The month of May has been home to many historical events over the years. Here’s a look at some that helped to shape the world in May 1926.

• The Ford Motor Company becomes the first major American company to introduce a 40-hour workweek and the two-day weekend on May 1. The reduction from 48 to 40 hours comes with no reduction in pay.

• The first night landing of an airplane on the deck of a ship is accomplished in Britain on May 6. Royal Air Force pilot G.H. Boyce lands a Blackburn Dart on the deck of the HMS Furious.

• Russian inventor Leon Theremin demonstrates his experimental television system in the Soviet Union on May 7.

• English documentary producer and naturalist Sir David Attenborough is born in London on May 8.

• Explorers Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett take off from Spitsbergen, Norway, in a monoplane on May 9. The men return nearly 16 hours later, claiming to have successfully completed a flight over the North Pole. However, a diary entry of Byrd’s discovered in 1996 suggests the plane turned back 150 miles short of the North Pole due to an oil leak.

• On May 10, France becomes the first nation to ratify the 1925 Geneva Protocol. The protocol bans the use of poison gases and biological weapons in war.

• The New York Rangers, the Chicago Blackhawks and the Detroit Cougars are admitted to the National Hockey League on May 15.

• Christian evangelist and national celebrity Aimee Semple McPherson disappears on May 18. McPherson had last been seen swimming at Venice Beach, California, and initial speculation was that she had drowned. However, McPherson reappears in Mexico five weeks later.

• United States President Calvin Coolidge signs an act authorizing the creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park on May 22.

• One hundred and forty people are killed when the Mount Tokachi volcano in Japan erupts on May 24.

• Miles Dewey Davis III is born in Alton, Illinois, on May 26. Davis would become one of the most influential and acclaimed musicians of the twentieth century.

• The opening ceremonies of the Sesquicentennial Exposition are held in Philadelphia on May 31. The exposition is a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence.