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


1982
May 5, Janet Smith, a secretary, was injured when a bomb package was opened at Vanderbilt


2001
May 5, In Guatemala Barbara Ann Ford (62), a member of the Sisters of Charity of New York, was shot and killed in an apparent robbery.


2002
May 5, In SF Bruce Brooks (51), a street blues musician, killed Juliette Williamson, his girlfriend and bandmate, by repeatedly smashing her head with a hammer. Her body was found on May 22, washed up on Yerba Buena Island. In 2008 Brooks was convicted of 2nd-degree murder.


2006
May 5, Valerie Plame, former CIA agent, agreed to sell her memoir for $2.5 million. The book, whose working title is "Fair Game," is scheduled to be published in the fall of 2007 by Crown Publishing, an imprint of Random House.


2009
May 5, In Columbia, Illinois, Sheri Coleman (31) and her two sons, Garett (11) and Gavin (9) were found strangled to death. Husband and father Chris Coleman (32) was charged with three counts of first-degree murder, but later pleaded not guilty.

2009
May 5, In Zimbabwe prominent human rights campaigner JestinaMukoko and the 17 others were taken back into custody, just two months after their release on bail over an alleged plot to overthrow President Robert Mugabe. PM Morgan Tsvangirai's party warned their detention threatened the survival of Zimbabwe's fledgling unity government. Zimbabwe's teachers unions called off a threatened strike at state schools after the government agreed to scrap fees for children of teachers.


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.