| 1453 | Constantinople falls to Muhammad II, ending the Byzantine Empire. |
| 1660 | Charles II is restored to the English throne, succeeding the short-lived Commonwealth. |
| 1721 | South Carolina is formally incorporated as a royal colony of England. |
| 1790 | Rhode Island becomes the last of the original thirteen colonies to ratify the Constitution. |
| 1848 | Wisconsin becomes the thirtieth state. |
| 1849 | A patent for lifting vessels is granted to Abraham Lincoln. |
| 1862 | Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard retreats to Tupelo, Mississippi. |
| 1911 | The Indianapolis 500 is run for the first time. |
| 1913 | The premier of the ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) in Paris causes rioting in the theater. |
| 1916 | U.S. forces invade the Dominican Republic. |
| 1922 | Ecuador becomes independent. |
| 1922 | The U.S. Supreme Court rules organized baseball is a sport not subject to antitrust laws. |
| 1942 | The German Army completes its encirclement of the Kharkov region of the Soviet Union. |
| 1951 | C. F. Blair becomes the first man to fly over the North Pole in single-engine plane. |
| 1953 | Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay become the first men to reach the top of Mount Everest. |
| 1974 | President Richard Nixon agrees to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts. |
| 1990 | Boris Yeltsin is elected the president of Russia. |
Born on May 29 |
| 1630 | Charles II, king of England (1660-1685). |
| 1736 | Patrick Henry, American revolutionary and governor of Virginia. |
| 1874 | G.K. Chesterton, English writer. |
| 1880 | Oswald Spengler, German philosopher of history and author of The Decline of the West. |
| 1894 | Bea Lillie, comic actress. |
| 1894 | Josef von Sternberg, film director (Blue Angel). |
| 1903 | Bob Hope, comedian and actor. |
| 1906 | T.H. White, British writer (The Sword in the Stone). |
| 1917 | John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States (1961-1963). |
| 1955 | John Hinckley Jr., attempted assassin of President Ronald Reagan. |
