On May 31, 1910, the Union of South Africa was created. Exactly fifty-one years later in 1961, the Republic of South Africa was born. Learn more about the history of South Africa from the country's government.

On May 31, 1921, the Tulsa race riot was touched off after a black elevator operator was alleged to have attacked a white woman in an elevator in downtown Tulsa. Armed whites attacked, burned and looted the local black business community of Greenwood in violence that killed more than 300 people and destroyed more than 1200 homes. Learn more about the Tulsa race riot. A special commission set up by the Oklahoma legislature decades afterward submitted this report [PDF] on the riot in 2001.