May 2

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  1519: Polymath Leonardo da Vinci dies. His areas of interest included painting, sculpting, architecture, invention, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography.

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  1602: Scholar and polymath Athanasius Kircher born. He will publish some 40 major works, most notably in the fields of comparative religion, geology, and medicine.

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  1860: Biologist, mathematician, and classics scholar D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson born.

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  1986: Chernobyl disaster: The City of Chernobyl is evacuated six days after the disaster.

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  2002: Mathematician, codebreaker, and academic W. T. Tutte dies. During the Second World War, he made a brilliant and fundamental advance in cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher, a major Nazi German cipher system.