1809
May 5, Mary Kies was 1st woman issued a US patent (weaving straw).

1915
May 5, Alice Jeanne Leppert, known later as the actress Alice Faye, was born in NYC. (Some sources give her birth year as 1912), she reigned as the queen of the Fox movie lot from 1935 to 1944.

1924
May 5, Kate Claxton (b.1850), NYC theater actress, died.

1945
May 5, A Japanese balloon bomb exploded on Gearhart Mountain in Oregon, killing Mrs. Elsie Mitchell, the pregnant wife of a minister, and five children after they attempted to drag it out the woods in Lakeview, Oregon. The balloon was armed, and exploded soon after they began tampering with it. They became the 1st and only known American civilians to be killed in the continental US during World War II.

2011
May 5, In South Africa Sheryl Cwele, the wife of the South African Cabinet minister in charge of intelligence, was convicted of dealing in illegal drugs. Cwele and her co-defendant faced a minimum of 15 years in prison for recruiting women to smuggle drugs from Turkey and South America.

2012
May 5, In CongoDRC at least 10 people, including four women working in the fields, were killed by presumed Rwandan rebels in a Sud-Kivu village.

2012
May 5, Egypt's military ruler attended an unprecedented public funeral for a soldier killed in clashes with protesters. The army decided to hold 179 people, including 13 women, for 15 days pending investigation.