Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/May 15

Images
Use only ONE image at a time

Eligible

 * 1252 – Pope Innocent IV issued the papal bull Ad extirpanda, authorizing the use of torture on heretics during the Medieval Inquisition.
 * 1602 – Early English explorer Bartholomew Gosnold arrived on Cape Cod in present-day Massachusetts.
 * 1836 – English 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.
 * 1862 – Fertilisation of Orchids, the first book by Charles Darwin which demonstrated the power of natural selection in detail, was published.
 * 1869 – Susan 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.
 * 1911 – Mexican Revolution: A force of Maderistas captured Torreón and proceeded to massacre 303 of the city's Chinese residents.
 * 1912 – During a match, baseball star Ty Cobb enters the stands and assaults a fan who had heckled him, leading to his suspension.
 * 1945 – The British Army directed fleeing Croatian soldiers to surrender to the Yugoslav Partisans, beginning the Bleiburg repatriations.
 * 1953 – Don 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.
 * 1957 – The United Kingdom tested its first hydrogen bomb over Malden Island in Operation Grapple.
 * 1966 – Disapproving of General Tôn Thất Đính handling of the Buddhist Uprising, South Vietnamese prime minister Nguyễn Cao Kỳ ordered an attack on his forces and ousted Đính from his post.
 * 1970 – Police opened fire during a confrontation with a group of Jackson State College students, killing two students and injuring twelve others.
 * 1972 – The Ryukyu Islands were returned to Japan by the United States, and the U.S. occupation government was abolished.
 * 1990 – Vincent 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.
 * 2004 – Arsenal became the first football team in England's top flight to finish a season undefeated since Preston North End did so in 1888–1889.
 * 2010 – Three days before her seventeenth birthday, Jessica Watson arrived in Sydney after sailing non-stop and unassisted around the world.
 * Born/died: |Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban |baptised|1633| Levi Lincoln Sr. |b|1749| Klemens von Metternich |b|1773| Élie Metchnikoff |b|1845| Williamina Fleming |b|1857| E. Urner Goodman |b|1891| Ida Freund |d|1914| Jakucho Setouchi |b|1922| Lawrence Sabatini |b|1930| D. H. Turner |b|1931| Esther Fischer-Homberger |b|1940| Mohamed Brahmi |b|1955| Patrice Evra |b|1981| Jean-Luc Dehaene |d|2014 Elisabeth Bing |d|2015