May 1973

• An estimated 1,600,000 workers in the United Kingdom stop work in support of a Trade Union Congress "day of national protest and stoppage" against the Government's anti-inflation policy.[1]
• John Habgood is consecrated Bishop of Durham.[2]
• Born: Oliver Neuville, German international soccer player, in Locarno, Switzerland[3]

A Nord 2052 Noratlas of the Portuguese Air Force crashes during a premature attempt to land at Mueda Airport in Mueda, Mozambique; all 11 people on board are killed.[4]

• Born: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, German film director, in Cologne[5]

• The Northern Ireland Assembly Act receives royal assent, allowing the UK government to set up a Northern Ireland Assembly and attempt power sharing.[6]

• Construction of the Sears Tower in Chicago is completed; it becomes the world's tallest building, at 1,451 feet.[7]

• Shambu Tamang becomes the youngest person to climb to the summit of Mount Everest. His actual age at the time is disputed.[8]
• Sunderland achieve a shock 1–0 win over Leeds United in the FA Cup final at Wembley, with Ian Porterfield scoring the only goal of the game. It was the first time that an FA Cup winning team had not contained a single player to be capped at full international level, and the first postwar FA Cup won by a side outside the First Division.[9]
• Secretariat wins the Kentucky Derby.[10]
• Led Zeppelin play before 56,800 persons at Tampa Stadium on the band's 1973 North American Tour, thus breaking the August 15, 1965, record of 55,600 set by The Beatles at Shea Stadium.
• Fianna Fáil's Erskine Hamilton Childers sets off on a 28-day presidential campaign tour of Ireland.
• US athlete Al Feuerbach breaks Randy Matson's seven-year-old world record in the men's shot put by throwing 21.82 meters (71' 7") at the San Jose Invitational at San Jose State College.[11]

• Australia wins the 11th Federation Cup women's tennis competition, held at Bad Homburg, West Germany.[12]
• Died: Sir Ernest MacMillan, 79, Canadian conductor and composer

• The Blaenplwyf transmitting station begins a full (3-channel) 625-line UHF colour television service for western parts of Wales.[13]

• A 71-day standoff between federal authorities and American Indian Movement activists who were occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, ends with the surrender of the militants.
• In a 9–7 losing effort against the San Francisco Giants, St. Louis Cardinals baseball ace Bob Gibson makes his 242nd consecutive start. It is a new 20th-century record, passing that of Red Ruffing.

• The 34-floor Borden Building (now the Continental Plaza) in Columbus, Ohio, US, is topped out.[14]
• The century-old Rackleff Building in Portland, Maine, is added to the US National Register of Historic Places.[15]

• The Polisario Front, a Sahrawi movement dedicated to the independence of Western Sahara, is formed.[16]
• United Kingdom local elections: The results show an improvement in the performance by the Conservatives since the county council elections earlier in the year. The Liberals enjoy notable success, becoming the largest group on Liverpool council. The Conservatives take control of five metropolitan districts, and also gain one Welsh district, Monmouth.[17]
• The New York Knicks defeat the Los Angeles Lakers, 102–93 in Game 5 of the NBA Finals to win the NBA title.

• The Greek coaster Pramnos collides with the Italian ship Tony off Porto Stefano, Italy, and sinks with the loss of three of her fourteen crew.[18][19]
• Died: Lex Barker, 54, US actor (heart attack)

• The 1973 Memorial Cup hockey competition is won by the Toronto Marlboros.

• Bobby Riggs challenges and defeats Margaret Court, the world's #1 women's player, in a nationally televised tennis match set in Ramona, CA northeast of San Diego. Riggs wins 6–2, 6–1,[20] which leads to the huge Battle of the Sexes match against Billie Jean King later in the year on September 20.

• Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched, but is seriously damaged during liftoff.[21]
• The British House of Commons votes to abolish capital punishment in Northern Ireland.
• At the Cannes festival, Day for Night (La nuit americaine) by François Truffaut is previewed out of competition.[22]

• The 1973 Sierra Leonean general election is won by the All People's Congress. The main opposition party, the Sierra Leone People's Party boycott the election because of alleged irregularities,[23] and most APC candidates are elected unopposed.
• In the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, prime minister Edward Heath describes large payments made by Lonrho to Duncan Sandys through the tax haven of the Cayman Islands, at a time when the government was trying to implement a counter-inflation policy, as the "unacceptable face of capitalism"'[24]
• Died: Andrés Selich, former Minister of the Interior of Bolivia, officially as a result of falling downstairs while trying to escape arrest for an attempted coup-d’état against the president Hugo Banzer. In 1967, Selich had led the regiment that captured and executed Ernesto Guevara.[25]

• The Liberian cargo ship Hongkong Grace collides with the South African ship Mina in Mossel Bay, South Africa, and catches fire. The ship is scrapped later in the year.[26]
• At the Kaftanzoglio Stadium in Thessaloniki, A. C. Milan wins the final match of the 1972–73 European Cup Winners' Cup, beating the Leeds United 1-0 (goal by Luciano Chiarugi.)[27]

• Watergate scandal: Televised hearings begin in the United States Senate.
• Milan police headquarters bombing. During the memorial ceremony for the first anniversary of Luigi Calabresi’s murder, Gianfranco Bertoli, throws a grenade causing a victim and 55 injured (three of them die the following week). The bomber, immediately captured and rescued from lynching, declares himself an individualist anarchist; his target was the Minister of Interior, Mariano Rumor, who at the time of the slaughter had let the place for a few minutes.[28]
• Born: Josh Homme, American singer and musician, frontman of Queens of the Stone Age, in Joshua Tree, California[29]

• Cod War: Joseph Godber, British Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, announces that Royal Navy frigates will protect British trawlers fishing in the disputed 50-mile limit round Iceland.
• Leonid Brezhnev begins his official visit in West Germany, the first by a Soviet leader; at the Cologne-Bonn Airport, the Chancellor Willy Brandt welcomes him.[30]
• Died: Dieudonné Costes, 80, French aviator

• 1973 Victorian state election: Elections are held in the Australian state of Victoria to elect the 73 members of the state's Legislative Assembly and 18 members of the 36-member Legislative Council. The result is a majority for incumbent premier Rupert Hamer and his Liberal party.[31]
• Racehorse Secretariat wins the Preakness Stakes.

• Britain's Royal Navy send three frigates to protect British fishing vessels from Icelandic ships in the Cod War dispute.[32]
• In Monza, during the Nations motorcycle Grand Prix, in a frightful accident Renzo Pasolini and the former world champion Jarno Saarinen die; other 14 runners are injured.[33]
• In the last day of the Serie A 1972-73 Juventus beats Roma for 1-2 and gets its fifteenth scudetto, while Milan, after having dominated the whole tournament, is surprisingly defeated 5-2 by Hellas Verona and loses in extremis the star (the tenth scudetto).[34]

• Opening of the Rantau Panjang – Sungai Golok Bridge on the Malaysia-Thailand border in Kelantan.
• Mahendra Mohan Choudhry replaces D. C. Pavate as Governor of the Punjab.[35]
• For the first time in Italy, a child is kidnapped for extortion purposes. In Bergamo, Mriko Panattoni, 8 years old, son of a caterer, is abducted in front of the school; two weeks later, he is freed in exchange for a 300-million-lira ransom.[36]  
• At the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, the screening of La Grande Bouffe, by Marco Ferreri, a willfully provocative and extreme apologue about consumerism, arouses scandal and is violently contested by the public. Director and actors have to be escorted by the police to the hotel.[37]
• Born: Noel Fielding, British comedian, actor, and television presenter, in Westminster, London[38]
• Died:
  • Carlo Emilio Gadda, Italian writer, 79.
  • Ivan Konev, Soviet general, 73.

• Lord Lambton resigns from the British government over a 'call girl' scandal.[39]
• Watergate scandal: the White House spokesperson Ronald Ziegler reads a Richard Nixon’s statement. The president admits to have ordered wiretaps and to have created the White House Plumbers, but denies any involvement in the Watergate effraction.[40]

• The second leg of the 1973 UEFA Cup Final is played at the Bökelbergstadion. Liverpool F.C. defeat Borussia Mönchengladbach 3–2 on aggregate.
• First regular issue of the daily newspaper Libération, directed by Jean Paul Sartre and voice of the French far left.[41]

• Ephraim Katzir assumes office as the fourth president of the State of Israel.
• Earl Jellicoe, Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Lords in Britain, resigns over a separate prostitution scandal.
• United States Deputy Secretary of Defense Bill Clements replaces Elliot Richardson as Secretary of Defense, when the latter becomes Attorney General.[42]
• In Athens, a mutiny of the Hellenic Navy against the Greek junta, plotted by the retired admirals Engofopulos and Minaios, is nipped in the bud by the police; the two conspirators are arrested.[43]
• Dead: William Oswald Mills, 48, US congressman for Maryland. He commits suicide after being involved in the Watergate scandal (he received 25,000 dollars by the committee for Nixon re-election).

• Skylab 2 (Pete Conrad, Paul J. Weitz, Joseph P. Kerwin) is launched on a mission to repair damage to the recently launched Skylab space station.[44]
• Héctor José Cámpora is inaugurated as democratic president of the Argentine Republic, ending the 1966 to 1973 Revolución Argentina military dictatorship; the ceremony degenerates into a battle between police and Peronist militants, with four dead.[45]
• Claude Levi-Strauss is elected to the Academie Francaise, in the place of Henry de Montherlant.[46]
• The Hireling, by Alan Bridges, and Scarecrow, by Jerry Schatzberg, win ex-aequo the Grand Prix at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival. The verdict is controversial and the president of the jury, Ingrid Bergman, is accused of favoritism for the American productions.[47]
• Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells becomes the first release on Richard Branson's newly launched Virgin label.
• Born: Demetri Martin, American comedian, director, and actor, in New York City

• Two day after the failed mutiny of the Hellenic Navy, the Greek destroyer Velos leaves the NATO maneuvers in the Tyrrhenian Sea and drop the anchor off the coast of Fiumicino, as a protest against the Greek junta. The commander Nicholas Papas, the officers and part of the crew get political asylum in Italy.[48]
• The BBC's long-running, highly rated magazine show That's Life!, introduced by Esther Rantzen, is broadcast for the first time.[49]
• In Argentina, the new president Horacio Campora declares the pardon for all the political prisoners (the terrorist Montoneros included). At the Villa Devoto jail, the wardens fire on the crowd asking for the prisoners’ liberation and kill two protesters.[50]

• By virtue of the non-retroactivity of Soviet copyright laws, all works published before this date are public domain. This applies worldwide.^{Confirmation needed}

• Conclusion of the Sixty-third Texas Legislature.

• Princess Anne, the only daughter of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, announces her engagement to Olympic equestrian champion Lt. Mark Phillips.[51]

• Irish presidential election: voters choose a successor to President Éamon de Valera. Erskine H. Childers is elected, defeating Tom O'Higgins.[52]
• 1973 Northern Ireland local elections: Election results are decided by proportional representation, using the single transferable vote system.

• Indian Airlines Flight 440 crashes on approach to Palam Airport, killing 48 of the 65 passengers and crew on board. The dead include India's Minister of Iron and Steel Mines, Mohan Kumaramangalam.[53]
• Morning rains threaten to wash out the Indianapolis 500 motor race out for the third day in a row. The race is finally started at 2:10 p.m. Some estimates put the day's attendance as low as 35,000.[54] On the 59th lap, Swede Savage loses control and the race is halted at 3:05 p.m., while track crews rush to his aid. The race is eventually won by Gordon Johncock, one of Savage's Patrick Racing/STP teammates; Johncock leaves shortly afterwards to visit Savage in hospital.[55] Savage would die of complications less than five weeks later.