May 2 in History

King Oscar II of Sweden publicly backed the United Kingdom during the Second Boer War, aligning neutral Scandinavia with British imperial interests at a time when much of continental Europe sympathized with the Boer republics. His declaration reflected the complex web of alliances and rivalries that defined European diplomacy at the turn of the century.

Princess Margriet of the Netherlands unveiled the Man With Two Hats monument in Apeldoorn, with a twin sculpture placed in Ottawa, honoring the Dutch-Canadian bond forged during World War II. Canadian troops liberated the Netherlands in 1945, and the grateful Dutch sent thousands of tulip bulbs to Ottawa each spring—a tradition that now draws over a million visitors annually.

The charges were written before the interrogations began. Anne Boleyn's arrest on May 2nd, 1536, came with accusations so perfectly coordinated—five men, four days of supposed affairs, dates Henry's own schedule proved she couldn't have been present—that the verdict seemed inevitable. She'd given him a daughter, not a son. Three years as queen, three miscarriages, one surviving girl. The men accused with her went to the scaffold first, so she'd know exactly what was coming. Henry was already planning his wedding to Jane Seymour before Anne's head fell.

The getaway boat almost sank twice crossing Loch Leven. Mary Stuart's teenage admirer Willie Douglas had stolen the castle keys during dinner, locking every gate behind them as the 25-year-old queen fled the island prison where she'd been forced to abdicate her throne. They made it to shore where George Douglas waited with horses and an army of loyalists. Eleven days later she'd lose the Battle of Langside and flee to England, trading one prison for another. She'd spend the next nineteen years as Elizabeth's captive. Willie Douglas stayed loyal the entire time.

The mameluke cavalry were Napoleon's elite—North African fighters who'd never lost in Europe. On May 2nd, 1808, Madrid's civilians attacked them with kitchen knives, roof tiles, and scissors. Anything within reach. The French executed hundreds in reprisal shootings the next dawn, which Goya painted too. Spain's professional army had surrendered to Napoleon without a fight weeks earlier. But this street-level resistance sparked six years of guerrilla war that drained 300,000 French troops and gave the English language a new word: guerrilla. The professionals quit. The amateurs didn't.

The fastest land grab in British colonial history took four days and covered an area larger than England itself. Captain Charles Fremantle didn't even wait for the actual colonists to arrive—he planted the Union Jack on May 2, 1829, claiming the entire western third of Australia while the settlement's founder, James Stirling, was still sailing toward shore. The local Noongar people watched from the tree line, unaware they'd just become subjects of a queen 9,000 miles away. Fremantle's reward for claiming a continent? They named a port city after him.

His own men shot him. Stonewall Jackson rode back from scouting Confederate positions after dark on May 2, 1863, and the 18th North Carolina Infantry mistook his party for Union cavalry. Three bullets hit him—two in the left arm, one through the right hand. Surgeons amputated the arm. He seemed to recover. Then pneumonia set in. Eight days after Chancellorsville, Robert E. Lee's most aggressive commander died at 39, leaving the Confederate Army without the general who never retreated. Lee would say he lost his right arm twice that week.

A Spanish socialist party was born over cod croquettes and vermouth. Pablo Iglesias Posse chose Casa Labra—a Madrid tavern that still exists today—to found the PSOE with just twenty-five workers in 1879. They met in the back room on May 2nd, the anniversary of Madrid's uprising against Napoleon. The pub's owner didn't mind revolutionaries, as long as they kept ordering drinks. Iglesias was a typesetter who'd been orphaned at nine. Within forty years, his backroom movement would help establish Spain's Second Republic. The croquettes, by the way, are still excellent.

Fine Bull's warriors stopped shooting first. After hours of fighting Canadian militia at Cut Knife Hill, the Cree war chief ordered his men to let Colonel Otter's exhausted troops retreat—though they could've wiped them out completely. Eight government soldiers died, three Indigenous fighters. Otter had marched 45 miles to attack Poundmaker's camp at dawn, convinced it'd be easy. Instead, his Gatling gun jammed, his men got pinned down, and he barely escaped. The Cree and Assiniboine won their biggest battle of the rebellion. And then chose mercy over massacre.

Menelik II thought he was signing a friendship treaty. The Italian version said something else entirely. Article 17 in Amharic made Italy Ethiopia's diplomatic helper; in Italian, it made Ethiopia Italy's protectorate. Two languages, two completely different meanings. When Menelik discovered the deception in 1890, he denounced it. Italy had already used their version to claim Ethiopia at the Berlin Conference. The disagreement led to war in 1896—where Ethiopian forces crushed the Italians at Adwa, making Ethiopia the only African nation to defeat a European colonial power in battle.