| 58921 | May.23 | Event | 1609 – Official ratification of the Second Charter of Virginia takes place. |
| 58922 | May.23 | Event | 1618 – The Second Defenestration of Prague precipitates the Thirty Years' War. |
| 58923 | May.23 | Event | 1701 – After being convicted of piracy and of murdering William Moore, Captain William Kidd is hanged in London, England. |
| 58924 | May.23 | Event | 1706 – Battle of Ramillies: John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, defeats a French army under Marshal François de Neufville, duc de Villeroy. |
| 58925 | May.23 | Event | 1788 – South Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution as the eighth American state. |
| 58926 | May.23 | Event | 1793 – Battle of Famars during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition. |
| 58927 | May.23 | Event | 1829 – Accordion patent granted to Cyrill Demian in Vienna, Austrian Empire. |
| 58928 | May.23 | Event | 1844 – Declaration of the Báb the evening before the 23rd: A merchant of Shiraz announces that he is a Prophet and founds a religious movement that would later be brutally crushed by the Persian government. He is considered to be a forerunner of the Bahá' |
| 58929 | May.23 | Event | 1846 – Mexican–American War: President Mariano Paredes of Mexico unofficially declares war on the United States. |
| 58930 | May.23 | Event | 1873 – The Canadian Parliament establishes the North-West Mounted Police, the forerunner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. |
| 58931 | May.23 | Event | 1900 – American Civil War: Sergeant William Harvey Carney is awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism in the Assault on the Battery Wagner in 1863. |
| 58932 | May.23 | Event | 1907 – The unicameral Parliament of Finland gathers for its first plenary session. |
| 58933 | May.23 | Event | 1911 – The New York Public Library is dedicated. |
| 58934 | May.23 | Event | 1915 – World War I: Italy joins the Allies after they declare war on Austria-Hungary. |
| 58935 | May.23 | Event | 1932 – In Brazil, four students are shot and killed during a manifestation against the Brazilian dictator Getúlio Vargas, which occurred in the city of São Paulo. Their names and surnames were used to form the MMDC, a revolutionary group that would act ag |
| 58936 | May.23 | Event | 1934 – The American bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Bienville Parish, Louisiana. |
| 58937 | May.23 | Event | 1934 – The Auto-Lite strike culminates in the "Battle of Toledo", a five-day melée between 1,300 troops of the Ohio National Guard and 6,000 picketers. |
| 58938 | May.23 | Event | 1939 – The U.S. Navy submarine USS Squalus sinks off the coast of New Hampshire during a test dive, causing the death of 24 sailors and two civilian technicians. The remaining 32 sailors and one civilian naval architect are rescued the following day. |
| 58939 | May.23 | Event | 1945 – World War II: Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Schutzstaffel, commits suicide while in Allied custody. |
| 58940 | May.23 | Event | 1945 – World War II: The Flensburg Government under Reichspräsident Karl Dönitz is dissolved when its members are captured and arrested by British forces at Flensburg in Northern Germany. |
| 58941 | May.23 | Event | 1948 – Thomas C. Wasson, the US Consul-General, is assassinated in Jerusalem, Israel. |
| 58942 | May.23 | Event | 1949 – The Federal Republic of Germany is established and the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany is proclaimed. |
| 58943 | May.23 | Event | 1951 – Tibetans sign the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet with China. |
| 58944 | May.23 | Event | 1958 – The satellite Explorer 1 ceases transmission. |
| 58945 | May.23 | Event | 1967 – Egypt closes the Straits of Tiran and blockades the port of Eilat at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping. |
| 58946 | May.23 | Event | 1970 – Robert Stephenson's pioneering Britannia Tubular Bridge over the Menai Strait is catastrophically damaged by fire after standing for 120 years. |
| 58947 | May.23 | Event | 1992 – Italy's most prominent anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three body guards are killed by the Corleonesi clan with a half-ton bomb near Capaci, Sicily. His friend and colleague Paolo Borsellino will be assassinated less than two months |
| 58948 | May.23 | Event | 1995 – The first version of the Java programming language is released. |
| 58949 | May.23 | Event | 1998 – The Good Friday Agreement is accepted in a referendum in Northern Ireland with 75% voting yes. |
| 58950 | May.23 | Event | 2002 – The "55 parties" clause of the Kyoto Protocol is reached after its ratification by Iceland. |