The notorious American outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were killed on May 23, 1934, in a police shoot-out near Gibsland, Louisiana. The couple had been on a crime spree lasting 21 months, during which they robbed restaurants, gas stations, and small-town banks, chiefly in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Missouri. In the April before their spree ended, Bonnie and Clyde killed three policemen and kidnapped another.

A brilliant feat of 19th-century engineering, the Brooklyn Bridge—spanning the East River from Brooklyn to Manhattan Island in New York City—opened on May 24, 1883. It was the first bridge to use steel for cable wire, and its main span of 1,595 feet (486 meters) was the world’s longest at the time. The public, however, initially distrusted its structural integrity, leading the city to hire celebrated showman P.T. Barnum to parade 21 elephants and 17 camels across the bridge.

On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed African American man, was killed during an arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Floyd had been accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill at a convenience store. Police were called, and Floyd was handcuffed and restrained. One of the officers, Derek Chauvin, pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, leading to the latter’s suffocation. Floyd’s death set off massive protests around the country and generated greater support for the Black Lives Matter movement. Chauvin was later convicted of second-degree murder.

The Constitutional Convention opened on May 25, 1787, in Philadelphia, where 55 state delegates, initially charged with amending the Articles of Confederation, later drafted the Constitution of the United States. Those delegates included many of the leading figures of the period, including George Washington, who was elected to preside, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin.