1519: Five ships set sail from Spain under the command of Ferdinand Magellan, aiming to circumnavigate the globe. Magellan himself never completes the journey, killed in the Philippines in 1521, but one of his ships finishes the voyage in 1522.
1934: Italian actress Sophia Loren is born.
1946: The first Cannes Film Festival opens, having originally been due to launch in 1939 before being postponed by the Second World War.
1957: Finnish-Swedish composer Jean Sibelius dies.
1971: Giorgos Seferis, pen name of Giorgos Seferiadis, the Nobel Prize-winning Greek poet, dies.
1989: F.W. de Klerk is sworn in as President of South Africa.
1997: Turkish Chief of the General Staff İsmail Hakkı Karadayı says all necessary measures will be taken to prevent the deployment of Russian missiles in Cyprus.
2011: The United States officially ends its "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, allowing gay service members to serve openly for the first time.
