1987 – The Bobro 400 set sail from New York Harbor with 3,200 tons of garbage. The barge travelled 6,000 miles in search of a place to dump its load. It returned to New York Harbor after 8 weeks with the same load.
1204 – Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders is crowned first Emperor of the Latin Empire
1527 – The Florentines drive out the Medici for a second time and Florence re-establishes a republic.
1547 – Protestant German monarch surrenders to Karel in Wittenberg
1568 – Mary Queen of Scotland 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.
1777 – Lachlan McIntosh and Button Gwinnett shoot each other during a duel near Savannah, Georgia. Gwinnett, a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence, dies three days later.
1803 – Britain and France renew war, the French complete their occupation of Hanover, and they threaten to invade England from Boulogne, where they begin to assemble an invasion fleet
1836 – Edgar Allan Poe marries his 13-year-old cousin Virginia.
1843 – The first major wagon train heading for the Northwest sets out with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri on the Oregon Trail
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.
1881 – In Germany, the first electric tram for the public started service.
1888 – The first demonstration of recording on a flat disc was demonstrated by Emile Berliner.
1888 – The capitol of Texas was dedicated in Austin.
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 a jailable offense
1920 – In Rome, Pope Benedict XV canonizes Joan of Arc as a saint.
1939 – Food stamps are first issued
1940 – Nazis forbid non-professional auto workers
1943 – Nazi officer Jergen Stroop reports to his superiors that the Warsaw ghetto is no longer in existence. According to his calculations 7,000 Jews have been killed in street fighting, 30,000 have been deported to Treblinka and 5-6,000 have perished in flames
1944 – Rabbi Weissmandl sends out pleas to bomb camp and rail lines – based on his “”Auschwitz Protocol”” – a 31 page report from escapees’ eyewitness accounts of Rudolph Verba and Alfred Wetzler.
1946 – Jack Mullin showed the world the first magnetic tape recorder.
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 – Nikita Khrushchev demands an apology from US President Dwight D. Eisenhower for U-2 spy plane flights over the Soviet Union thus ending a Big Four summit in Paris.
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
1965 – Spaghetti-O’s were sold for the first time.
1969 – Venus 5, a Russian spacecraft, landed on the planet Venus.
1973 – Zimbian troops kill two Canadian women at Rhodesian (Zimbabwe) border; believed they were saboteurs.
1974 – Josip Broz Tito was re-elected as president of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This time he was elected for life.
1977 – 5 die as New York Airway helicopter topples on the Pan Am Building in NYC
1983 – Lebanese parliament accept peace accord with Israel
1983 – Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement rebelled against the Sudanese government
1987 – The Bobro 400 set sail from New York Harbor with 3,200 tons of garbage. The barge travelled 6,000 miles in search of a place to dump its load. It returned to New York Harbor after 8 weeks with the same load.
1988 – A report released by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop declared that nicotine was addictive in similar was as heroin and cocaine.
1988 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police do not have to have a search warrant to search discarded garbage.
1989 – Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev and Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping meet in Beijing, ending a 30-year rift between the two Communist powers
1991 – Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.
1995 – Japanese police arrest cult leader Shoko Asahara & charged him with Nerve-gas attack on Tokyo’s subways two months earlier
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.
2003 – In Casablanca, Morocco, 33 civilians are killed and more than 100 people are injured in the Casablanca terrorist attacks.
2005 – Kuwait permits women’s suffrage in a 35-23 National Assembly vote.
2011 – Space shuttle Endeavour launches on its final commission in space
2013 – Pope Francis calls for ethical financial reform to fight speculation
2017 – 10-year-old girl granted special 20 week abortion request in Rohtak, India in land-mark case
2019 – British people get drunk more than any other nation, 51 times year according to the Global Drug survey, with English-speaking countries drinking the most
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
2022 – Sri Lanka runs out of petrol, has only enough for one more day, has no cash to pay 1.4 million civil servants, says its newly appointed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe
2022 – US President Joe Biden approves redeployment of several hundred US ground troops to Somalia, reversing a decision by President Donald Trump
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
