1943 – Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto ends after 30 days of fighting
1204 – Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders is crowned first Emperor of the Latin Empire.
1220 – English King Henry III lays the foundation stone for a new Lady Chapel, start of the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey, in London
1527 – The Florentines drive out the Medici for a second time and Florence re-establishes a republic.
1568 – Defeated at the Battle of Langside, Mary Queen of Scots flees to England in the hope Elizabeth I will help her regain her throne who instead detains her at Carlisle Castle
1606 – 2,000 foreigners murdered in Russia
1648 – Battle of Zhovti Vody: Ukrainian Cossacks, commanded by Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Crimean Tatars led by Tuhaj Bej, defeat Polish King John II Casimir, after 18 days of battle
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.
1792 – Denmark abolishes slave trade
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.
1846 – A revolutionary insurrection begins in Portugal against the reign of Queen Maria II
1861 – Kentucky proclaims its neutrality
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.
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.
1902 – 2 deaf-mutes face each other for 1st time as Dummy Hoy leads off for the Reds against Dummy Taylor of the Giants, Reds win 5-3
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
1927 – Supreme Court ruled bootleggers must pay income tax
1939 – US food stamps are 1st issued in Rochester, New York
1940 – Nazis forbid non-professional auto workers
1942 – The first transport of British/Dutch prisoners to South Burma
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.
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.
1956 – Egypt recognizes People’s Republic of China
1960 – A Big Four summit in Paris collapsed due to the American U-2 spy plane incident.
1963 – After 22 Earth orbits Gordon Cooper returned to Earth, ending Project Mercury.
1965 – Spaghetti-O’s were sold for the first time.
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.
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 – 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 – 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 – 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.
1993 – Farmer Sugeng finds 1.2 million year old Pithecanthropus IX skull
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.“
2004 – The Day of Mourning at Bykivnia forest, just outside of Kiev, Ukraine. Here during 1930s and early 1940s communist bolsheviks executed over 100.000 Ukrainian civilians.”
2013 – Human stem cells are successfully cloned
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
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
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
