May 1902

• A tornado swept over the city of Dacca in British India (now Dhaka in Bangladesh and killed 416 people.[1]
• The Canadian Pacific Railway took over the Ottawa, Northern and Western Railway.[2]
• The Cork International Exhibition, a world's fair, opened in Ireland for a six month long run until the end of October.[1] On the same day, the directors of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri, voted to postponed the celebration from 1903 to 1904.[1]
• U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt approved the court-martial of Major Edwin F. Henn for torture of Filipino prisoners.[1].
• The imprisoned U.S. Navy officers of USS Chicago were set free after being pardoned by the King of Italy.[1].
• U.S. Representative William H. Moody of Massachusetts resigned to become the new United States Secretary of the Navy.
• The 13th County Championship cricket season began in the UK, with 15 counties competing.[3]
• Fujimoto Bill Broker Banking, as predecessor of Daiwa Securities, was founded in Osaka, Japan.[4]

• The town of Maharg, Oklahoma, located on Turkey Creek of Washita County, was destroyed by a flash flood. The survivors relocated to higher ground and incorporated it as "Foss".
• Died:
  • Amos J. Cummings, 73, American Medal of Honor winner and U.S. Representative for New York since 1895
  • Prince George of Prussia, 76, German nobleman and playwright who wrote under the names Gunther von Freiberg and George Conrad.

• The Battle of Bayan between the U.S. Army Fourth Infantry and the army of the Moro sultan on the island of Mindanao, ended when the American infantry stormed the fort, killing the Sultan and 200 of his defenders.[1]
• A fire destroyed the Egyptian village of Mit Ghamr, killing at least 61 people.[1]
• Born: Alfred Kastler, French physicist and Nobel Prize laureate, in Guebwiller (died 1984)

• Died:
  • Peter J. Otey, 61, former Confederate Army officer, U.S. prisoner of war and U.S. Representative for Virginia since 1895.
  • Potter Palmer, 75, American businessman and co-founder of Marshall Field and Company department store in Chicago

• The Commonwealth Public Service Act created Australia's Public Service.
• The U.S. Senate voted to postpone the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1903 to 1904.[1]
• U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt nominated Herbert G. Squiers to be the first American ambassador to Cuba.[1]
• A violent eruption of Mount Pelee terrified many of the residents of most of the residents of the island of Martinique, although most chose not to evacuate.[1]
• Died:
  • Bret Harte, 65, American writer, from throat cancer[5]
  • Michael Corrigan, 62, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York since 1885

• All 737 passengers and crew on the British passenger ship SS Camorta were killed when the ship sank in a cyclone while en route from Madras in India, to Rangoon in Burma, after being hit by a cyclone. The hsip was traversing the Irrawaddy Delta when it was stroke.[6]
• In a revolt in the Venezuela city of Carupano, 115 Venezuelan Army troops were killed and 210 wounded.[1]
• Born: – Max Ophüls, German film director, in Saarbrücken (died 1957)
• Died: William T. Sampson, 62, U.S. Navy admiral and the third incumbent U.S. Representative to die in office in the past five days.

• Two thousand people on the island of Saint Vincent were killed when the volcano La Soufrière erupted, devastating the northern portion of the island.[7]
• Irish Nationalists in the United Kingdom House of Commons voted on a resolution to censure the Speaker of the Commons. The measure was rejected by a vote of 63 for and 398 against.[1]
• The U.S. House of Representatives began consideration of statehood for the U.S. territories of Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico.[1]
• Died: Agostino Roscelli, 83, Italian priest and Catholic saint, founder of the Institute of Sisters of the Immaculata

• Over 30,000 people on the island of Martinique were killed when the Mount Pelée volcano erupted, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre.
• Born: André Michel Lwoff, French microbiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, in Paris (died 1994)
• Died: Paul Leicester Ford, 37, American novelist, was shot and killed by his older brother, Malcolm Webster Ford, 40, American amateur athlete, in a murder suicide.

• Ships from the Royal Navy, the French Navy and the German Navy sailed into the Guatemalan port of San José to enforce repayment of foreign loans.[1]
• Tirésias Simon Sam resigned as President of Haiti after six years in office.[1] Pierre Boisrond-Canal formed a temporary government on May 26.
• Died: Henry Morton, 65, American scientist and the president of the Stevens Institute of Technology sinced its founding in 1870.

• Born: David O. Selznick, American film producer, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (died 1965)
• Died: Sebastian S. Marble, 85, former Governor of Maine

• In the second round of France's legislative election, the Bloc des gauches alliance of Socialists, Radicals, and the Opportunist Republicans defeated the Progressive Republicans. The dearth of seats won by Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau's Republicans resulted in Radical Émile Combes being selected to form a government.[8]
• Died: Charles "Tucky" Collis, 64, Irish-born American Medal of Honor winner.

• Brazilian inventor Augusto Severo de Albuquerque Maranhão, 38, and his companion, French engineer Georges Saché, 25, flew Severo's semi-rigid airship Pax over Paris. They lost control of the aircraft, which caught fire and exploded 1,200 feet over Montparnasse Cemetery, killing both men.[9]
• A strike by the United Mine Workers closed all of the unionized coal mines in the anthracite district of Pennsylvania.[1]
• Multiple explosions of naphtha killed 28 people at Sheraden, Pennsylvania, at the time an unincorporated community outside of the city limits of Pittsburgh, and injured 200 others.[1]

• The 1902 Copa de la Coronación football competition began in Spain, the forerunner of the Copa del Rey. Real Madrid, founded in March, played its first game as a soccer football team and lost to FC Barcelona, 3 to 1.
• The U.S. Congress voted to approve $300,000 for foreign aid relief to Martinique.[1]
• Died: Walter N. Haldeman, 81, American newspaper editor who founded the Louisville Courier as a pro-secessionist newspaper in 1844, then later merged it with a pro-Union newspaper in 1868 to form the Louisville Courier-Journal. Haldeman was also the a major league baseball team owner and a charter member of the National League with the Louisville Grays who played in 1876 and 1877.

• Italian operatic tenor Enrico Caruso performed for the first time in the England, performing at Covent Garden in Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto.
• Born:
  • Helen Flanders Dunbar, American healthcare provider and pioneer in psychosomatic medicine; in Chicago (d. 1959)
  • Mahmoud Aslan, Tunisian novelist, playwright and journalist; in Tunis

• Lyman Gilmore claimed to have flown a steam-powered fixed-wing aircraft on this date. The proof was alleged to have been destroyed in a 1935 fire.[10]
• The final of the Copa de la Coronación football tournament was won by Club Bizcaya, who defeated FC Barcelona 2-1.[11]
• Born: Richard J. Daley, American politician and longtime Mayor of Chicago; in Chicago (d. 1976)

• Born:
  • Elizabeth Nord, British-born American labor leader and executive of the Textile Workers Union of America; in Lancashire (d. 1986)
  • Karamshi Jethabhai Somaiya, Indian entrepreneur who established Somaiya University near Bombay; in Malunjar, Ahmednagar District, Bombay Presidency (now Maharashtra state) (d. 1999)
  • Judith Tyberg, American Sanskrit scholar and yogi; in Point Loma, California (d. 1980)
  • Carles Fages de Climent, Catalonian writer, poet and journalist; in Figueres (d. 1968)
• Died:
  • Benjamin H. Child, 59, American law enforcement officer and Medal of Honor winner
  • Major General Herbert T. Siborne, 75, British Army officer, engineer and military historian

• The coronation of King Alfonso XIII of Spain took place in Madrid as the young monarch came of age.[12]
• Valerios Stais identified the Antikythera mechanism as an astronomical clock; it would later be recognized as a type of ancient analog computer.[13]

• A tornado at Goliad, Texas killed 92 people and injured 103 others.[1]
• Born: Meredith Willson, American musician, composer and playwright, known for writing The Music Man; in Mason City, Iowa (died 1984)
• Died: Bishop William Taylor, 81, American Methodist missionary. Taylor University in Indiana was named in his honor in 1890.

• A coal mine explosion killed 216 miners at the Coal Creek Coal Company in Fraterville, Tennessee.[1]

• Cuba was granted independence from the United States, becoming the Republic of Cuba.[14] The 1901 Constitution of Cuba took effect (replaced in 1940). Tomas Estrada Palma was inaugurated as the new nation's first President, and U.S. military occupation of Cuba ceased.[1]

• The first monument to American soldiers, killed in the Spanish-American War, was dedicated at the Arlington National Cemetery. [15]
• Born:
  • Earl Averill, American baseball player, in Snohomish, Washington (died 1983)
  • Marcel Lajos Breuer, Hungarian architect, in Pécs (died 1981)
  • Anatole Litvak, Ukrainian film director, in Kiev (died 1974)
• Died: Edwin Lawrence Godkin, 70, Irish-born American journalist and editor who founded (in 1865), The Nation, the oldest continuously published U.S. weekly news magazine.

• By a nearly unanimous vote, the American Presbyterian Church adopted its revised creed at its 1902 general assembly. [15]
• White Star Line's latest luxury ocean liner, SS Ionic, was launched from the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast in Ireland.[16]
• Died: General Mariano Escobedo, 75, Mexican Army officer known for defeating French Army troops at the 1867 battle of Querétaro and the capture of the last Emperor of Mexico, Maximilian I.

• A coal mine explosion killed 109 miners at the Crow's Nest Coal Mining Company in Fernie, British Columbia. [17] [15]
• Bertrand Russell completed the manuscript of his widely-read book The Principles of Mathematics.
• One of Spain's highest honors for technical achievement, the Civil Order of Alfonso XII, was established by the royal decree of King Alfonso XIII. It would be superseded in 1988 by the Civil Order of Alfonso X, the Wise.
• Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau announced that he would resign as Prime Minister of France after nearly three years in office. A new government would be formed on June 7 by Émile Combes. [15]
• Born:
  • Herbert Macdonald, Jamaican athlete and sports administrator; in Kingston (d. 1991)
  • Maxi Linder (Wilhelmina Rijburg), Surinamese prostitute and labor organizer; in Paramaribo
• Died: John James, 64, British-born U.S. Army soldier and winner of the Medal of Honor

The Belgian steamer Stanleyville was wrecked off Takoradi, in the British colony of Gold Coast.[18]

• Died: Julian Pauncefote, 73, British Ambassador to the United States since 1893, known for the Hay–Pauncefote Treaty signed six months earlier with the United States.

• Parliamentary elections were held in Belgium and The ruling Catholic Party, led by the Count de Smet as Prime Minister, strengthened its majority from 86 to 93 of the 162 seats in the Chamber of Representatives. [15]
• Died: Benjamin M. Palmer, 84, American Presbyterian minister and secessionist known for rallying legislators in Louisiana to secede from the United States "to conserve and to perpetuate the institution of domestic slavery as now existing"; from injuries sustained after being struck by a streetcar while crossing the street in New Orleans.

• Pierre Boisrond-Canal became the new President of Haiti. [15]
• Died: Almon Brown Strowger, 63, American inventor who created the first automatic telephone exchange to allow direct calls between parties without use of a human operator [19]
• Died:
  • Alice Fleury Durand, 79, French novelist who wrote under the pen name Henry Gréville.
  • Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, 56, French portrait painter

• The United States and Chile agreed upon a treaty of extradition. [15]

• The Pacts of May were signed by representatives of Chile and Argentina in an attempt to resolve territorial disputes by submitting them to binding arbitration.[20]
• Meatpackers in Chicago who were members of the Teamsters union went on strike. [15]
• The Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument in New York City was unveiled at Riverside Park in Manhattan. [15]
• Died:
  • Adolf Kussmaul, 80, German physician and gastroenterologist known for his pioneering work in gastroscopy and for popularizing the use of the stomach pump technique.
  • Paul J. Sorg, 61, American tobacco entrepreneur and former U.S. Congressman

• Born: Henri Guillaumet, French aviator, in Bouy (dued 1940)

• Died: Sylvester Pennoyer, 70, Governor of Oregon from 1887 to 1895. His name is famous as a party in the landmark 1878 U.S. Supreme Court case of Pennoyer v. Neff.

Transvaal

United Kingdom

Orange Free State

• The Treaty of Vereeniging was signed at Pretoria, bringing an end the Second Boer War with the surrender of the South African Republic (Transvaal) and the Orange Free State to the United Kingdom.[21] Lord Milner (the British Colonial Secretary) and the commander of the British Army's forces, Earl Kitchener, signed on behalf of the UK while South African President Schalk Burger and Orange Free State President Christiaan de Wet signed the articles, bringing an end to existence of their Boer Republics.
• Following a court ruling that the reserve clause in contracts between players and United States National League baseball clubs did not apply to players signed with an American League team,[22]Connie Mack traded Nap Lajoie and Bill Bernhard with the Cleveland Bronchos.[23]
• U.S. President Roosevelt issued an order through the War Department reducing the size of the United States Army by 14 percent, from 77,287 to 66,497 troops. [15]