TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: MAY 23
1059 Henri I crowns his son compassionate King Philip I of France
1275 King Edward I of England orders cessation of persecution of French Jews
1430 Burgundians capture Joan of Arc and sell her to the English.
1533 Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon is declared null and void.
1618 Second Defenestration of Prague: Two Catholic Lords Regent and their secretary are thrown out of a window and amazingly are not seriously injured by the 70 foot (21m) fall. Triggers the Thirty Years’ War.
1701 Captain William Kidd, the Scottish pirate, is hanged on the banks of the Thames.
1785 Benjamin Franklin announces his invention of bifocals.
1844 Siyyid `Alí Muḥammad Shírází founds Bábism. The Báb, as he called himself, created the religion which was a forerunner of the Bahá’í Faith. His teachings were seen as a threat by the Islamic clergy, and his followers were brutally persecuted by the Persian government.
1873 The North West Mounted Police force was formed in Canada. It would later be known as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
1900 Civil War hero Sgt. William H. Carney becomes the first African American to receive the Medal of Honor, thirty-seven years after the Battle of Fort Wagner.
1911 The New York Public Library, at the time the largest marble structure ever built in the United States, was dedicated by President Taft in New York City after 16 years of construction.
1922 Walt Disney incorporates his 1st film company Laugh-O-Gram Films
1934 Gangsters Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are killed by Texas Rangers.
1945 Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi Gestapo, commits suicide after being captured by Allied forces.
1949 Federal Republic of [West] Germany created out of the American, British and French occupation zones
1960 Israel announces the capture of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina.
1969 The Who release Tommy
1977 Moluccan extremists hold 105 schoolchildren & 50 others hostage on a hijacked train in Netherlands, 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
1983 Radio Moscow announcer Vladimir Danchev praises Afghánistán Muslims standing up to Russia; he is removed from the air
1991 US Supreme Court bars subsidized clinics from discussing abortion
1992 The Italian mafia murder Giovanni Falcone. Falcone, a judge, was the mafia’s most prominent adversary. After he, together with his wife and three bodyguards, fell victim to a car bomb, Falcone became a folk hero in Italy.
1992 In Lisbon, Portugal , the U.S. and four former Soviet republics signed an agreement to implement the START missile reduction treaty that had been agreed to by the Soviet Union before it was dissolved.
1999 In Kansas City, MO, Owen Hart (Blue Blazer) died when he fell 90 feet while being lowered into a WWF wrestling ring. He was 33 years old.
2016 U.S. President Obama announced that the United States would end its ban of lethal military equipment sales to Vietnam. The restrictions had been in place since the end of the Vietnam War
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
