Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/May 15
This is a list of selected May 15 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
May 15: Independence Day in Paraguay (1811); Teachers' Day in Mexico and South Korea; Nakba Day in Palestinian communities
- 1602 – English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold became the first European to discover Cape Cod.
- 1836 – English astronomer Francis Baily first observed "Baily's beads", a phenomenon during a solar eclipse in which the rugged lunar limb topography allows beads of sunlight to shine through (example pictured).
- 1932 – Japanese Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi was assassinated in the May 15 incident, an attempted coup d'état by radical elements of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
- 1957 – The United Kingdom tested its first hydrogen bomb over Malden Island in Operation Grapple.
- 1990 – Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet was sold at auction in Christie's New York office for a total of US$82.5 million, at the time the world's most expensive painting.