Exit Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5, 1821, in exile on the remote island of St Helena. Not long before his death he told his secretary, “There is no more oil in the lamp”, but his last words are said to be either “Mon Dieu - la nation Française - Tête d’armée or “Josephine”. Aged 51, he became ill and went into a coma on this day, dying a few hours later.

Napoleon’s willows
It is said that all the weeping willow trees in Australia are descended from cuttings taken from trees that surround Napoleon’s grave on St Helena, brought by British people when their ships stopped at the island en route.
The willow is by tradition a sad tree. People who have lost their love place mourning garlands on willow branches and exiles hung their harps on them. "She is in her willows" implies the mourning of a female for her lost mate.

May 5, 1945: A US B-29 bomber was shot down over Japan and eight American airmen prisoners were made available for medical experiments at Kyushu Imperial University. The eight were dissected while they were still alive.
This is the only occasion on which Americans became part of the cruel practices associated with Lt Gen. Shiro Ishii’s Unit 731, and the only time at which such experiments were done in Japan. Unit 731 was most active in China in a little known chapter of human bestiality in which perhaps hundreds of thousands of men, women and children were deliberately killed.
The personnel behind the unit went relatively unpunished as General Douglas MacArthur and the US Joint Chiefs of Staff secured their immunity from retribution in exchange for vast amounts of documentation of research conducted (upon Chinese civilians) into biological warfare. More