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May 1
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May 2
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- Comcast accidentally replaced a Handy Manny broadcast with hard-core pornography for viewers in Lincroft, New Jersey in 2007.
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May 3
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- Liberian general election 1927, most fraudulent election in recorded history with a 1,119% voter turnout rate.
- In 1991, a warehouse in Milwaukee caught on fires and sent a river of liquid butter through the streets of Milwaukee. The Wisconsin Butter Fire continued to burn for a days.
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May 4
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May 5
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- In 1880, Adrian Carton de Wiart was born. He was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; was blinded in his left eye; survived two plane crashes; tunnelled out of a prisoner-of-war camp; and tore off his own fingers when a doctor declined to amputate them. Describing his experiences in the First World War, he wrote, "Frankly, I had enjoyed the war."
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May 6
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- In 2006, Devin Gaines attracted media attention for graduating with five degrees. Months later, he died because he didn't know how to swim.
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May 7
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May 8
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- In 2006, a man named Guy Goma who went to the BBC for a job interview was instead interviewed on live TV about a technology lawsuit.
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May 9
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- In an operation called Orbiting Frog Otolith, NASA launched bullfrogs into orbit to see if they could balance in 1971.
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May 10
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- In the 1893 case Nix v. Hedden, the US Supreme Court ruled that tomatoes were, for fiscal purposes, vegetables.
- The app Send Me To Heaven, which encouraged people to throw their phones in the air, was released in 2013.
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May 11
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- Cello Scrotum letter was printed in the British Medical Journal in 1974
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May 12
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May 13
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May 14
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May 15
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May 16
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- Bliefield conspiracy, a bizarre joke where Germans pretend the city of Bliefield doesn't exist, started in 1994
- In 2001, British deputy prime minister John Prescott punched a protestor who threw an egg at him. History (and Wikipedia) remembers the incident as the Prescott punch.
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May 17
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- In 1995, a tank-driving San Diego man went on a rampage
- In 1884, PT Barnum led elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge to demonstrate its strength.
- In 1991, Lenin was a mushroom aired. It was a Soviet TV hoax that announced that Lenin had turned into a mushroom and millions of citizens believed it.
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May 18
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May 19
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- On May 19th, 1999 when Star Wars: The Phantom Menace released into theaters, an estimated 2.2 million full time employees missed work to watch the film costing the US an estimated $293 million dollars from lose of productivity.
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May 20
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- World Metrology Day, the anniversary of the 1875 Metre Convention! Perhaps you can celebrate by reading the list of unusual units of measurement.
- In 1989, Soviet pilot Aleksandr Zuyev baked a cake with sleeping pills, fed it to his squadron, and while they were sleeping he wrestled the guard on duty, took control of a Mig-29 and flew it to Turkey, and defected from the USSR to USA. All because he wasn't selected to be promoted to test pilot! He eventually became a test pilot for the US.
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May 21
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- The corpse of a migrating stork nicknamed "Pfeilstorch" was found in 1822 which served as evidence for bird migration. Previously, people weren't sure where all the birds went in the winter.
- Christian radio host Harold Camping predicted the world would end on May 21, 2011.
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May 22
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- In 2020, Saturn (alligator) in the Moscow Zoo died at the age of 83. He was born in Mississippi and gifted to the Berlin Zoo in 1936 (bad timing!), where he was nicknamed "Hitler". He escaped during the allied bombing in 1943. British soldiers found him three years later and gifted him to the Soviet Union. The paragraph about his narrow escapes with death is a thrilling read. What a life!
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May 23
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May 24
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May 25
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- In 2003 an Angola 727 airplane was stolen with two people aboard and never found
- Pepsi Number Fever, a 1992 sales promotion in the Philippines in which Pepsi accidentally made thousands of people winners. When people learned it was a mistake, and that they wouldn't each get prizes worth $40,000, they rioted in the streets and five people died.
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May 26
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- Moondog was born 1916. Not sure if this is obscure enough but putting it in anyway.
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May 27
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- Start of the Centralia mine fire in 1962. The fire is still burning beneath a Pennsylvania town.
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May 28
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- Mathias Rust, a teenage amateur pilot, flew across the Soviet border and through the air-defense system to land in the middle of Moscow
- Harambe was shot in 2016
- Crypt of Civilization, a time capsule, was sealed in 1940. It isn't supposed to be opened until the year 8113. Guinness Book of Records declared the Crypt to be the first genuine attempt to permanently preserve a record of 20th century culture for people of thousands of years into the future.
- 1990, Pepsi Cool Cans debut. People later became convinced the word "SEX" was hidden on the can.
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May 29
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- The My Way killings peaked in 2007 when a Filipino karaoke singer was shot and killed because his My Way rendition was so off-key.
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May 30
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May 31
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- Trump tweeted covfefe
- The southern United States converted all 11,500+ miles of its railroads from broad gauge (5 ft/1.524 m) to nearly-standard gauge (4 ft 9 in/ 1.448 m) in just 36 hours starting on May 31, 1886
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