May 12
1588 - King Henry III fled Paris after Henry of Guise triumphantly entered the city.
1780 - Charleston, South Carolina fell to British forces.
1847 - William Clayton invented the odometer.
1870 - Manitoba entered the Confederation as a Canadian province.
1881 - Tunisia, in North Africa became a French protectorate.
1885 - In the Battle of Batoche, French Canadians rebelled against the Canadian government.
1888 - Charles Sherrill of the Yale track team became the first runner to use the crouching start for a fast break in a foot race.
1926 - The airship Norge became the first vessel to fly over the North Pole.
1926 - In Britain, a general strike by trade unions ended. The strike began on May 3, 1926.
1937 - Britain's King George VI was crowned at Westminster Abbey.
1940 - The Nazi conquest of France began with the German army crossing Muese River.
1942 - The Soviet Army launched its first major offensive of World War II and took Kharkov in the eastern Ukraine from the German army.
1943 - The Axis forces in North Africa surrendered during World War II.
1949 - The Soviet Union announced an end to the Berlin Blockade.
1950 - The American Bowling Congress abolished its white males-only membership restriction after 34 years.
1957 - A.J. Foyt won his first auto racing victory in Kansas City, MO.
1965 - West Germany and Israel exchanged letters establishing diplomatic relations.
1970 - Ernie Banks, of the Chicago Cubs, hit his 500th home run.
1975 - U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez was seized by Cambodian forces in international waters.
1978 - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced that they would no longer exclusively name hurricanes after women.
1982 - South Africa unveiled a plan that would give voting rights to citizens of Asian and mixed-race descent, but not to black people.
1984 - South African prisoner Nelson Mandela saw his wife for the first time in 22 years.
1999 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin dismissed Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and named Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin as his successor.
2002 - Former U.S. President Carter arrived in Cuba for a visit with Fidel Castro. It was the first time a U.S. head of state, in or out of office, had gone to the island since Castro's 1959 revolution.
2003 - In Texas, fifty-nine Democratic lawmakers went into hiding over a dispute with Republican's over a congressional redistricting plan.
2008 - In the U.S., the price for a one-ounce First-Class stamp increased from 41 to 42 cents.
2015 - It was announced that Verizon would be acquiring AOL.
