On May 13, 1607, some 100 English colonists arrive along the east bank of the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. Dispatched from England by the London Company, they had sailed across the Atlantic aboard the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery.- On May 14, 1796, Edward Jenner, an English country doctor, administers the world’s first vaccination as a preventive treatment for smallpox. Scientists following Jenner’s model developed new vaccines to fight diseases such as polio, whooping cough, measles and tetanus.
- On May 12, 1932, the body of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh’s baby is found, more than two months after he was kidnapped from his family’s Hopewell, New Jersey, mansion. Kidnapping was made a federal crime in the aftermath of this high-profile crime.
- On May 15, 1942, gasoline rationing begins in 17 eastern states to aid the American war effort during World War II. By the end of the year, President Franklin Roosevelt had made gas rationing mandatory in all 48 states.
- On May 9, 1960, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the world’s first commercially produced birth-control pill, Enovid-10, made by the G.D. Searle Company of Chicago. Clinical tests of the pill had begun in 1954.
- On May 10, 1980, Treasury Secretary G. William Miller announces the approval of nearly $1.5 billion in federal loan guarantees for the nearly bankrupt Chrysler Corporation, at the time the largest rescue package ever by the U.S. government to an American corporation. The loan terms required Chrysler to raise another $2 billion on its own.
- On May 11, 1997, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov resigns after 19 moves in a game against Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer developed by IBM scientists. It was the sixth and final game of their match, which Kasparov lost two games to one, with three draws.
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