1868 – U.S. President Andrew Johnson was acquitted during the Senate impeachment, by one vote.
1220 – English King Henry III lays the foundation stone for a new Lady Chapel, start of the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey, in London
1568 – Mary Queen of Scots flees to England
1606 – 2,000 foreigners murdered in Russia
1770 – Marie Antoinette, at age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.
1771 – The Battle of Alamance, a pre-American Revolutionary War battle between local militia and a group of rebels called “The Regulators”, occurs in present-day Alamance County, North Carolina.
1861 – Major General Twiggs surrenders to Confederate Army in San Antonio, Texas (US Civil War)
1864 – Last battles at Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia (6,666 casualties)
1866 – The U.S. Congress authorized the first 5-cent piece to be minted.
1868 – U.S. President Andrew Johnson was acquitted during the Senate impeachment, by one vote.
1879 – The Treaty of Gandamak between Russia and England set up the Afghan state.
1907 – In the Pact of Cartagena, Great Britain, France, and Spain agree to maintain the status quo in the Mediterranean and along the Atlantic coast of Europe and Africa
1910 – The U.S. Bureau of Mines was authorized by the U.S. Congress.
1918 – The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government an imprisonable offense.
1920 – Joan of Arc was canonized in Rome.
1927 – US Supreme Court ruled bootleggers must pay income tax
1943 – SS General Jürgen Stroop orders the burning of the Warsaw Ghetto, ending a month of Jewish resistance. 13,000 Jews have died, about half burnt alive or suffocated, German casualties less than 300
1948 – The body of CBS News correspondent George Polk was found in Solonika Bay in Greece. It had been a week after he’d disappeared.
1960 – A Big Four summit in Paris collapsed due to the American U-2 spy plane incident.
1960 – Theodore Maiman, at Hughes Research Laboratory in California, demonstrated the first working laser.
1963 – After 22 Earth orbits Gordon Cooper returned to Earth, ending Project Mercury.
1966 – In China, the Cultural Revolution begins – The publication of the May 16 notification marks the beginning of the political campaign, which was initiated by Mao Zedong and lasted ten years. Its objective was to strengthen communism by removing capitalist, traditional and cultural elements from Chinese society.
1969 – Venus 5, a Russian spacecraft, landed on the planet Venus.
1977 – Five people were killed when a New York Airways helicopter, idling on top of the Pan Am Building in Manhattan, toppled over, sending a huge rotor blade flying.
1983 – Lebanese parliament accepts peace accord with Israel
1988 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police do not have to have a search warrant to search discarded garbage.
1989 – Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping meet in Beijing and formally end a 30-year rift
1991 – Daily Planet fires cub reporter Jimmy Olson (fictional Superman character)
1996 – Admiral Jeremy “Mike” Boorda, the nation’s top Navy officer, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after some of his military awards were called into question.
1997 – In Zaire, President Mobutu Sese Seko gave control of the country to rebel forces ending 32 years of autocratic rule.
1997 – Final agreement creating Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) signed by project participants, including Russia, Kazakhstan, Chevron Corp and others
2003 – Calcutta high court rules Calcutta does not have a birthday and that British East India employee Job Charnock is not the city’s founder as previously claimed
2004 – Day of Mourning at Bykivnia forest, just outside of Kyiv, Ukraine where during 1930s and early 1940s communist bolsheviks executed over 100,000 Ukrainian civilians
2013 – Bill Gates regains his position as the world’s richest man with $72.7 billion after losing the position in 2008
2017 – 10-year-old girl granted special 20 week abortion request in Rohtak, India in land-mark case
2019 – US President Donald Trump declares a national emergency over IT threats, banning US companies from using foreign technology without a license
2020 – 118-year old American department store JC Penney files for bankruptcy
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
