May 2

Theodor Herzl, the journalist who founded modern political Zionism, was born in Pest, then in the Kingdom of Hungary and now part of Budapest.

Athanasius of Alexandria, the bishop and theologian central to the fourth-century debates over the nature of Christ, died at Alexandria.

Thorkild Jacobsen, the Danish-American Assyriologist and scholar of Sumerian literature and religion, died in New Hampshire.

Leonardo da Vinci died at Amboise, France. A painter, anatomist, and engineer, his notebooks recorded studies of the human body, flight, water, and machines far ahead of their time.