1948 – Israel was attacked by Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon only hours after declaring its independence. The First Arab-Israeli War was initiated by Israel’s proclamation of independence on the day before the invasion. It lasted nearly 10 months and caused thousands of casualties on both sides.
1492 – Cheese & Bread rebellion: German mercenaries kill 232 residents of Alkmaar, Netherlands
1525 – The battle of Frankenhausen: German peasant army surrounded, 5,000 slaughtered ; ends the peasants’ uprising
1536 – Anne Boleyn and her brother George, Lord Rochford, accused of adultery and incest
1602 – Cape Cod was discovered by Bartholomew Gosnold.
1614 – An aristocratic uprising in France ended with the treaty of St.Menehould.
1618 – Johannes Kepler discovered his harmonics law.
1702 – The War of Spanish Succession began.
1800 – King George III survives a second assassination attempt
1817 – First private mental health hospital opens in the US, Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1862 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture was created by an act of Congress on this day.
1862 – Major General Benjamin Butler issues order (New Orleans) that confederate women abusing union soldiers be treated as whores
1897 – The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee is founded in Berlin by Magnus Hirschfeld, the first-ever LGBT rights organization
1911 – The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil Company, ruling it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
1916 – U.S. Marines landed in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.
1932 – The 15th May Incident: in an attempted coup d’état, the Prime Minister of Japan Inukai Tsuyoshi is killed
1942 – Gasoline rationing began in the U.S. The limit was 3 gallons a week for nonessential vehicles.
1943 – Joseph Stalin dissolves the Comintern (or Third International) to avoid upsetting his Western allies with claims he was trying to foment revolution globally
1948 – Israel was attacked by Transjordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon only hours after declaring its independence. The First Arab-Israeli War was initiated by Israel’s proclamation of independence on the day before the invasion. It lasted nearly 10 months and caused thousands of casualties on both sides.
1957 – Evangelist Billy Graham launches his “crusade” in front of 18,000 people at Madison Square Garden in NYC
1960 – Taxes took 25% of earnings in US
1967 – “In re Gault”, US Supreme Court rules juveniles accused of crimes should be given same legal rights as adults
1970 – U.S. President Nixon appointed America’s first two female generals.
1970 – Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green, two black students at Jackson State University in Mississippi, were killed when police opened fire during student protests.
1972 – Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace was shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, MD while campaigning for the U.S. presidency. Wallace was paralyzed by the shot.
1972 – The island of Okinawa, under U.S. military governance since its conquest in 1945, reverts to Japanese control.
1988 – The Soviet Union began their withdrawal of its 115,000 troops from Afghanistan. Soviet forces had been there for more than eight years.
1997 – The Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a mission to deliver urgently needed repair equipment and a fresh American astronaut to Russia’s orbiting Mir station.
1999 – The Russian parliament was unable a attain enough votes to impeach President Boris Yeltsin.
2008 – California becomes the second U.S. state after Massachusetts in 2004 to legalize same-sex marriage after the state’s own Supreme Court rules a previous ban unconstitutional.
2017 – 1st US prosecution under federal Hate Crimes Act of violence against transgender person, murder of Mercedes Williamson
2018 – 58 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces and 1700 hospitalized on the Gaza border protesting opening of US embassy in Jerusalem and 70 year founding of Israel
2018 – Controversial Kerch bridge linking Russia and annexed Crimea opened by Russian President Vladimir Putin. At 19km the longest bridge in Europe.
2018 – North Korea threatens to pull out of summit with US and South Korea saying it can “not hide our feeling of repugnance” towards US security advisor John Bolton
2019 – Alabama passes law banning abortion in almost all cases including rape or incest
2019 – US birthrate in 2018 the lowest for 32 years (total fertility rate 1,728 births per 1,000 women), with record lows for teen births
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
