On May 29, 1913, Igor Stravinsky's masterwork Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) premiered at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, outraging, scandalizing, and delighting audiences who had never seen or heard anything quite like it before--and, as there was no reliable record of Vaslav Nijinksy's choreography or Nicholas Roerich's costumes or sceneries, have not seen or heard anything quite like it since.

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided on the case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruling that racial segregation in public educational facilities is unconstitutional. In the decades that followed, the integration process has been in many places slow, dangerous, or even functionally nonexistent.

On May 22, 1843, the inaugural wagon train of the Great Emigration departed from Independence, Missouri, bound for the Pacific coast. A group of 1,000 settlers (along with 1,000 head of cattle) began a five-month journey across the Western half of the continent, arriving in Oregon in late October.