May 13 1607:

Some 100 English colonists settle along the west bank of the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.
Dispatched from England by the London Company, the colonists had sailed across the Atlantic aboard the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery.

May 13, 1972:

Dan Blocker actor (Hoss-Bonanza), dies following surgery at 41

On May 14:

1796 - Edward Jenner, an English doctor, administered the world's first vaccination to prevent smallpox.

1897 - Guglielmo Marconi sent the first communication by wireless telegraph.

May 15 1800:

President John Adams orders the federal government to pack up and leave Philadelphia and set up shop in the nation’s new capital in Washington, D.C.

After Congress adjourned its last meeting in Philadelphia on May 15,
Adams told his cabinet to make sure Congress and all federal offices were up and running smoothly in their new headquarters by June 15, 1800.
Philadelphia officially ceased to serve as the nation’s capital as of June 11, 1800.

May 15: General Interest
1941 : FIRST ALLIED JET FLIES:

On May 15, 1941, the jet-propelled Gloster-Whittle E 28/39 aircraft
flies successfully over Cranwell, England, in the first test of an
Allied aircraft using jet propulsion. The aircraft's turbojet engine,
which produced a powerful thrust of hot air, was devised by Frank
Whittle, an English aviation engineer and pilot generally regarded as
the father of the jet engine.

Whittle, born in Coventry in 1907, was the son of a mechanic. At the
age of 16, he joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as an aircraft
apprentice at Cranwell and in 1926 passed a medical exam to become a
pilot and joined the RAF College. He won a reputation as a daredevil
flier and in 1928 wrote a senior thesis entitled Future Developments
in Aircraft Design, which discussed the possibilities of rocket
propulsion.

From the first Wright brothers flight in 1903 to the first jet flight
in 1939, most airplanes were propeller driven. In 1910, the French
inventor Henri Coanda built a jet-propelled bi-plane, but it crashed
on its maiden flight and never flew again. Coanda's aircraft attracted
little notice, and engineers stuck with propeller technology; even
though they realized early on that propellers would never overcome
certain inherent limitations, especially in regard to speed.

After graduating from the RAF college, Whittle was posted to a fighter
squadron, and in his spare time he worked out the essentials of the
modern turbojet engine. A flying instructor, impressed with his
propulsion ideas, introduced him to the Air Ministry and a private
turbine engineering firm, but both ridiculed Whittle's ideas as
impractical. In 1930, he patented his jet engine concept and in 1936
formed the company Power Jets Ltd. to build and test his invention. In
1937, he tested his first jet engine on the ground. He still received
only limited funding and support, and on August 27, 1939, the German
Heinkel He 178, designed by Hans Joachim Pabst von Ohain, made the
first jet flight in history. The German prototype jet was developed
independently of Whittle's efforts.

One week after the flight of the He 178, World War II broke out in
Europe, and Whittle's project got a further lease of life. The Air
Ministry commissioned a new jet engine from Power Jets and asked the
Gloster Aircraft Company to build an experimental aircraft to
accommodate it, specified as E 28/39. On May 15, 1941, the
jet-propelled Gloster-Whittle E 28/39 flew, beating out a jet
prototype being developed by the same British turbine company that
earlier balked at his ideas. In its initial tests, Whittle's
aircraft--flown by the test pilot Gerry Sayer--achieved a top speed of
370 mph at 25,000 feet, faster than the Spitfire or any other
conventional propeller-driven machine.

As the Gloster Aircraft Company worked on an operational turbojet
aircraft for combat, Whittle aided the Americans in their successful
development of a jet prototype. With Whittle's blessing, the British
government took over Power Jets Ltd. in 1944. By this time, Britain's
Gloster Meteor jet aircraft were in service with the RAF, going up
against Germany's jet-powered Messerschmitt Me 262s in the skies over
Europe.

Whittle retired from the RAF in 1948 with the rank of air commodore.
That year, he was awarded 100,000 pounds by the Royal Commission on
Awards to Inventors and was knighted. His book Jet: The Story of a
Pioneer was published in 1953. In 1977, he became a research professor
at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He died in
Columbia, Maryland, in 1996.