• Readsy

On this day

Russo-Ukrainian war: Russia claims full control of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol after a nearly three-month siege.

2022

view article

The International System of Units (SI): The base units are redefined, making the international prototype of the kilogram obsolete.

2019

view article

The government of Singapore authorised the controversial execution of convicted murderer Kho Jabing for the murder of a Chinese construction worker despite the international pleas for clemency, notably from Amnesty International and the United Nations.

2016

view article

An EF5 tornado strikes the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, killing 24 people and injuring 377 others.

2013

view article

At least 27 people are killed and 50 others injured when a 6.0-magnitude earthquake strikes northern Italy.

2012

view article

Mamata Banerjee is sworn in as the Chief Minister of West Bengal, the first woman to hold this post.

2011

view article

An Indonesian Air Force Lockheed L-100 Hercules crashes in Magetan Regency, killing 99.

2009

view article

The independence of East Timor is recognized by Portugal, formally ending 23 years of Indonesian rule and three years of provisional UN administration (Portugal itself is the former colonizer of East Timor until 1976).

2002

view article

Civil rights: The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians.

1996

view article

The first post-Communist presidential and parliamentary elections are held in Romania.

1990

view article

The Chinese authorities declare martial law in the face of pro-democracy demonstrations, setting the scene for the Tiananmen Square massacre.

1989

view article

Radio Martí, part of the Voice of America service, begins broadcasting to Cuba.

1985

view article

First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by a team of French scientists including Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Jean-Claude Chermann, and Luc Montagnier.

1983

view article

Church Street bombing: A car bomb planted by UMkhonto we Sizwe explodes on Church Street in South Africa's capital, Pretoria, killing 19 people and injuring 217 others.

1983

view article

In a referendum in Quebec, the population rejects, with 60% of the vote, a government proposal to move towards independence from Canada.

1980

view article

In the Chuknagar massacre, Pakistani forces massacre thousands, mostly Bengali Hindus.

1971

view article

The Battle of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam ends.

1969

view article

The Popular Movement of the Revolution political party is established in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

1967

view article

One hundred twenty-one people are killed when Pakistan International Airlines Flight 705 crashes at Cairo International Airport.

1965

view article

Discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation by Robert Woodrow Wilson and Arno Penzias.

1964

view article

Capital Airlines Flight 300 collides in mid-air with a United States Air Force Lockheed T-33 over Brunswick, Maryland, killing 12.

1958

view article

In Operation Redwing, the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

1956

view article

In the United States, the Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor to the National Security Agency, is established.

1949

view article

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek wins the 1948 Republic of China presidential election and is sworn in as the first President of the Republic of China at Nanjing.

1948

view article

The Luttra Woman, a bog body from the Early Neolithic period (radiocarbon-dated c. 3928–3651 BC), was discovered near Luttra, Sweden.

1943

view article

World War II: Battle of Crete: German paratroops invade Crete.

1941

view article

The Holocaust: The first prisoners arrive at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz.

1940

view article

Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day.

1932

view article

Treaty of Jeddah: The United Kingdom recognizes the sovereignty of King Ibn Saud in the Kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd, which later merge to become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

1927

view article

Charles Lindbergh takes off for Paris from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, N.Y., aboard the Spirit of St. Louis on the first nonstop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, landing 33+1⁄2 hours later.

1927

view article

Cuba gains independence from the United States. Tomás Estrada Palma becomes the country's first President.

1902

view article

History of cinema: The first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope.

1891

view article

Krakatoa begins to erupt; the volcano explodes three months later, killing more than 36,000 people.

1883

view article

The Triple Alliance between the German Empire, Austria-Hungary and the Kingdom of Italy is formed.

1882

view article

Signing of the Metre Convention by 17 nations leading to the establishment of the International System of Units.

1875

view article

Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.

1873

view article

American Civil War: Battle of Ware Bottom Church: In the Virginia Bermuda Hundred campaign, 10,000 troops fight in this Confederate victory.

1864

view article

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act into law, opening eighty-four million acres (340,000 km2) of public land to settlers.

1862

view article

American Civil War: The state of Kentucky proclaims its neutrality, which will last until September 3 when Confederate forces enter the state.

1861

view article

American Civil War: The State of North Carolina secedes from the Union.

1861

view article

Napoleon Bonaparte leads his French troops into the Battle of Bautzen in Saxony, Germany, against the combined armies of Russia and Prussia. The battle ends the next day with a French victory.

1813

view article

By the Law of 20 May 1802, Napoleon Bonaparte reinstates slavery in the French colonies, revoking its abolition in the French Revolution.

1802

view article

The Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence is allegedly signed in Charlotte, North Carolina.

1775

view article

The Battle of Cartagena de Indias ends in a Spanish victory and the British begin withdrawal towards Jamaica with substantial losses.

1741

view article

Johann Sebastian Bach leads the first performance of his cantata for Pentecost, Erschallet, ihr Lieder, BWV 172, at the chapel of Schloss Weimar.

1714

view article

Yangzhou massacre: The ten day massacre of the residents of the city of Yangzhou, part of the Transition from Ming to Qing.

1645

view article

The city of Magdeburg in Germany is seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years' War.

1631

view article

Shakespeare's sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.

1609

view article

Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issues Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas.

1570

view article

Ignatius of Loyola is seriously wounded in the Battle of Pampeluna.

1521

view article

Hernan Cortés defeats Pánfilo de Narváez, sent by Spain to punish him for insubordination.

1520

view article

Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama discovers the sea route to India when he arrives at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut), India.

1498

view article

John Cabot sets sail from Bristol, England, on his ship Matthew looking for a route to the west (other documents give a May 2 date).

1497

view article

The Battle of Alfarrobeira is fought, establishing the House of Braganza as a principal royal family of Portugal.

1449

view article

King Mohnyin Thado formally ascends to the throne of Ava.

1426

view article

King Sancho IV of Castile creates the Estudio de Escuelas de Generales in Alcalá de Henares.

1293

view article

The Second Battle of Lincoln is fought near Lincoln, England, resulting in the defeat of Prince Louis of France by William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke.

1217

view article

A major earthquake hits Syria, widely felt between Sicily and Iraq.

1202

view article

A Magyar raiding army defeats forces of the Muslim frontier state of Fraxinetum.

942

view article

Christopher Lekapenos is crowned Byzantine co-emperor by his father, emperor Romanos I Lekapenos, on the feast of Whitsun.

921

view article

While visiting the royal Mercian court at Sutton Walls with a view to marrying princess Ælfthryth, King Æthelberht II of East Anglia is taken captive and beheaded.

794

view article

The Battle of Dun Nechtain is fought between a Pictish army under King Bridei III and the invading Northumbrians under King Ecgfrith, who are decisively defeated.

685

view article

Empress Ariadne marries Anastasius I. The widowed Augusta is able to choose her successor for the Byzantine throne, after Zeno (late emperor) dies of dysentery.

491

view article

The First Council of Nicaea is formally opened, starting the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church.

325

view article

Top Stories from Hacker News

Qian Xuesen: The missile genius America lost and China gained (2025)

22 points

10 comments

discussionsource

Why is Inkwell stuck in review

37 points

13 comments

discussionsource

Map of Metal

An interactive map of Metal history and the influential bands that helped shaped the genres we know today

340 points

119 comments

discussionsource

Saying Goodbye to Asm.js

Disabling asm.js optimizations in SpiderMonkey

242 points

110 comments

discussionsource

How fast is N tokens per second really?

164 points

42 comments

discussionsource

Formal Verification Gates for AI Coding Loops

Formal verification gates for AI coding loops, in the language you're already shipping.

65 points

9 comments

discussionsource

SBCL: the ultimate assembly code breadboard (2014)

Paul Khuong's personal blog. Some Lisp, some optimisation, mathematical or computer.

85 points

5 comments

discussionsource

LoRA and Weight Decay (2023)

LoRA doesn’t approximate a solution to full-finetuning; it solves a different (albeit similar) optimization problem

7 points

0 comments

discussionsource

Incident Report: May 19, 2026 – GCP Account Suspension

Railway experienced a platform-wide service disruption due to Google Cloud incorrectly placing our account in a suspended status. This resulted in a temporary loss of service for all GCP hosted infrastructure.,Railway experienced a platform-wide service disruption due to Google Cloud incorrectly placing our account in a suspended status. This resulted in a temporary loss of service for all GCP hosted infrastructure.

304 points

178 comments

discussionsource

Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

A three-month national investigation by Beyond Plastics found that not a single tracked Starbucks cold-beverage cup ended up at a recycling facility — even when the cups were placed in clearly marked recycling bins inside Starbucks stores., A three-month national investigation by Beyond Plastics found that not a single tracked Starbucks cold-beverage cup ended up at a recycling facility — even when the cups were placed in clearly marked recycling bins inside Starbucks stores.

86 points

59 comments

discussionsource

Everything in C is undefined behavior

If he had been a programmer, Cardinal Richelieu would have said “Give me six lines written by the hand of the most expert C programmer in the world, and I wi...

440 points

590 comments

discussionsource

Qwen3.7-Max: The Agent Frontier

Qwen Studio offers comprehensive functionality spanning chatbot, image and video understanding, image generation, document processing, web search integration, tool utilization, and artifacts.

497 points

192 comments

discussionsource

Google's AI is being manipulated. The search giant is quietly fighting back

A BBC investigation revealed a simple way to get AI chatbots to spit out misinformation. Google and other AI companies are now trying to fix the problem.

197 points

144 comments

discussionsource

GitHub confirms breach of 3,800 repos via malicious VSCode extension

GitHub has confirmed that roughly 3,800 internal repositories were breached after one of its employees installed a malicious VS Code extension.

85 points

28 comments

discussionsource

Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia, UAE

القسط لحقوق الإنسان، هي منظمة مستقلة ذات قاعدة شعبية، تأسست عام 2014 بهدف تعزيز حقوق الإنسان في السعودية وحمايتها.للاستفسارات، يُرجى التواصل عبر البريد الإلكتروني: contact@alqst.org,The undersigned NGOs condemn Meta’s decision to restrict the Facebook and Instagram accounts of independent NGOs, researchers, and civil society figures from reaching audiences in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

807 points

342 comments

discussionsource

Sharla Boehm, the programmer whose code underpins the Internet

Sharla Boehm, a math teacher, spent her summers coding. She’d go on to build what would eventually evolve into the Internet

39 points

12 comments

discussionsource

Flipper One Tech Specs

Flipper One Documentation

40 points

6 comments

discussionsource

An OpenAI model has disproved a central conjecture in discrete geometry

An OpenAI model solved the 80-year-old unit distance problem, disproving a major conjecture in discrete geometry and marking a milestone in AI-driven mathematics.

134 points

64 comments

discussionsource

Apparently Google hates us now

304 points

147 comments

discussionsource

Node.js 26.0.0 (Now with Temporal)

Node.js® is a free, open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment that lets developers create servers, web apps, command line tools and scripts.

39 points

7 comments

discussionsource