15 MAY

1889 - Filipino reformist Graciano Lopez Jaena's  article, "How to deceive the motherland," is published in La Solidaridad, the publication of illustrados who aim at representing and advocating the colonial cause of the Phillippines before the Spanish parliament; Jaena counters the La Voz de Espana's editorial declaring religion and traditionalism—to the exclusion of the Spanish language or government reforms—as the only things that unite the Spanish colony with the metropolis.

1957 - Great Britain drops its first hydrogen bomb over Christmas Island as part of a series of  tests in the Pacific following two years of development; supposedly made amidst the escalation of the nuclear arms race, the tests will later spark a major international debate as to the dangers of nuclear weapons and, ultimately, help lead to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signed by many countries.

1974 - Between 18 and 21 teenagers die, along with three Palestinian kidnappers,  as Israeli troops storm a school in Ma'alot where hostage-taking has taken place; a total of 71 people are also injured in the operation aimed at freeing the youngsters in the violent act believed to be part of a wave of sabotage attacks designed to coincide with the 26th anniversary of the founding of the Israeli state.

1993 - Masked French police commandos free six girls and their nursery teacher from a lone gunman, to conclude the drama of a two-day hostage crisis in Paris; the operation involved shooting dead the then-sleeping "human bomb" hostage-taker fitted with 16 dynamites sticks and, at the same time, covering the children with mattresses.