1862 – The Westminster Bridge across The Thames opened in London, England.

1901 – Seventy eight miners died in the Caerphilly pit disaster in South Wales.

1930 – Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly solo from the UK to Australia.
Amy departed from Croydon Airport in Surrey, England, on May 5 and flew a total of 11,000 miles until she reached Darwin, Australia, on this day.

1941 – World War II: The German battleship Bismarck sank the Royal Navy’s largest warship HMS Hood off Greenland with the loss of more than 1,400 lives. The ship exploded when a German shell hit the Hood’s ammunition store.

1969 – The Black and White Minstrel Show, at London’s Victoria Palace, closed after completing 4,354 performances over a period of seven years.

1976 – British Airways and Air France Concordes arrived at Dulles International Airport, Washington D.C. having made their first commercial crossing of the North Atlantic.

1978 – Princess Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth II was divorced from her husband, Lord Snowdon, after 18 years of marriage.

1988 – Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 was enacted; a controversial amendment stating that a local authority could not intentionally promote homosexuality.

1989 – A jury at the High Court in London awarded £600,000 damages to Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, against the satirical magazine Private Eye.

1995 – The death of Harold Wilson, Huddersfield born Labour politician and Prime Minister from 1964-1970 and again from 1974-1976. This statue of him, (see ©BB picture) outside Huddersfield railway station in St George’s Square, was unveiled in July 1999 by the then Prime Minister Tony Blair.

1999 – Lawrence Dallaglio resigns as England’s rugby union captain following newspaper allegations that he took and sold drugs before becoming a rugby player.

2003 – Britain’s entry in the Eurovision Song Contest failed to score a single point, a fact later blamed on the UK’s stance during the Iraq conflict.

2019 – At just after 10:00am Theresa May announced that she would stand down as Conservative leader on 7th June, over her failure to deliver Brexit and after losing the support of her own MPs. She continued to serve as Prime Minister while a Conservative leadership contest took place.

2020 – At the Government’s daily coronavirus briefing, Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave full support to his adviser Dominic Cummings, who had driven 250 miles to his parents’ house in Durham after strict lockdown rules had been imposed on the UK. Cummings said that he travelled to Durham to self isolate whilst he was recovery from coronavirus.