- May 7
- The U.S. Federal Reserve reports that ten of the biggest 19 banks in the U.S. do not have adequate capital reserves in case the economy worsens, and must raise a total of US$75 billion by the end of 2010. The worst is Bank of America, requiring US$34 billion. [105]
- May 8
- Fannie Mae, the largest provider of U.S. home mortgage funding, reports a US$23.2 billion loss in the first quarter, and seeks US$19 billion in additional funding from the US Treasury. [35]
- May 9
- In the Indonesian parliamentary election, the president's Democrat Party takes first place with 20.85% of the vote. [57]
- May 11
- The NASA space shuttle Atlantis blasts off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on a mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope. [57]
- May 12
- The Cannes film festival opens in France, with a preview of the Disney-Pixar 3D animation comedy film Up. [35]
- A rare blue diamond (7.03 carats, graded flawless) mounted on a platinum ring, sells for a record 10.5 million Swiss francs (US$9.5 million) at auction in Geneva, Switzerland. [57]
- Gordon Campbell wins a historic third straight term as British Columbia's premier in Canada. His Liberal party win 49 of 85 seats to the NDP's 36 seats. [105]
- May 13
- In France, a new law is given final approval to disconnect people from the Internet who are caught downloading content illegally three times. [57]
- The European Commission slaps a record 1.06 billion euro (US$1.45 billion) fine on Intel for antitrust violations, and orders it to halt illegal efforts to squeeze out Advanced Micro Devices. The antitrust fine, imposed after an eight-year investigation, is the biggest the European Union's executive Commission has imposed on a company. [35]
- May 14
- An Ariane 5 rocket blasts off from Kourou in French Guiana, carrying Europe's Herschel and Planck telescopes into space. The satellites will gather new insights into the nature of the cosmos. The combined program cost US$2.5 billion. [57]
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- Chrysler eliminates 789 car dealerships in the US. [529.67]
- May 15
- General Motors eliminates 1100 car dealerships in the US. [529.67]
- May 16
- General election in India: Congress alliance with president Sonia Gandhi and prime minister Manmohan Singh win re-election. [57] [529.29]
- May 17
- Dalia Grybauskaite is elected Lithuania's first female president, with 68 percent of votes. [57]
- May 18
- Sri Lanka's army defeats the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, unifying the country for the first time in 25 years. Rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran is killed, at age 54. An estimated 70,000 people died in the civil war. [105] [398] [529.29,92]
- The third C40 Large Cities Climate Leadership Group meets in Seoul, South Korea. [398]
- May 19
- UK Speaker of the House Michael Martin is forced to resign over expenses scandal. [529.57]
- Velupillai Prabhakaran, leader of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, is found dead in northeast Sri Lanka. [378.66]
- May 20
- The Pitcairn Islands issues its first coinage for circulation, six coins valued at 5 cents through 2 dollars. [369.1]
- An Indonesian military C-130 Hercules transport plane crashes and burst into flames in East Java, killing at least 98 people on board and on the ground. [35]
- May 21
- Linda Fleming, 66-year-old US woman with advanced cancer, becomes the first person to die under a new assisted suicide law in Washington State. [57]
- May 22
- India's new government, with Manmohan Singh as prime minister, takes the oath of office in Delhi. [57]
- Malawi's President Bingu wa Mutharika is sworn in for a second five-year term. [57]
- May 23
- German President Horst Koehler is re-elected for a second five-year term. [57]
- Communist Party of Nepal leader Madhav Kumar Nepal is elected as Nepal's new prime minister. [105] [378.66]
- Australians begin receiving bonus payments worth US$700, the largest cash handouts in the country's history. The payments will cost the government a total of US$33 billion. [57]
- South Korea's former President (2002-2008) Roh Moo-hyunal dies from a fall while hiking on Ponghwa Mountain near Bongha village at age 62, possibly a suicide. [35] [378.96] [398]
- May 24
- Mongolia's opposition party leader of the Democratic Party and two-time former prime minister, Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, wins the presidential election. [57]
- An earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale hits southern Macedonia near the Greek border. [105]
- May 25
- North Korea claims to have conducted its second underground nuclear detonation test. [35] [378.63] [398]
- May 26
- France opens its first permanent military base in the Persian Gulf, in the Abu Dhabi emirate of the United Arab Emirates. The base will be manned by up to 500 French troops and include a navy base, air base, and training camp. [57]
- More than 155 people are killed by Cyclone Aila in Bangladesh and West Bengal in eastern India. At least 500,000 people are made homeless by the storm. [57]
- May 27
- (to May 31) Heritage Numismatic Auctions conducts Central States Signature Auction. Some highlights:
- US 1804 $1 Class III, PR-58 PCGS: US$2.3 million;
- US 1870-S $1, EF-40 PCGS: US$503,125;
- US 1794 $1, MS-61 NGC: US$503,125;
- US 1876-CC 20-cent, MS-66 PCGS: US$460,000.
[498.18]
- North Korea announces it has abandoned the truce that ended the Korean war, calling South Korea's decision to join a US-led initiative to search ships for nuclear weapons a "declaration of war". [57]
- Alice Munro wins the Man Booker international prize for her short story fiction writing. [378.94]
- May 28
- A 7.4-magnitude earthquake strikes off the coast of Honduras, killing five people. [57]
- May 29
- Heritage Auction Galleries conducts their Signature auction in Long Beach, California. A 1856-O Coronet double eagle, SP-63 PCGS, finest known sells for US$1,437,500. [506.5] [516.94]
- May (month)
- U.S. employers cut 345,000 jobs during the month, putting the unemployment rate up to 9.4 percent, highest since July 1983. [35]
- Euro-zone unemployment hits 9.5 percent, highest in ten years. In Spain, the unemployment rate is 18.7 percent, with 15 million jobless. [356.A8]
- U.S. Consumer Price Index is 1.3 percent lower than one year ago, the largest decrease since 1950. [35]
- June 1
- Air France Airbus A330-300 flight AF447 from Rio, Brazil, to Paris, France, crashes in the Atlantic Ocean, 650km off Brazil's coast. All 228 people on board are killed, the worst loss of life in Air France's history. [57] [398]
- American car-maker General Motors files for bankruptcy, the third-largest in U.S. history and the largest ever in U.S. manufacturing. The U.S. government will provide US$30 billion of additional taxpayer funds to restructure. [35] [564.17]
- June 5
- A fast-moving fire kills 41 children in the ABC Daycare centre in Hermosillo, northern Mexico. [105]
- June 6
- Costa Cruises enters the Guinness World Records for the joint christening in Genoa of its 13th and 14th additions to the fleet - the Costa Luminosa (92,600 gross tons, 2260 passengers) and the Costa Pacifica (114,500 gross tons, 3008 passengers) cruise ships. [292.7,13] [339] [359.42] [379.9]
- June 7
- Lebanon's parliamentary election returns the pro-Western coalition to power, winning 71 seats in the 128-member body. [57]
- June 8
- Death of Africa's longest serving leader (42 years), Gabonese President Omar Bongo, at age 73 of a heart attack. [57] [398]
- June 11
- The World Health Organization declares the H1N1 influenza has reached the pandemic level, the first time it has called a global flu epidemic in 41 years. [105] [398]
- June 12
- American investment firm BlackRock acquires Britain's Barclays Global Investors for US$13.5 billion, creating the world's largest money manager, with roughly US$2.8 trillion of assets under management. [35]
- Official results of presidential election in Iran show Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defending his re-election with 62.6 percent of votes. [57] [530.41]
- June 13
- New York-based theme park operator Six Flags files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, with US$2.4 billion in debt. [35]
- Following the reelection of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, supporters of defeated candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi accuse the government of fraud, and launch a series of sustained protests. [398]
- June 15
- The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals orders Exxon Mobil to pay US$507.5 million in punitive damages stemming from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, plus 5.9 percent interest running from the 1996 trial judgment. [35]
- June 17
- Former American HealthSouth chief executive Richard Scrushy is ordered to pay US$2.9 billion after a judge found him responsible for an accounting fraud that nearly bankrupted the hospital chain. [35]
- June 18
- America's NASA successfully launches two spacecraft to the Moon on missions to prepare for a return to the lunar surface by US astronauts. One mission will send a rocket crashing into the surface, so that the debris plume can be scanned for evidence of water. The other mission will help plan for future landing sites, and for construction of an outpost. [57] [398]
- June 20
- A suicide truck bomb near a Shia mosque in Taza, near Kirkuk, Iraq, kills 72, injures about 200 others. [57]
- Ground is broken in New Mexico, USA, on the construction site of Spaceport America, the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport. It will cost the New Mexico government almost US$200 million. [57]
- June 21
- As a step toward total independence from the Kingdom of Denmark, Greenland assumes control over its law enforcement, judicial affairs, and natural resources. Greenlandic becomes the official language. [398]
- June 22
- Kodak announces it will retire Kodachrome color film this year, due to overwhelming competition from digital cameras, after 74 years of production. [35]
- June 24
- In Iraq, a bomb explodes in a crowded market in Baghdad's main Shia district, Sadr City, killing at least 72 people and wounding 127. [35] [105]
- June 25
- Death of Michael Jackson at age 50 of heart failure at his home in Beverly Hills, California, USA; music superstar ("Beat It", "Billie Jean"; "Thriller" is the world's best-selling record of all time with sales of over 50 million, dubbed the "King of Pop", won 13 Grammy Awards, had 13 number one singles). [105] [398] [457] [530.83]
- June 28
- Honduran President Manuel Zelaya is taken from his home by force by soldiers, and expelled from the country. [105] [398] [530.31]
- June 29
- Bernard Madoff is sentenced to 150 years in prison for "extraordinarily evil" crimes in Wall Street's biggest and most brazen investment fraud. [35] [530.72]
- Iran's Guardian Council announces the election of June 12 was fair, with no sign of wrongdoing. [530.41]
- June 30
- Yemenia Airbus 310 carrying 153 people plunges into the ocean north of the Comoros Islands. The only survivor is a 14-year old girl. [357.6A] [398]
- A car bomb explodes in Iraq's northern city of Kirkuk, killing at least 32 people and wounded more than 100. [35]
- US troops formally hand over security duties to new Iraqi forces, and withdraw from towns and cities in Iraq. Some 131,000 US troops remain in Iraq. [57]
- A freight train carrying gas derails in northern Italy and explodes, killing at least 14 people. [57]
- June (month)
- US job losses for the month: 467,000, taking the unemployment rate to 9.5 percent. [356.1]
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