohio before being stopped near Kenton.
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1990Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold at auction at Christie's in New York for US$82.5 million, making it the world's most expensive painting at the time.
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The Ryukyu Islands were returned to Japan by the United States, and the U.S. occupation government was abolished.
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1970Police opened fire during a confrontation with a group of Jackson State College students, killing two students and injuring twelve others.
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1966Disapproving of General Tôn Thất Đính's handling of the Buddhist Uprising, South Vietnamese prime minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ ordered an attack on his forces and ousted Đính from his post.
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1957The United Kingdom tested its first hydrogen bomb over Malden Island in Operation Grapple.
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1953Don Murphy organized the first pinewood derby, an event for Cub Scouts of the Boy Scouts of America where wooden cars built by the scouts are raced.
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1945The British Army directed fleeing Croatian soldiers to surrender to the Yugoslav Partisans, beginning the Bleiburg repatriations.
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1912During a match, baseball star Ty Cobb enters the stands and assaults a fan who had heckled him, leading to his suspension.
Source- 1911
Mexican Revolution: A force of Maderistas captured Torreón and proceeded to massacre 303 of the city's Chinese residents.
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1904Russo-Japanese War: The Japanese battleships Hatsuse and Yashima sank after striking several mines off Port Arthur, China.
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1891Pope Leo XIII issued the encyclical Rerum novarum, which addressed the condition of the working classes and is considered to be the foundation of modern Catholic social teaching.
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1869Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association, breaking away from the American Equal Rights Association which they had also previously founded.
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1864American Civil War: A small Confederate force, which included cadets from the Virginia Military Institute, forced the Union army out of the Shenandoah Valley.
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1862Fertilisation of Orchids, the first book by Charles Darwin which demonstrated the power of natural selection in detail, was published.
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1855Thieves stole 224 pounds (102 kg) of gold from a train travelling from London to Folkestone, England.
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1836English astronomer Francis Baily observed Baily's beads (example pictured), a phenomenon during a solar eclipse in which the rugged topography of the lunar limb allows sunlight to shine through.
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1725Bach led the first performance of his cantata Ich bin ein guter Hirt, BWV 85, about Jesus as the Good Shepherd.
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1602Early English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold arrived on Cape Cod in present-day Massachusetts.
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1252Pope Innocent IV issued the papal bull Ad extirpanda, authorizing the use of torture on heretics during the Medieval Inquisition.
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Roman emperor Valentinian II (pictured) was found hanged in his residence in Vienne, in present-day France.
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Photo archive
24 historic images from this day — tap to open the gallery.
What was life like?
Prices, jobs, food, music and everyday routine — the world as it felt to live in.
Sources & fact check
Every claim is traced to primary sources, archives, universities and the press — with an explicit confidence rating. Dossiers are generated once and cached permanently.