| 4 May 1747 | United Netherlands [political events] | William IV of Orange-Nassau, grand-nephew of King William III of Great Britain and Ireland, is elected hereditary stadtholder (chief magistrate) and captain and admiral general (commander in chief of forces) of the United Netherlands. |
| 4 May 1799 | India [Anglo–Mysore Wars (1767–99)] | Following the death of Tippu, sultan of Mysore, India, at Seringapatam after its capture by the British, his kingdom is divided between Britain and the nizam of Hyderabad. |
| 4 May 1814 | Spain [legislation] | King Ferdinand VII of Spain annuls the liberal constitution of the cortes (national assembly), one of the first of a wave of antidemocratic acts performed by royalty returning to office after Emperor Napoleon I's defeat. |
| 4 May 1825 | England [births and deaths] | Thomas Henry Huxley, English biologist known for his defence of Darwinian evolution, born in Ealing, Middlesex, England (–1895). |
| 4 May 1843 | Natal, UK [colonization] | Natal in southern Africa is proclaimed a British colony. |
| 4 May 1881 | Russia [births and deaths] | Alexander Kerensky, Russian revolutionary and head of the Russian provisional government July–October 1917, born in Simbirsk, Russia (–1970). |
| 4 May 1897 | France [cinema and film] | An explosion and resulting fire at a Cinématograph emonstration at the Charity Bazaar in Paris, France, kills 121 people and leads to a decrease in film attendance. |
| 4 May 1904 | United Kingdom [companies and organizations] | Henry Royce and Charles Rolls start manufacturing and selling cars under the name Rolls-Royce in Britain. |
| 4 May–27 July 1924 | France, USA, Finland, UK, Italy [Olympic Games] | The 8th Olympic Games are held in Paris, France, attended by 3,092 competitors, 136 of whom are women, from 44 countries. The USA wins 45 gold medals; Finland, 14; France, 13; Britain, 9; and Italy, 8. The star of the games is Paavo Nurmi of Finland who wins gold medals in the 1,500 metres, 5,000 metres, 3,000 metres team race, and 10,000 metres individual and team cross-country events. Harold Abrahams of Britain is the first European to win the 100 metres. |
| 4 May 1929 | [births and deaths] | Audrey Hepburn (born Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston), US motion picture actor, born in Brussels, Belgium (–1993). |
| 4–8 May 1942 | USA, Japan [World War II (1939–45)] | US naval forces narrowly succeed in preventing a Japanese attempt to take the Allied base at Port Moresby, Papua, in the first great carrier battle of the Pacific War, the Battle of the Coral Sea. |
| 4 May 1979 | UK [law and government] | The British Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher becomes Britain's first woman prime minister. |
| 4 May 1980 | Yugoslavia [births and deaths] | Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavian communist leader from 1943, elected president 1953–80, dies in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia (87). |
| 4 May 1990 | Latvia, USSR [political events] | Latvia declares itself an independent sovereign state. |
| 4 May 2000 | UK [elections] | Independent candidate Ken Livingstone is elected mayor of London. He wins a total of 776,427 votes against 564,137 for Steven Norris, the Conservative candidate. The other candidates, including Labour's Frank Dobson and Liberal Democrat Susan Kramer, are eliminated after a first round of counting. |
| 4 May 2000 | [computing] | A computer virus nicknamed the ‘love bug’, sent as an attachment claiming to be a love letter, strikes computer systems around the world, closing down an estimated one-tenth of the world's servers. |
