May 12 in History

Maria Theresa was the ruler of the Habsburg monarchy from 1740 until her death in 1780, and the only woman to hold the position in her own right. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Transylvania, Slavonia, Mantua, Milan, Moravia, Galicia and Lodomeria, Dalmatia, Austrian Netherlands, Carinthia, Carniola, Gorizia and Gradisca, Austrian Silesia, Tyrol, Styria and Parma. By marriage, she was Duchess of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, and Holy Roman Empress.

The American Revolutionary War, also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and commanded by George Washington defeated the British Army. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war's outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war, but Washington and the Continental Army's decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war. In 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British monarchy acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation.

The Finnish War was fought between the Kingdom of Sweden and the Russian Empire from 21 February 1808 to 17 September 1809 as part of the Napoleonic Wars. As a result of the war, the eastern third of Sweden was established as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire. Other notable effects were the Swedish parliament's adoption of a new constitution and the establishment of the House of Bernadotte, the new Swedish royal house, in 1818.

The Donner Party, sometimes called the Donner–Reed Party, was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California in a wagon train from the Midwest. Delayed by a multitude of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in the Sierra Nevada. Some of the migrants resorted to cannibalism to survive, mainly eating the bodies of those who had succumbed to starvation, sickness, or extreme cold, but in one case murdering and eating two Miwok guides.

The Battle of Raymond was fought on May 12, 1863, near Raymond, Mississippi, during the Vicksburg campaign of the American Civil War. Initial Union attempts to capture the strategically important Mississippi River city of Vicksburg failed. Beginning in late April 1863, Union Major General Ulysses S. Grant led another try. After crossing the river into Mississippi and winning the Battle of Port Gibson, Grant began moving east, intending to turn back west and attack Vicksburg. A portion of Grant's army consisting of Major General James B. McPherson's 10,000 to 12,000-man XVII Corps moved northeast towards Raymond. The Confederate commander of Vicksburg, Lieutenant General John C. Pemberton, ordered Brigadier General John Gregg and his 3,000 to 4,000-strong brigade from Jackson to Raymond.

The Battle of Palmito Ranch, also known as the Battle of Palmito Hill, is considered by some criteria the final battle of the American Civil War. It was fought May 12 and 13, 1865, on the banks of the Rio Grande east of Brownsville, Texas, and a few miles from the seaport of Los Brazos de Santiago, at the southern tip of Texas. The battle took place more than a month after the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia under Robert E. Lee to Union forces at Appomattox Court House, which had since been communicated to both commanders at Palmito. However, in early May Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith had rejected a proposal from Union Major-General John Pope to surrender Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department on the same terms that General Ulysses S. Grant had given to Robert E. Lee. As such Kirby Smith only officially surrendered all Confederate forces in the Trans-Mississippi Department on June 2, 1865.

Ottoman Tunisia was a semi-autonomous territory of the Ottoman Empire. It existed from the 16th to the 19th century and was located roughly in present-day Tunisia.

The Norge was a semi-rigid Italian-built airship that carried out the first verified trip of any kind to the North Pole, an overflight on 11 through 14 May 1926. It was also the first aircraft to fly over the polar ice cap between Europe and America. The expedition was the brainchild of polar explorer and expedition leader Roald Amundsen, the airship's designer and pilot Umberto Nobile and the wealthy American adventurer and explorer Lincoln Ellsworth who, along with the Norwegian Aviation Society, financed the trip, which was known as the Amundsen-Ellsworth 1926 Transpolar Flight.

On March 1, 1932, Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of Col. Charles Lindbergh and his wife, aviator and author Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was murdered after being abducted from his crib in the upper floor of the Lindberghs' home, Highfields, in East Amwell, New Jersey, United States. On May 12, the child's corpse was discovered by a truck driver by the side of a nearby road in adjacent Hopewell Township.

The Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) was a program established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, building on the Hoover administration's Emergency Relief and Construction Act. It was replaced in 1935 by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse was a German civil engineer, pioneering computer scientist, inventor and businessman. His greatest achievement was the world's first programmable computer; the functional program-controlled Turing-complete Z3 became operational in May 1941. Thanks to this machine and its predecessors, Zuse is regarded by some as the inventor and father of the modern computer.

A tanker is a ship designed to transport or store liquids or gases in bulk. Major types of tanker ship include the oil tanker, the chemical tanker, cargo ships, and a gas carrier. Tankers also carry commodities such as vegetable oils, citrus juice, molasses, and wine.

A spacecraft is a vehicle that is designed to fly and operate in outer space. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, Earth observation, meteorology, navigation, space colonization, planetary exploration, and transportation of humans and cargo. All spacecraft except single-stage-to-orbit vehicles cannot get into space on their own, and require a launch vehicle.

During the aftermath of World War II and the Cold War, the Indochina wars were a series of wars which were waged in Indochina from 1945 to 1991, by communist forces against the opponents. The term "Indochina" referred to former French Indochina, which included the current states of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. In current usage, it applies largely to a geographic region, rather than to a political area. The wars included:The First Indochina War began after the end of World War II with the War in southern Vietnam (1945–1946), which acted as the precursor to the First Indochina War. The conflict officially began in 1946 and lasted until the French defeat in 1954. After a long campaign of unsuccessful resistance against the French and the Japanese, Viet Minh forces claimed a victory in the August Revolution after Japanese forces surrendered to the Allies on 15 August 1945, leading to the fall of the Empire of Vietnam and Nguyễn dynasty. In the War in southern Vietnam (1945–1946), British forces temporarily occupied the South with the objective of disarming Japanese forces, starting from 13 September 1945, only to restore French colonial control in 1946. Meanwhile, the communist Viet Minh sought to consolidate power by terrorizing and purging rival Vietnamese nationalist groups and Trotskyist activists. In the United Nations, and through their alliance with the United Kingdom and the United States, the French demanded return of their former Indochina colony prior to agreeing to participate in the NATO alliance opposing Soviet expansion beyond the countries of the Warsaw Pact in the Cold War. With support from China and the Soviet Union, the communist Viet Minh continued fighting the French Union, including the anti-communist State of Vietnam, ultimately forcing the NATO-backed French out of North Vietnam as a result of 1954 Geneva Conference. The Second Indochina War was a group of interconnected civil wars, most often referring to what is called the Vietnam War in the United States. It began as a conflict between the United States-backed South Vietnamese government and its opponents, both the North Vietnamese-based communist Viet Cong and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), known in the West as the North Vietnamese Army (NVA). The conflict began in 1955 and lasted until 1975 when the North Vietnamese army conquered South Vietnam. The United States, which had supported France and its native vassal during the First Indochina war, backed the Republic of Vietnam government in opposition to the communist Viet Cong and PAVN. The North benefited from military and financial support from China, the Soviet Union, and other members of the communist bloc. Fighting also occurred during this time in Cambodia between the US-backed government, the PAVN, and the communist-backed Khmer Rouge, which also fought alongside deposed King Sihanouk's government in exile and in Laos between the US-backed government, the PAVN, and the communist-backed Pathet Lao. The Third Indochina War was a period of prolonged conflict following the Second Indochina War. The conflict began in 1978 and lasted until the 1991 Paris Peace Agreements on 23 October 1991, in which several wars were fought:The Cambodian–Vietnamese War began when Vietnam invaded Cambodia and deposed the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. The war lasted from 21 December 1978 to 23 October 1991. Cambodia's constitutional monarchy was then restored in 1993.The Sino-Vietnamese War was a four-week war fought in February–March 1979 between the People's Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The Chinese launched a punitive expedition in revenge for the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, and withdrew a month later to prewar positions. Skirmishes along the border would continue until the two countries normalized relations on 5 November 1991.After the triumph of the Pathet Lao, an anti-communist insurgency in Laos lasted until most Hmong insurgents surrendered in 2007, though some resistance cells remained active for several years after. Thailand, which supported the Lao insurgents, as well as the anti-Vietnamese forces in the Third Indochina War, fought a few skirmishes with Vietnam in 1984, and a short conflict with Laos in 1987.FULRO insurgency in Vietnam – United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed RacesThe Communist Party of Thailand fought an insurgency from 1965 to 1989. They received backing from Laos and Vietnam from 1975 to 1979 but were expelled from their bases and lost most of their supply lines after they sided with the Cambodian-Chinese aligned forces, rather than the pro-Soviet Vietnamese and Laotian regimes.

Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under various titles such as virgin or queen, many of which are mentioned in the Litany of Loreto. The Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and Methodist churches believe that Mary, as mother of Jesus, is the Mother of God. The Church of the East historically regarded her as Christotokos, a term still used in the liturgy of the Assyrian Church of the East. She has the highest position in Islam among all women and is mentioned numerous times in the Quran, including in a chapter (surah) named after her. She is also revered in the Baháʼí and Druze faiths.

James Earl Carter Jr. was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, Carter served from 1971 to 1975 as the 76th governor of Georgia and from 1963 to 1967 in the Georgia State Senate. He lived longer than any other president in US history, reaching age 100.

The 2006 São Paulo violence outbreak began on the night of May 12, 2006 in São Paulo, Brazil, the largest city in South America. It was among the worst outbreaks of violence in recorded Brazilian history and was directed against security forces and a few civilian targets. By May 14 the attacks had spread to other Brazilian states including Paraná, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais and Bahia.

An earthquake occurred in the province of Sichuan, China at 14:28:01 China Standard Time on May 12, 2008. Measuring at 8.0 Ms, the earthquake's epicenter was located 80 kilometres (50 mi) west-northwest of Chengdu, the provincial capital, with a focal depth of 19 km (12 mi). The earthquake ruptured the fault for over 240 km (150 mi), with surface displacements of several meters. The earthquake was also felt as far away as Beijing and Shanghai—1,500 and 1,700 km away, respectively—where office buildings swayed with the tremor, as well as Bangkok, Thailand and Hanoi, Vietnam. Strong aftershocks, some exceeding 6 Ms, continued to hit the area up to several months after the main shock, causing further casualties and damage. The earthquake also caused the largest number of geohazards ever recorded, including about 200,000 landslides and more than 800 quake lakes distributed over an area of 110,000 km2 (42,000 sq mi).

Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 was a scheduled international Afriqiyah Airways passenger flight from Johannesburg, South Africa to Tripoli, Libya. On 12 May 2010 at about 06:01 while on approach to Tripoli International Airport, the aircraft operating the flight, an Airbus A330-200, crashed about 1,200 metres short of the runway. Of the 104 passengers and crew on board, 103 were killed. The sole survivor was a 9-year-old Dutch boy.

A major earthquake occurred in Nepal on 12 May 2015 at 12:50 pm local time with a moment magnitude of 7.2–7.3, 18 kilometres (11 mi) southeast of Kodari. The epicenter was on the border of Dolakha and Sindhupalchowk, two districts of Nepal. This earthquake occurred on the same fault as the larger magnitude 7.8 earthquake of 25 April, but further east than the original quake. As such, it is considered to be an aftershock of the April quake. It struck at a depth of 18.5 km (11.5 mi). Shaking was felt in northern parts of India including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Tremors were felt as far as about 2,400 km away from the epicenter in Chennai.

The solar storms of May 2024 were a series of powerful solar storms with extreme solar flares and geomagnetic storm components that occurred from 10 to 13 May 2024 during solar cycle 25. They are also known as the 2024 Mother's Day solar storm or the Gannon storm. The geomagnetic storm was the most powerful to affect Earth since March 1989, and produced aurorae at far lower latitudes than usual.