Today in History
~ May 23
Events
1059 - Henri I crowns his son King Philip I of France
1275 - King Edward I of England orders cessation of persecution of French Jews
1421 - Jews of Austria imprisoned & expelled
1430 - Joan of Arc is captured at Compiegne by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English.
1533 - The marriage of England's King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void.
1536 - Pope Paul III installs Portugese Inquisition
1611 - Matthias von Habsburg chosen king of Bohemia
1660 - King Charles II returns from exile, sailing from Scheveningen to England
1701 - British privateer William Kidd, popularly known as Captain Kidd, was hung in London
for his convictions on five counts of piracy and one count of murder. [H]
1706 - Battle of Ramillies -- Marlborough defeats French; 17,000 killed
1750 - Carlo Goldoni's "Il Bugiardo," premieres in Mantua
1785 - Benjamin Franklin announces his invention of bifocals
1788 - South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1861 - Virginia citizens vote 3 to 1 in favor of secession
1862 - Valley Campaign -- Stonewall Jackson takes Front Royal, Virginia
1864 - Battle of N Anna River, VA
1865 - Flag flown at full staff over White House, 1st time since Lincoln shot
1865 - Union Army's Grand Review begins in Washington DC
1867 - Jesse James gang robs bank in Richmond Missouri (2 die, $4,000 taken)
1873 - Canada's North West Mounted Police Force (RCMPF) forms
1887 - 1st transcontinental train arrives in Vancouver, BC
1898 - 1st Phillipine Expeditionary Troops sail from San Francisco.
1900 - Sgt. William H. Carney became the first black to win the Congressional Medal of Honor, for his efforts during the Battle of Fort Wagner, S.C., in
July 1863. [H]
1901 - US forces captured Filipino rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo.
1903 - 1st automobile trip across US from SF to NY, ended April 1
1908 - Dirigible explodes over SF Bay, 16 passengers fall, none die
1908 - Part of Great White Fleet arrives in Puget Sound, Wash
1911 - NY Public Library building at 5th Avenue dedicated by Pres Taft
1915 - Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary & Germany during WW I
1922 - "Abie's Irish Rose" 1st of over 2,500 performances
1934 - Clyde Champion Barrow and Bonnie Parker were shot to death by Texas and Louisiana state police ambush
as they attempted to escape apprehension in a stolen 1934 Ford V-8 near Bienville Parish, Louisiana.
[H]
1934 - Wallace Carothers manufactures 1st nylon (polymeer 66)
1939 - British parliament plans to make Palestine independent by 1949
1939 - Dmitri Shostakovitch appointed professor at conservatory of Leningrad
1939 - Hitler proclaims he wants to move into Poland
1940 - 1st great dogfight between Spitfires
1940 - Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, the Pied Pipers and featured soloist Frank Sinatra recorded "I'll Never Smile Again" in New York for RCA.
1941 - Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten, second cousin of King George IV of Britain and the only man other than the king to hold rank in all three military services simultaneously, is among those thrown into the Mediterranean Sea when his destroyer, the HMS Kelly, is sunk.
1943 - -24] 826 Allied bombers attack Dortmund
1943 - Thomas Mann begins writing his novel Dr Faustus
1945 - British military police arrest Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, Hitler's designated successor ("Fuhrer for a Weekend")
1945 - Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS, assistant chief of the Gestapo, commits suicide one day after being arrested by the
British, while imprisoned in Luneburg, Germany.
1945 - Lord Haw Haw arrested at Danish boundary
1945 - Winston Churchill resigns as British PM
1949 - Federal Republic of [West] Germany proclaimed (Republic Day)
1951 - Peter Ustinov's "Love of Four Colonels," premieres in London
1953 - Schools 1st use Cliff's Notes
1956 - World Trade Center dedicated in Ferry Building.
1958 - Mao Tse Tung starts "Great leap forward" movement in China
1959 - Presbyterian church accepts women preachers
1960 - Israel announced it had captured former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. As head of the Gestapo's Jewish section, he had dispatched millions of Jews to death camps.
Eichmann was tried in Israel, found guilty of crimes against humanity, and hanged in 1962.
1962 - OAS leader general Raoul Salan sentenced to life
1962 - Scott Carpenter orbits Earth 3 times in US Aurora 7
1969 - BBC orders 13 episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus
1969 - Who release rock opera "Tommy"
1977 - Moluccan extremists hold 105 schoolchildren & 50 others hostage on a hijacked train in Neth, children released May 27, siege ends June 11
1977 - Supreme Court refuses to hear appeals of Watergate wrong doers H R Halderman, John Ehrlichman & John Mitchell
1982 - BBC warns Britain will bomb Argentina
1983 - Radio Moscow announcer Vladimir Danchev praises Afghanistan Muslims standing up to Russia; he is removed from the air
1988 - Maryland Gov. Donald Schaefer signed the nation's first law banning the manufacture and sale of cheap handguns, known as "Saturday Night Specials."
1990 - Cost of rescuing savings & loan failures is put at up to $130 billion
1990 - Presidential son Neil Bush, testifying before the House Banking Committee, denied any wrongdoing in the failure of a Colorado thrift, where he was a director, that
cost taxpayers about $1 billion.
1991 - In a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld regulations barring federally subsidized family planning clinics from discussing abortion with pregnant women, or from telling women where they could get abortions.
1991 - Last Cubans troops leave Angola
1992 - Pres Bush orders Coast Guard to intercept boats with Haitian refugees
1992 - The United States and four former Soviet republics signed an agreement in
Lisbon, Portugal, to implement the START missile-reduction treaty that had been
agreed to by the Soviet Union prior to its dissolution.
1993 - A jury in Baton Rouge, La., acquitted a man who said he was defending his home against what he thought was an intruder when he shot and killed 16-year-old Japanese exchange student Yoshihiro Hattori.
1994 - Former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis was laid to rest next to her first husband, President John F. Kennedy, in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
1994 - Four men convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center were each sentenced to 240 years in prison.
1995 - A man with an unloaded handgun climbed over a fence and ran toward the White House. He was tackled by one Secret Service agent and shot and wounded by a second.
1995 - What was left of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, site of the previous month's bombing that killed 169 people, was razed.
1996 - The House approved, by a vote of 281-144, election-year legislation to raise the minimum wage by 90 cents an hour.
1997 - The defense at the Oklahoma City bombing trial suffered an embarrassing
setback when one of its own witnesses provided testimony potentially damaging to
defendant Timothy McVeigh. The Senate decisively approved a carefully
constructed deal to balance the budget and cut taxes.
1997 - Iranians elected a moderate president, Mohammad Khatami, who favored improved economic ties with the West,
over hard-liners in the ruling Muslim clergy.
1998 - Official returns showed two convincing "yes" votes for the Northern Ireland peace accord in British-linked Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
2000 - Two weeks before a U.S.-Russia arms summit, presidential candidate George W. Bush said he would slash America's nuclear arsenal as part of a broad national security review that would call for a missile-defense system.
Anniversary of BJ & Peg Hunnicutt of Mill Valley! (MASH)
Birthdays
Today
1718 - William Hunter, obstetrician/medal writer
1734 - Friedrich Anton Mesmer, Austria, physician/hypnotist (Mesmerism)
1799 - Thomas Hood, English poet/composer (Song of the Shirt)
1810 - Margaret Fuller Writer and editor who
inspired other Americans to devote themselves to learning.
1824 - Union General Ambrose Everett Burnside
1848 - Helmuth J L von Moltke, German general/chief of staff (WW I)
1883 - Douglas Fairbanks (Julius Ullman) 1st & greatest of Hollywood's swashbucklers.
(actor: The Duke's Jester, The Americano, He Comes Up Smiling, The Mollycoddle, The Mark of Zorro, The Three Musketeers, Robin Hood, The Thief of Bagdad, The Black Pirate, The Gaucho; formed United Artists with D.W. Griffith & Charlie Chaplin)
1890 - Herbert Marshall (actor: The Little Foxes, The Painted Veil, The Razor's Edge, The Underworld Story, The Virgin Queen; radio serial: A Man Called X)
1908 - John Bardeen, Nobel prize winner,
1910 - Artie Shaw (Arshawsky) (musician: clarinet: bandleader: Begin The Beguine, Indian Love Call, Frenesi, Summit Ridge Drive, My Little Nest of Heavenly Blue, Back Bay Shuffle, Traffic Jam, Nightmare, The Blues, They Say, Thanks for Ev'rything, Stardust, Dancing in the Dark, Concerto for Clarinet, I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, Any Old Time)
1910 - Scatman (Benjamin) Crothers (entertainer)
1912 - John Payne (actor: Miracle on 34th Street, The Razor's Edge, Springtime in the Rockies, Tin Pan Alley, To the Shores of Tripoli)
1919 - Betty Garrett (actress: All in the Family, LaVerne & Shirley, My Sister Eileen, On the Town, Take Me Out to the Ball Game)
1920 - Helen O'Connell (singer: Green Eyes, Amapola, Tangerine; married to bandleader, Frank DeVol)
1921 - James [Benjamin] Blish, US/UK, sci-fi author (Hugo, Black Easter, Star Trek Reader)
1928 - Nigel Davenport (actor: A Man for All Seasons, Chariots of Fire, Nighthawks, Picture of Dorian Gray)
1928 - Rosemary Clooney (singer: Hey There, Come On-A My House, This Ole House, Bye Bye Blackbird; actress: White Christmas, Deep in My Heart, Red Garters, Mangos, The Rosemary Clooney Show; aunt of ER's George Clooney; sister of Nick Clooney, TV news anchor)
1929 - Julian Euell (jazz musician)
1931 - Barbara Barrie (Berman) (actress: Barney Miller, Backstairs at the Whitehouse, Private Benjamin, Two of a Kind)
1933 - Joan Collins (actress: Dynasty, The Stud; appeared in Playboy at age 50; sister of writer, Jackie Collins)
1934 - Dr. Robert Moog (electronics inventor: Moog synthesizer)
1943 - John Newcombe (tennis champion: Australian Open [1973, 1975], Wimbledon [1967, 1970, 1971], U.S. Open [1967, 1973])
1943 - Lee May (baseball)
1945 - Bob Rowe (football)
1945 - Lauren Chapin (actress: Father Knows Best)
1946 - David Graham (Australia's golf champion: U.S. Open [1981], PGA [1979])
1948 - Reggie Cleveland (baseball)
1951 - Anatoli Karpov, USSR, world chess champion (1975-85)
1952 - Butch Metzger (baseball: NL Rookie of the Year: San Diego Padres pitcher)
1952 - Marvelous Marvin Hagler (International Boxing Hall of Famer: world middleweight champion [1980-1985])
Famous
deaths
1153 - David I, king of Scotland (1124-53), dies at about 68
1423 - Benedict XIII, [Pedro the Luna], Spanish Pope (1394-1423), dies
1498 - Girolamo Savonarola, moral scourge of Florence (1494-98), hanged at 45
1701 - William Kidd, Scottish pirate, hanged at London's Execution Dock [H]
1881 - Kit Carson, frontiersman, dies
1934 - Bonnie Parker, outlaw (Bonnie & Clyde), killed in police ambush [H]
1934 - Clyde Barrow, outlaw (Bonnie & Clyde), killed in police ambush [H]
1937 - John Davison Rockfeller, industrialist, dies at 97 in Ormond Beach Fla
1945 - Heinrich Himmler, Gestapo leader, commits suicide in captivity at 44
1975 - Jackie "Moms" Mabley, comedienne (Amazing Grace), dies at 81
1986 - Sterling Hayden, actor (Blue & Gray), dies at 70
1991 - Peter T Thwaites, British brig-gen/playwright (Love or money)
If
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