Template:On this day - May 12

Manuel Godoy

• 1106 – Death of Domingo de la Calzada, Spanish religious, engineer and saint, one of the greatest promoters of the Way of Saint James (b. 1019).
• 1280 – Alfonso X of Castile allies with the Marinid sultan Abu Yusuf and the Banu Ashqilula to attack the Emirate of Granada (present-day Spain).
• 1512 – In Salamanca (Spain) the first stone of the New Cathedral is laid.
• 1521 – Xicohténcatl Axayacatzin, chief of the Tlaxcaltec armies, is accused of treason by Hernán Cortés and executed.
• 1551 – The University of San Marcos, the oldest in all of America still in operation, is officially founded in Lima by Royal Decree of King Charles I.
• 1614 – In Villarrobledo (Spain), the Community of Poor Clare Nuns settles in the Monastery of San Juan de la Penitencia.
• 1638 – Birth of Pedro Atanasio Bocanegra, Spanish Baroque painter (d. 1689).
• 1689 – The Treaty of Vienna is signed between Emperor Leopold I and the United Provinces, which Denmark, England and Spain join.
• 1742 – In the Captaincy General of Chile, Governor José Manso de Velasco refounds the city of Talca.
• 1767 – Birth of Manuel Godoy, politician and Prime Minister of Charles IV of Spain (d. 1851).
• 1898 – On the island of Puerto Rico, the United States fleet bombards the city of San Juan.
• 1912 – In Spain, the magazine Blanco y Negro publishes the first color photograph to appear in the Spanish press.
• 1914 – Death of Eugenio Montero Ríos, Spanish politician and jurist (b. 1832).
• 1921 – Death of Emilia Pardo Bazán, novelist, journalist, poet, playwright, translator, editor, professor and lecturer who promoted the introduction of naturalism in Spain (b. 1851).
• 1922 – Death of José López Pinillos, Spanish journalist, playwright and writer of naturalism (b. 1875).
• 1922 – In the course of the Moroccan War, Spanish troops take Tazarut.
• 1935 – Pío Baroja, writer of the Generation of '98, joins the Royal Spanish Academy.
• 1982 – At the Sanctuary of Fátima (Portugal), Pope John Paul II suffers a new assassination attempt at the hands of the Spanish priest Juan Fernández Krohn, who claimed that the Pope was a modernist and a communist.
• 2002 – In Cuba, former President of the United States Jimmy Carter visits Fidel Castro for five days, the first United States president, in or out of office, to visit the island since the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
• 2014 – Mairead Maguire and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel (both Nobel Peace Prize laureates) ask the United States human rights organization Human Rights Watch to expel Javier Solana (former Secretary General of NATO) from its board of directors.
• 2014 – Death of Jacinto Convit, renowned Venezuelan physician and scientist (b. 1913).
• 2018 – Death of Antonio Mercero, Spanish director and film and television screenwriter (b. 1936).