May 6 in History

Christopher Smart was an English poet. He was a major contributor to two popular magazines, The Midwife and The Student, and a friend to influential cultural icons like Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Smart, a high church Anglican, was widely known throughout London.

Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, Marquess of Maranhão, styled Lord Cochrane between 1778 and 1831, was a British naval officer, politician and mercenary. Serving during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in the Royal Navy, his naval successes led Napoleon to nickname him le Loup des Mers. He was successful in virtually all his naval actions.

The Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was first issued in the United Kingdom on 1 May 1840 but was not valid for use until 6 May. The stamp features a profile of 21-year-old Queen Victoria.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans.

Crazy Horse was a Lakota war leader of the Oglala band and one of the most renowned Native American figures of the nineteenth century. Known for his commitment to defending Lakota lands and lifeways, he emerged as a central figure in the northern Great Plains during a period of intense conflict with the United States. Crazy Horse resisted U.S. expansion into the Powder River Country, rejecting treaty settlements and reservation life, and became widely respected for both his tactical skill and his personal humility, which included a lifelong avoidance of being photographed.

The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a bicameral legislature, including a lower body, the U.S. House of Representatives, and an upper body, the U.S. Senate. They both meet in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Gorkhapatra is the oldest Nepali language state-owned national daily newspaper of Nepal. It was started as a weekly newspaper in May 1901 and became a daily newspaper in 1961. It is managed by the Gorkhapatra Sansthan. The Rising Nepal is an English-language sister newspaper of Gorkhapatra.

George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.

The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914–1917 is considered to be the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Conceived by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition was an attempt to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent. After Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition in 1911, this crossing remained, in Shackleton's words, the "one great main object of Antarctic journeyings". Shackleton's expedition failed to accomplish this objective but became recognised instead as an epic feat of endurance.

Vietnam, officially the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam (SRV), is a country at the eastern edge of Mainland Southeast Asia. With an area of about 331,000 square kilometres and a population of over 102 million, it is the world's 16th-most populous country. One of two communist states in Southeast Asia, Vietnam is bordered by China to the north, and Laos and Cambodia to the west; it lies along the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest and the South China Sea to the east, where it has shared and disputed maritime borders with other countries. Its capital is Hanoi, while its largest city is Ho Chi Minh City.

The New Deal was a 1933–1938 series of economic, social, and political reforms in response to the Great Depression in the United States under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He introduced the phrase when accepting the Democratic Party presidential nomination in the 1932 United States presidential election, winning in a landslide over incumbent Herbert Hoover, whose administration was widely viewed as ineffective. Roosevelt attributed the Depression to inherent market instability and inadequate aggregate demand, and argued that stabilizing and rationalizing the economy required massive government intervention.

John Ernst Steinbeck was an American writer and novelist. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social perception". He has been called "a giant of American letters".

The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt is a World War II-era fighter aircraft produced by the American company Republic Aviation from 1941 through 1945. One of the main United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) fighters, it found success in the European and Pacific theaters as an escort fighter well-suited to high-altitude air-to-air combat. It also served as the foremost American fighter-bomber in the ground-attack role.

Mildred Elizabeth Gillars was an American broadcaster employed by Nazi Germany to disseminate Axis propaganda during World War II. Following her capture in post-war Berlin, Gillars became the first woman to be convicted of treason against the United States. In March 1949, she was sentenced to ten to thirty years' imprisonment. Gillars was paroled in 1961. Along with Rita Zucca she was nicknamed "Axis Sally".

The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer. Inspired by John von Neumann's seminal First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC, the machine was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England to provide a service to the university. EDSAC was the second electronic digital stored-program computer, after the Manchester Mark 1, to go into regular service.

The wedding of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones took place on Friday, 6 May 1960 at Westminster Abbey in London. Princess Margaret was the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II, while Antony Armstrong-Jones was a noted society photographer.

Deniz Gezmiş was a Turkish Marxist-Leninist revolutionary, student leader, and political activist in Turkey in the late 1960s. He was one of the founding members of the People's Liberation Army of Turkey (THKO).

The 1976 Friuli earthquake, also known in Italy as Terremoto del Friuli and Orcolat, occurred on 6 May 1976, at 21:00:13 with a moment magnitude of 6.5 and a maximum EMS intensity of X. The shock occurred in the Friuli region in northeast Italy near the town of Gemona del Friuli. 990 people were killed, up to about 3,000 were injured, and more than 157,000 were left homeless.

The Korean Martyrs were the victims of religious persecution against Catholics during the 19th century in Korea. Among them are 103 Saints and 124 Blesseds officially recognized by the Catholic Church.

Elizabeth II was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during her lifetime and was the monarch of 15 realms at her death. Her reign of 70 years, 214 days, is the longest of any British monarch, the second-longest of any sovereign state, and the longest of any queen regnant in history.

The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker and debt manager, and still one of the bankers for the government of the United Kingdom, it is the world's second oldest central bank, after Sweden's (1668). It is considered to be one of the world's most important central banks.

Steven Paul Jobs was an American businessman, inventor, and investor. A pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, Jobs co-founded Apple Inc. with his early business partner Steve Wozniak as Apple Computer Company in 1976. After the company's board of directors fired him in 1985, he founded NeXT the same year and purchased Pixar in 1986, becoming its chairman and majority shareholder until 2007. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 as CEO, where he was closely involved with the creation and promotion of many of the company's most influential products until his resignation in 2011.

Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic (SAR), is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north and northwest, Iraq to the east and southeast, Jordan to the south, and Israel and Lebanon to the southwest. It is a republic under a provisional government and comprises 14 governorates. Damascus is the capital and largest city. With a population of 26 million across an area of 185,180 square kilometres (71,500 sq mi), it is the 56th-most populous and 87th-largest country.

"The Last One" is the series finale of the American sitcom Friends. Originally shown in its entirety, the episode's two parts were classified as the seventeenth and eighteenth episodes of the tenth season, and the 235th and the 236th episodes overall. It was written by series creators David Crane and Marta Kauffman and directed by executive producer Kevin S. Bright. The series finale first aired on NBC in the United States on May 6, 2004, when it was watched by 52.5 million viewers, making it the most watched entertainment telecast in six years and the fifth most watched overall television series finale in American history as well as the most watched episode from any television series throughout the 2000s decade on American television. In Canada, the finale aired simultaneously on May 6, 2004, on Global, and was viewed by 5.16 million viewers, becoming the second-highest viewed episode of the series.

The coronation of Charles III and his wife, Camilla, as king and queen of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms, took place on Saturday, 6 May 2023 at Westminster Abbey. Charles acceded to the throne on 8 September 2022 upon the death of his mother, Elizabeth II.