May 12: Facts & Historical Events On This Day

More than 69,000 people lost their lives to a magnitude 8.0 earthquake in Sichuan, China.

Juan María Fernández y Krohn tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II with a bayonet.

The US Commerce Department decided that hurricane names would no longer be only female.

The first-ever quadraphonic concert was held.

When Pink Floyd performed the Games for May concert in London, they were the first to perform a quadraphonic concert. Some effects included band members chopping up wood on stage and a bubble machine.

The Soviet Union’s Luna 5 uncrewed spacecraft crash-landed on the Moon.

Luna 5's launch on May 9, 1965, went off about as smoothly as Soviet spacecraft launches could at the time, and there were high hopes for it to become the first spacecraft in history to make a soft landing on the Moon. Failures in its guidance system during flight and errors from the ground team during landing led to Luna 5 becoming the second Soviet spacecraft to impact the Moon's surface.

The United States and Canada formed NORAD – the North American Air Defense Command.

The first confirmed trip to the North Pole was carried out by the Norge, a semi-rigid Italian-built airship.

National Hospital Day was first observed.

Originally starting as a one-day holiday, National Hospital Day turned into a week-long holiday to educate the public about medical care. The original day was celebrated on what would have been Florence Nightingale's 101st birthday.

After encountering many difficulties, Nathan Stubblefield was finally granted a US patent for his new version of a wireless telephone.

One hundred and forty thousand miners went on strike in Pennsylvania.

They went on strike for higher wages, shorter workdays, and the recognition of their union.

The first-ever cricket County Championship started, finishing with Yorkshire beating Gloucestershire.

Revolutionary War soldiers formed the Society of St. Tammany.

The Society of St. Tammany went on to become a powerful Democratic Party that controlled New York City and state politics. The group went defunct in the 1960s after bribery in the group was exposed.

The first university in the New World, the National University of San Marcos, was founded in Lima, Peru.

At its founding, the university was simply called The University of Lima and was entirely run by Dominican friars. So not only was it the first university to be officially opened in the Americas, but it's also the oldest continuously running university there too!