May 11 in History

The Mussel Slough Tragedy was a shootout over disputed land titles between settlers and the Southern Pacific Railroad (SP). It took place on May 11, 1880, on a farm located 5.6 miles (9 km) northwest of Hanford, California, in the central San Joaquin Valley. Seven people were killed. The episode became a major theme in many protests and publications denouncing the railroads as villains in California history.

The Pullman Strike comprised two interrelated strikes in 1894 that shaped national labor policy in the United States during a period of deep economic depression. First came a strike by the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman Company's factory in Chicago in spring 1894. When it failed, the ARU launched a national boycott against all trains that carried Pullman passenger cars. The nationwide railroad boycott that lasted from May 11 to July 20, 1894, was a turning point for US labor law. It pitted the American Railway Union (ARU) against the Pullman Company, the main railroads, the main labor unions, and the federal government of the United States under President Grover Cleveland.

During the evening hours of May 11, 1970, an extremely violent multiple-vortex tornado struck a large portion of the city of Lubbock, located in the state of Texas, United States. The incident resulted in 26 fatalities and an estimated $250 million in damage. Known as the Lubbock tornado, it was in its time the costliest tornado in U.S. history, damaging nearly 9,000 homes and inflicting widespread damage to businesses, high-rise buildings, and public infrastructure. The tornado's damage was surveyed by meteorologist Ted Fujita in what researcher Thomas P. Grazulis described as "the most detailed mapping ever done, up to that time, of the path of a single tornado." Originally, the most severe damage was assigned a preliminary F6 rating on the Fujita scale, making it one of only two tornadoes to receive the rating, alongside the 1974 Xenia tornado. Later, it was downgraded to an F5 rating. The extremity of the damage and the force required to displace heavy objects as much as was observed indicated that winds produced by vortices within the tornado may have exceeded 290 mph (470 km/h).

Aeroflot Flight 6551 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight on an Ilyushin Il-18B from Baku to Novosibirsk with a stopover in Tashkent that crashed on 11 May 1973 over Semipalatinsk in the Kazakh SSR, killing all 63 people aboard.

Niklaus Barbie was a German officer of the Schutzstaffel and Sicherheitsdienst who worked in Vichy France during World War II. He became known as the "Butcher of Lyon" for having personally tortured prisoners—primarily Jews and members of the French Resistance—as the head of the Gestapo in Lyon.

Deep Blue was a customized IBM RS/6000 SP supercomputer for chess-playing designed by computer scientist Feng-hsiung Hsu. It was the first computer to win a game, and the first to win a match, against a reigning world champion under regular time controls. Development began in 1985 at Carnegie Mellon University under the name ChipTest. It then moved to IBM, where it was first renamed Deep Thought, then again in 1989 to Deep Blue. In 1996, it was used to compete against world champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match, where it won one, drew two, and lost three games. In 1997, it underwent an upgrade, and in a six-game rematch it defeated Kasparov by winning two games and drawing three. Deep Blue's victory is considered a milestone in the history of artificial intelligence and has been the subject of several books and films.

The Second Chechen War took place in Chechnya and the border regions of the North Caucasus between the Russian Federation and the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, from August 1999 to April 2009.

Space Shuttle Atlantis is a retired Space Shuttle orbiter vehicle which belongs to NASA, the spaceflight and space exploration agency of the United States. Atlantis was manufactured by the Rockwell International company in Southern California and was delivered to the Kennedy Space Center in Eastern Florida in April 1985. Atlantis is the fourth operational and the second-to-last Space Shuttle built. Its maiden flight was STS-51-J made from October 3 to 7, 1985.

The 2011 Lorca earthquake was a moderate 5.1 Mw earthquake that occurred 6:47 p.m. CEST on 11 May 2011, near the town of Lorca, causing significant localized damage in the Region of Murcia, Spain, and panic among locals, and displacing many from their homes. The quake was preceded by a magnitude 4.4 foreshock at 17:05, that inflicted substantial damage to many older structures in the area, including the historical Espolón Tower of Lorca Castle, the Hermitage of San Clemente and the Convent of Virgen de Las Huertas. Three people were killed by a falling cornice. A total of nine deaths have been confirmed, while dozens are reported injured. The earthquake was the worst to hit the region since a 5.0 Mw tremor struck west of Albolote, Granada in 1956.

The 2013 Reyhanlı car bombings took place on 11 May 2013, when two car bombs exploded in the Turkish town of Reyhanlı, a town of 64,000 people, 5 km from the Syrian border and the busiest land border post with Syria, in Hatay Province, Turkey. At least 52 people were killed and 140 injured in the attack.

In May 2016, the Islamic State conducted a series of bombing attacks in and around Shia neighbourhoods in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, killing and wounding hundreds. According to IS, attacks were aimed at Shia fighters.

Shireen Abu Akleh was a prominent Palestinian-American journalist who worked as a reporter for 25 years for Al Jazeera, before she was killed by Israeli forces while wearing a blue press vest and covering a raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Abu Akleh was one of the most prominent names across the Middle East for her decades of reporting in the Palestinian territories, and seen as a role model for many Arab and Palestinian women. She is considered to be an icon of Palestinian journalism.