| 51241 | May.04 | Event | 1959 – The 1st Annual Grammy Awards are held. |
| 51242 | May.04 | Event | 1961 – American civil rights movement: The "Freedom Riders" begin a bus trip through the South. |
| 51243 | May.04 | Event | 1961 – Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather attain a new altitude record for manned balloon flight ascending in the Strato-Lab V open gondola to 113,740 feet (34.67 km). |
| 51244 | May.04 | Event | 1970 – Vietnam War: Kent State shootings: The Ohio National Guard, sent to Kent State University after disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, opens fire killing four unarmed students and wounding nine others. The students were protesting the |
| 51245 | May.04 | Event | 1972 – The Don't Make A Wave Committee, a fledgling environmental organization founded in Canada in 1971, officially changes its name to "Greenpeace Foundation". |
| 51246 | May.04 | Event | 1974 – An all-female Japanese team reaches the summit of Manaslu, becoming the first women to climb an 8,000-meter peak. |
| 51247 | May.04 | Event | 1979 – Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. |
| 51248 | May.04 | Event | 1982 – Twenty sailors are killed when the British Type 42 destroyer HMS Sheffield is hit by an Argentinian Exocet missile during the Falklands War. |
| 51249 | May.04 | Event | 1988 – The PEPCON disaster rocks Henderson, Nevada, as tons of Space Shuttle fuel detonate during a fire. |
| 51250 | May.04 | Event | 1989 – Iran–Contra affair: Former White House aide Oliver North is convicted of three crimes and acquitted of nine other charges. The convictions, however, are later overturned on appeal. |
| 51251 | May.04 | Event | 1990 – Latvia proclaims the renewal of its independence after the Soviet occupation. |
| 51252 | May.04 | Event | 1994 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat sign a peace accord, granting self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho. |
| 51253 | May.04 | Event | 1998 – A federal judge in Sacramento, California, gives "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski four life sentences plus 30 years after Kaczynski accepts a plea agreement sparing him from the death penalty. |
| 51254 | May.04 | Event | 2000 – Ken Livingstone becomes the first Mayor of London. |
| 51255 | May.04 | Event | 2002 – EAS Airlines Flight 4226 crashes in a suburb of Kano, Nigeria shortly after takeoff, killing 149 people. |
| 51256 | May.04 | Event | 2007 – Greensburg, Kansas is almost completely destroyed by a 1.7 mi wide EF5 tornado. It was the first-ever tornado to be rated as such with the new Enhanced Fujita scale. |
| 51257 | May.04 | Event | 2014 – Three people are killed and 62 injured in a pair of bombings on buses in Nairobi, Kenya. |
| 51258 | May.04 | Event | 2015 – The Parliament of Malta moves from the Grandmaster's Palace to a purpose-built Parliament House. |
| 51259 | May.04 | Birth | 1008 – Khwaja Abdullah Ansari, Persian mystic and poet (d. 1088) |
| 51260 | May.04 | Birth | 1008 – Henry I of France (d. 1060) |
| 51261 | May.04 | Birth | 1649 – Chhatrasal, Indian warrior (d. 1731) |
| 51262 | May.04 | Birth | 1654 – Kangxi Emperor of China (d. 1722) |
| 51263 | May.04 | Birth | 1655 – Bartolomeo Cristofori, Italian instrument maker, invented the piano (d. 1731) |
| 51264 | May.04 | Birth | 1715 – Richard Graves, English minister and author (d. 1804) |
| 51265 | May.04 | Birth | 1733 – Jean-Charles de Borda, French mathematician, physicist, and sailor (d. 1799) |
| 51266 | May.04 | Birth | 1752 – John Brooks, American soldier and politician, 11th Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1825) |
| 51267 | May.04 | Birth | 1767 – Tyagaraja, Indian composer (d. 1847) |
| 51268 | May.04 | Birth | 1772 – Friedrich Arnold Brockhaus, German publisher (d. 1823) |
| 51269 | May.04 | Birth | 1796 – Horace Mann, American educator and politician (d. 1859) |
| 51270 | May.04 | Birth | 1796 – William H. Prescott, American historian and scholar (d. 1859) |