Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/May 6

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 * 1757 – English poet Christopher Smart was admitted to St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics in London, beginning his six-year confinement to mental asylums.
 * 1801 – French Revolutionary Wars: The 32-gun Spanish frigate El Gamo was captured by the outmanned and outgunned HMS Speedy (1782).
 * 1882 – Irish civil servants Thomas Henry Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish were stabbed to death by members of the radical Irish National Invincibles in Phoenix Park, Dublin.
 * 1882 – U.S. president Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act into law (cartoon pictured), implementing a ban on Chinese immigration to the United States that remained for 61 years.
 * 1930 – Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson purchased the Kent property they would transform into Sissinghurst Castle Garden.
 * 1937 – The German airship Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during an attempt to dock at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey, killing 36 people.
 * 1941 – American entertainer Bob Hope performed his first show with the United Service Organizations, beginning a 50-year involvement with them.
 * 1988 – Widerøe Flight 710 crashed into the fog-covered mountain of Torghatten in Brønnøy, Norway, killing all 36 people on board.
 * 1991 – Time magazine published the article "The Thriving Cult of Greed and Power" by Richard Behar criticizing the Church of Scientology, leading to years of legal conflict.
 * 1954 – At Oxford's Iffley Road Track, English runner Roger Bannister became the first person to run the mile in under four minutes.
 * 2008 – British barrister Mark Saunders was shot dead by police after a five-hour siege at his home in Chelsea, London.
 * 2010 – Exacerbated by high-frequency traders using strategies that have since been banned, major U.S. stock indices dropped nearly 9 percent and quickly rebounded.
 * 2023 – The coronation of Charles III and Camilla as King and Queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms is held in Westminster Abbey, London.
 * Born/died: | Pope Marcellus II |b|1501| James Tyrrell |d|1502| Giaches de Wert |d|1596| Mary Martha Sherwood |b|1775| Victor Grignard |b|1871| Ernst Ludwig Kirchner |b|1880| Rosemary Cramp |b|1929| George Clooney |b|1961| Grant McLennan |d|2006| Novera Ahmed |d|2015

May 6


 * 1536 – Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire: Sapa Inca emperor Manco Inca Yupanqui's army began a ten-month siege of Cusco against a garrison of Spanish conquistadors and Indian auxiliaries led by Hernando Pizarro.
 * 1782 – Construction began on the Grand Palace (pictured) in Bangkok, the official residence of the king of Thailand.
 * 1915 – Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition: SY Aurora, anchored in McMurdo Sound, broke loose during a gale, beginning a 312-day ordeal in the Ross Sea and Southern Ocean for her 18-man crew.
 * 2004 – The final episode of the television sitcom Friends was aired.
 * 2013 – Amanda Berry escaped from the Cleveland, Ohio, home of her captor, Ariel Castro, having been held there with two other women for ten years.