May 12·Every year

National Limerick Day

May 12th is Edward Lear's birthday — the Victorian poet who popularised the limerick form in his 1846 Book of Nonsense. The limerick's AABBA rhyme scheme is believed to date to 14th-century French poetry, but Lear made it immortal. A man from Nantucket famously misunderstood the assignment.

Category: Culture
Observed in: IrelandUnited KingdomUnited StatesAustralia

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Notable · 2008

In Postville, Iowa, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted the largest-ever raid of a workplace and arrested nearly 400 immigrants for identity theft and document fraud.

2024Middle/End of the May 2024 Solar Storms, the most powerful set of Geomagnetic storms since the 2003 Halloween solar storms.
2018Paris knife attack: A man is fatally shot by police in Paris after killing one and injuring several others.
2017The WannaCry ransomware attack impacts over 400,000 computers worldwide, targeting computers of the United Kingdom's National Health Services and Telefónica computers.