May 15
1602 - Cape Cod was discovered by Bartholomew Gosnold.
1614 - An aristocratic uprising in France ended with the treaty of St.Menehould.
1618 - Johannes Kepler discovered his harmonics law.
1702 - The War of Spanish Succession began.
1768 - Under the Treaty of Versailles, France purchased Corsica from Genoa.
1795 - Napoleon entered the Lombardian capital of Milan.
1849 - Neapolitan troops entered Palermo, and were in possession of Sicily.
1856 - Lyman Frank Baum, author of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," was born.
1862 - The U.S. Congress created the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
1911 - The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil Company, ruling it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
1916 - U.S. Marines landed in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.
1918 - Regular airmail service between New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC, began under the direction of the Post Office Department, which later became the U.S. Postal Service.
1926 - Roald Amundsen and Lincoln Ellsworth were forced down in Alaska after a four-day flight over an icecap. Ice had begun to form on the dirigible Norge.
1926 - The New York Rangers were officially granted a franchise in the NHL. The NHL also announced that Chicago and Detroit would be joining the league in November.
1930 - Ellen Church became the first female flight attendant.
1940 - Nylon stockings went on sale for the first time in the U.S.
1941 - Joe DiMaggio began his historic major league baseball hitting streak of 56 games.
1942 - Gasoline rationing began in the U.S. The limit was 3 gallons a week for nonessential vehicles.
1948 - Israel was attacked by Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon only hours after declaring its independence.
1951 - AT&T became the first corporation to have one million stockholders.
1957 - Britain dropped its first hydrogen bomb on Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean.
1958 - Sputnik III, the first space laboratory, was launched in the Soviet Union.
1963 - The last Project Mercury space flight was launched.
1964 - The Smothers Brothers, Dick and Tom, gave their first concert in Carnegie Hall in New York City.
1970 - U.S. President Nixon appointed America's first two female generals.
1970 - Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green, two black students at Jackson State University in Mississippi, were killed when police opened fire during student protests.
1972 - Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace was shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, MD while campaigning for the U.S. presidency. Wallace was paralyzed by the shot.
1975 - The merchant ship U.S. Mayaguez was recaptured from Cambodia's Khmer Rouge.
1980 - The first transcontinental balloon crossing of the United States took place.
1983 - In Boston,MA, the Madison Hotel was destroyed by implosion.
1988 - The Soviet Union began their withdrawal of its 115,000 troops from Afghanistan. Soviet forces had been there for more than eight years.
1990 - Vincent Van Gogh's "Portrait of Doctor Gachet" was sold for $82.5 million. The sale set a new world record.
1997 - The Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a mission to deliver urgently needed repair equipment and a fresh American astronaut to Russia's orbiting Mir station.
1999 - The Russian parliament was unable a attain enough votes to impeach President Boris Yeltsin.
2014 - The National September 11 Memorial Museum was dedicated in New York City.
