Category: Today

June 3

1098 – After a 5 month siege during the First Crusade, the Crusaders seize the city of Antioch, near the current city of Antakya, Turkey.

1539 – Hernando de Soto claims Florida for Spain.

1621 – The Dutch West India Company receives a charter for New Netherland on the current east coast of the U.S.

1781 – Jack Jouett begins his midnight ride to warn Thomas Jefferson at his home of Montecello, and the Virginia legislature at Charlottesville, of an impending raid by Lt Colonel Banastre Tarleton.

1861 – At the of Battle of Philippi, Union forces rout Confederate troops in Barbour County, Virginia, now West Virginia.

1864 – At the of Battle of Cold Harbor, Union forces attack Confederate troops in Hanover County, Virginia.

1889 – The first long distance electric power transmission line in the United States is completed, running 14 miles between a generator at Willamette Falls and downtown Portland, Oregon.

1916 – The National Defense Act is signed into law by President Wilson, creating the Army Reserves, the Reserve Officer Training Corps – ROTC,  and Army Aviation, also expanding the Presidential powers to federalize the National Guard.

1942 –Imperial Japan forces begin the Aleutian Islands Campaign by bombing Unalaska Island, an elaborate feint to lure U.S. forces out from Pearl Harbor and keep them far enough away from the invasion of Midway island that they will be unable to respond until the Japanese Navy has set up a trap for the remaining U.S. carriers stationed in the Pacific.

1965 – Aboard Gemini 4, astronauts James McDivitt and Ed White launch from Cape Kennedy on the first multi day space mission by NASA with White performing the first American spacewalk.

1969 – Off the coast of South Vietnam, the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne collides with and cuts the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Frank E. Evans in half, killing 74 sailors aboard the Evans.

1980 – The 1980 Grand Island tornado outbreak hits Nebraska, causing 5 deaths and $300 million in damage.

1989 – Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, dies.

2013 – The trial of United States Army private Chelsea Bradley Manning for leaking classified material to WikiLeaks begins in Fort Meade, Maryland.

2017 –  8 people are murdered and 48 more wounded when 3 moslem islamists stage a vehicle crash and and knife attack at London Bridge that lasts over 8 minutes before the policer arrive and shoot all the terrorists dead 20 seconds after arriving, proving the point that when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

June 2

455 – Due to a perceived violation of a peace treaty, the Germanic tribe of Vandals led by their king Genseric, sack Rome.

1098 – During the First Crusade, Crusader forces take the city of Antioch.

1763 – After the end of the French and Indian War in the colonies, Chippewas, under Chief Pontiac capture Fort Michilimackinac  – now Mackinaw City, Michigan.

1774 –Parliament in London, passes the The Quartering Act – one of the ‘Intolerable Acts’ – for the colonies, allowing a colonial governor to house British soldiers in uninhabited houses, outbuildings, barns, or other buildings if suitable quarters are not provided.

1835 – P. T. Barnum and his circus start their first tour of the U.S.

1896 – Guglielmo Marconi applies for a patent for his wireless telegraph.

1919 – Followers of the Italian anarchist Luigi Galleani simultaneously set off bombs in 8 separate U.S. cities killing 2 people and wounding another 2.

1924 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signs the Indian Citizenship Act into law, granting citizenship to all members of Indian tribes born within the territorial limits of the United States.

1930 – Astronaut Pete Conrad, the 3rd man to walk on the moon, is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1966 – The Surveyor 1 probe lands in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon, becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to soft land on another world.

1967 – Luis Monge is executed in Colorado’s gas chamber, the last execution in the U.S. before the Supreme Court rules the death penalty unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia in 1972.

1983 – Enroute from Dallas to Toronto, Air Canada Flight 797, a McDonnell Douglas DC-9, is forced to make an emergency landing at Cincinnati because of an in flight fire. After landing, 23 passengers aboard are killed when a flashover occurs as the plane’s doors open.

1990 – The Lower Ohio Valley tornado outbreak spawns 66 confirmed tornadoes in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Ohio, killing 12 people.

1997 – In Denver, Timothy McVeigh is convicted on 15 counts of murder and conspiracy for his role in bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and sentenced to the death penalty.

 

May 31

1775 – A month after the battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, the Mecklenburg Resolves, annulling and vacating all laws originating from the authority of the British King or Parliament, and ending recognition of the Crown’s power in the colony of North Carolina are adopted by the Mecklenburg County Committee of Safety.

1790 – Congress enacts the first copyright statute, the Copyright Act of 1790.

1862 – During the Peninsula Campaign; outside Richmond, Virginia,  Confederate forces under General Joseph E. Johnston engages Union forces under General George B. McClellan

1864 – During  the Overland Campaign; at Cold Harbor, Virginia, the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee engages the Army of the Potomac under General Ulysses S. Grant.

1879 – Gilmore’s Garden in New York City is renamed Madison Square Garden by William Henry Vanderbilt and is opened to the public at 26th Street and Madison Avenue.

1889 – After several days of heavy rain, the earthen work South Fork Dam of the Little Conemaugh River fails, sending a 60 foot wall of water over the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania killing over 2,200 people.

1921 – A race riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma results in the deaths of an estimated  55 to 300 black people.

1924 – A fire at the Hope Development School in Playa Del Rey, Los Angeles, California, kills 24 people, mostly disabled children.

1951 – Under authority given by the Constitution in Article I, Section 8, which provides that “The Congress shall have Power….To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval forces“, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 United States Code §§ 801–946 takes effect as the legal system of the U.S. Armed Forces.

1955 – The U.S. Supreme Court expands on its Brown v. Board of Education decision by ordering district courts and school districts to enforce educational desegregation “at all deliberate speed.”

1971 – In accordance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act passed by Congress in 1968, observation of Memorial Day occurs on the last Monday in May for the first time, rather than on the traditional Memorial Day of May 30.

1973 – The Senate votes to cut off funding for the bombing of Khmer Rouge targets within Cambodia, hastening the end of the Cambodian Civil War.

1977 – The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, running from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, Alaska is completed.

1985 – 41 tornadoes strike Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario, Canada leaving 76 dead.

2008 – Usain Bolt breaks the world record in the 100m sprint, at 9.72 seconds.

2013 – A record 2.6 mile wide, multiple vortex, EF5 force tornado, strikes El Reno, Oklahoma, killing 8 people, 4 of them ‘storm chasers’ and injuring 151 more.

2019 – A disgruntled city employee commits mass murder at a municipal office building at Virginia Beach, Virginia, shooting and killing 12 people and wounding 4 others before being engaged and killed by Police.

2020 – SpaceX Crew Dragon 2 Endeavour docks with the International Space Station and astronauts Hurley and Behnken transfer over to spend 62 days in space.

May 30

70 – During the Roman empire’s siege of Jerusalem, Titus and his legions breach the Second Wall of Jerusalem. Jewish defenders retreat to the First Wall.

1431 – In Rouen, France, Joan of Arc is burned at the stake as a heretic by an English dominated tribunal.

1539 – Hernando de Soto lands at Tampa Bay with 600 soldiers with the goal of finding gold.

1806 – Future President Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel over personal insults.

1854 – The Kansas-Nebraska Act, establishing the US territories of Kansas and Nebraska and repealing the Missouri Compromise, is signed into law by President Franklin Pierce.

1868 – Decoration Day, the predecessor of the modern Memorial Day, is observed in the U.S. for the first time after a proclamation by John A. Logan, head of the veterans group, The Grand Army of the Republic.

1883 – A stampede on the recently opened Brooklyn Bridge in New York kills twelve people.

1899 – Pearl Hart, a female outlaw of the Old West, commits one of the last stage coach robberies, about 30 miles southeast of Globe, Arizona.

1911 –Ray Harroun driving the Marmon Wasp wins the first Indianapolis 500 motor race, at a blistering average speed of 74.602 miles per hour.

1922 – The Lincoln Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. by former President and then Chief Justice of the United States, William H. Taft.

1943 – Dr. Josef Mengele becomes chief medical officer of the Zigeunerfamilienlager -Romani family camp- at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1948 – A dike along the Columbia River breaks during a flood, obliterating Vanport, Oregon and killing 15 people.

1958 – The remains of two unidentified American servicemen, killed in action during World War II and the Korean War, are buried along side the Unknown Soldier of World War 1 at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

1971 – The Mariner 9 probe is launched from Cape Canaveral on a mission to map the surface, and to study changes in the atmosphere and surface of Mars.

1972 – In Ben Gurion Airport (at the time, Lod Airport), Israel, 3 members of the Japanese Red Army attack and kill 26 people and injure 78 others before 2 are killed and the last wounded and arrested.

1979 – Downeast Flight 46,  a de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter, crashes on approach to Knox County Regional Airport in Rockland, Maine, killing 17 of the 18 passengers and crew aboard.

2020 – The SpaceX Crew Demo-2  Endeavour, the first crewed orbital spacecraft to launch from the United States since 2011, with astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken aboard, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center.

May 29

1108 – During the Reconquista, an allied army of Castile and León under the command of Prince Sancho Alfónsez is defeated by an Almoravid force under the command of Tamim ibn Yusuf near Uclés, just south of the river Tagus, that retake Cuenca, Huete, Ocaña, and Uclés

1453 – Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih capture Constantinople after a 53 day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire.

1780 –  British forces under the command of Lt. Colonel Banastre Tarleton continue attacking Continental troops under the command of Colonel Abraham Buford at the Battle of Waxhaws in South Carolina, even after they had already surrendered and laid down their arms, killing 113 troops and critically wounding all but 53.

1790 – Rhode Island becomes the last state to ratify the U.S. Constitution

1848 – Wisconsin is admitted as the 30th U.S. state.

1886 – Pharmacist John Pemberton places his first advertisement for Coca-Cola in The Atlanta Journal.

1919 – Arthur Eddington and Andrew Claude de la Cherois Crommelin conduct tests of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity by making coordinated observations of a total solar eclipse on the west African island of Príncipe, and at the town of Sobral in Brazil.

1931 – Michele Schirru, a U.S. citizen, is executed by Italian military firing squad for attempting to assassinate Benito Mussolini.

1932 – World War I veterans begin to assemble in Washington, D.C., to request early disbursement of cash bonuses promised to be paid  to them in 1945.

1947 – United Airlines Flight 521,  a Douglas DC-4, crashes while attempting to take off at LaGuardia Airport, killing 43 of the 48 passengers and crew aboard, at the time, the worst commercial aviation disaster in U.S. history

1953 – Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people confirmed to reach the summit of Mount Everest and return.

1988 – President Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union, arriving in Moscow for a summit meeting with the Mikhail Gorbachev.

1999 – On STS-96, U.S. Navy Captain Kent V. Rominger and a crew of 6 aboard Shuttle Discovery makes the first docking of a shuttle with the International Space Station.

2001 – In the case of PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin, the Supreme Court rules that the disabled golfer Casey Martin can use a cart to ride in tournaments.

2004 – The National World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. by President Bush

2015 – One World Observatory at One World Trade Center opens.

2021 – A privately owned Cessna Citation I/SP crashes into Percy Priest Lake in Tennessee shortly after takeoff from Smyrna Airport, killing all 7 people on board, including actor Joe Lara and his wife Gwen Shamblin Lara.

May 28

585 BC – A solar eclipse occurs, as predicted by the Greek scientist Thales, while Alyattes is battling Cyaxares in the Battle of Halys, in modern Turkey, leading to a truce. This is one of the cardinal dates from which other dates can be calculated.

722 – Around 10 years after the moslem invasion and near total conquest of what is now Spain, the inhabitants of the small town of Covadonga led by Pelayo, rout and defeat the moslem forces sent against them. This is considered the first step in the near 800 year long Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula.

1588 – The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, sets sail from Lisbon, Portugal, heading for the English Channel.

1754 –  In the first engagement of the French and Indian War, Virginia militia under Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeat a French reconnaissance party in the Battle of Jumonville Glen in what is now Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania.

1830 – President Andrew Jackson signs the Indian Removal Act which  forcibly relocates them to Indian Territory – now Oklahoma.

1892 – In San Francisco, John Muir organizes the Sierra Club.

1937 – Volkswagen is founded by the German Labor Front under the Nazi Party

1940 – Belgium surrenders to Nazi Germany to end the Battle of Belgium during World War II.

1977 – In Southgate, Kentucky, the Beverly Hills Supper Club is engulfed in fire, killing 165 people inside.

1987 – 18 year old West German pilot, Mathias Rust, evades Soviet Union air defense and lands a private plane in Red Square, Moscow.

1996 – President Clinton’s former business partners in the Whitewater land deal, Jim McDougal and Susan McDougal, and the Governor of Arkansas Jim Guy Tucker, are convicted of fraud.

1999 – After 22 years of restoration work, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Last Supper is put back on display in Milan, Italy

2002 – The last steel girder is removed from the original World Trade Center site. Cleanup duties officially end with closing ceremonies at Ground Zero in Manhattan, New York City.

2016 – Harambe, a gorilla, is shot to death after grabbing a 3 year old boy in his enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden.

2017 – Formula One driver Takuma Sato becomes the first Japanese and Asian driver to wins the Indianapolis 500.

May 27

1813 – During the War of 1812, U.S. forces capture the British Fort George in Canada.

1896 – An F4 strength tornado hits in St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois, killing 255 people and causing over $10 million in damage.

1905 – During the Russo-Japanese War, the Battle of Tsushima Straight – between Korea and southern Japan –  begins. The only decisive sea battle ever fought by modern steel battleship fleets.

1919 – The U.S. Navy’s Curtiss NC-4 aircraft flying from a stop in the Azores, arrives in Lisbon completing the first transatlantic flight.

1927 – Having ceased production of the Model T, the Ford Motor Company  begins to retool plants to make the Model A.

1930 – The 1,046 foot tall Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man made structure at the time, opens to the public.

1933 – As part of the New Deal, President Roosevelt signs the U.S. Federal Securities Act is signed into law, requiring the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.

1935 – In the case of A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, the Supreme Court of the United States declares the National Industrial Recovery Act to be unconstitutional.

1937 – The Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, linking San Francisco and Marin County, California.

1941 – After being severely damaged in combat, the battleship Bismarck is scuttled by the Germans as they abandon ship.

1942 –  Doris “Dorie” Miller, the first black man to be so, is awarded the Navy Cross for deeds at Pearl Harbor during the 7 December attacks.
On 19 January, 2020, the Navy announces that CVN-81, a Gerald R. Ford Class aircraft carrier, would be named after him.

1958 – With World War II veteran test pilot Robert Little at the controls, the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II makes its first flight.

1965 – U.S. Navy 7th Fleet destroyers of Task Group 70.8 begin the first bombardment of Viet Cong targets within South Vietnam.

1967 – At Newport News, Virginia, the U.S. Navy carrier CV-67, USS John F. Kennedy is christened by Jacqueline Kennedy and her daughter Caroline.

1997 – An F5 strength tornado strikes Jarrell, Texas, destroying most of the 38 home Double Creek Estates, killing 27 people and injuring 12 others.

1998 – Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the plot to bomb the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City.

2016 – Barack Hussein Obama is the first U.S. president to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

2018 – Heavy rains cause the Patapsco and Tiber rivers in Maryland to flood causing the death of a National Guard solder and severely damaging every building on Main Street in Ellicott City, Maryland

May 26

1135 – During the Reconquista, Alfonso VII of León and Castile is crowned in León Cathedral as Imperator Totius Hispaniae (Emperor of all of Spain).

1538 – Geneva expels John Calvin and his followers from the city. Calvin lives in exile in Strasbourg for the next 3 years.

1783 – A Great Jubilee Day is held at North Stratford, Connecticut, celebrated the end of fighting in the American Revolution.

1857 – Dred Scott and family are emancipated by the Blow family, his original owners.

1864 – Montana is organized as a U.S. territory.

1865 – Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi division, is the last general of the Confederate Army to surrender, at Galveston, Texas.

1868 – On a second vote at the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, the Senate again fails to convict by one vote, ending the trial with his acquittal.

1869 – Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

1896 – Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

1897 – The original manuscript of William Bradford’s history, Of Plymouth Plantation, is returned to the Governor of Massachusetts by the Bishop of London after being taken during the American Revolutionary War.

1900 – During the Thousand Days’ War, the Colombian Conservative Party turns the tide of war in their favor with victory against the Colombian Liberal Party in the Battle of Palonegro.

1908 – The first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East is made at Masjed Soleyman in southwest Persia.

1917 – Several powerful tornadoes rip through east central Illinois, killing 64 people and injuring 467 in the city of Mattoon and killing 34 and injuring 182 in Charleston.

1927 – The last Ford Model T rolls off the assembly line after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles.

1940 – The Siege of Calais ends with the surrender of the British and French garrison and British and Allied forces begin Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Dunkirk during World War II.

1948 – The U.S. Congress passes Public Law 80-557, which permanently establishes the Civil Air Patrol as an auxiliary of the United States Air Force.

1969 –  Apollo 10 returns to Earth after a successful 8 day mission testing all the components needed for the first manned moon landing.

1972 – The United States and the Soviet Union sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

1981 – An EA-6B Prowler crashes on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, killing 14 crewmen and injuring 45 others.

1998 – In the case of New Jersey v New York, the Supreme Court rules that due to the language of the original colonial land grant, Ellis Island, the gateway for immigrants, is mainly in the state of New Jersey, with a small area of New York state nearly surrounded by the other state.

2002 – The captain of the tugboat Robert Y. Love passes out due to a heart problem, losing control of the craft and causing the barges he towed to collide with the Interstate 40 bridge over the Arkansas River, causing it to collapse, killing 14 people and injuring 11 others

2004 – Terry Nichols is found guilty of 161 state murder charges for committing the Murrah federal building bombing.

2021 – A disgruntled employee of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority shoots and kills 9 other employees at a company rail yard in San Jose, California before committing suicide.

May 25

240 BC – The first recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet is documented in the Chinese chronicle 史記 – Shiji, Records of the Grand Historian.

1085 – During the Reconquista, the forces of Alfonso VI of Castile retake Toledo, Spain, back from the Moors.

1521 – The Diet of Worms ends when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw.

1738 – King George II intervenes to end the armed conflict between Pennsylvania and Maryland colonies over their border and orders negotiations to begin that will later result in the Mason-Dixon Line.

1787 – After a quorum of seven states is finally secured, the U.S. Convention of the States formally convenes in Philadelphia, and elects George Washington as President of the convention.

1865 – In Mobile, Alabama, an ordnance warehouse on Beauregard Street, containing 200 tons of shells and powder, explodes, killing around 300 people and causing a fire that burns down the northern part of the city.

1925 – In Dayton, Tennessee, John T. Scopes is indicted for violating the Butler Act which made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state funded school.

1953 – At Frenchman Flat at the Nevada Test Site, the United States Army conducts its first and only nuclear artillery test, the Grable shot of Upshot–Knothole, firing a 15 kiloton device from an M65 ‘Atomic Annie’ Cannon.

1955 – An F5 force tornado strikes Udall, Kansas, killing 80 people and injuring another 273.

1961 – Speaking before a joint session of Congress, President Kennedy announces his goal to initiate a project to put a “man on the Moon” before the end of the decade.

1968 – The Gateway Arch, the tallest man made monument in the Western Hemisphere, is formally dedicated by Vice President Hubert Humphrey

1978 – The first bomb set by the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski,  detonates at Northwestern University but only causes some minor injuries.

1979 – American Airlines Flight 191, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 looses its left engine and crashes during takeoff at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, killing all 271 passengers and crew on board, and 2 people on the ground.

1999 – The House of Representatives releases the Cox Report which details the People’s Republic of China’s nuclear espionage against the U.S. over the prior two decades.

2001 – American adventurer Erik Weihenmayer becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

2008 – NASA’s Phoenix lander touches down in the ‘Green Valley’ region within Vastitas Borealis of Mars to search for environments suitable for water and microbial life.

2012 – The SpaceX Dragon supply ship becomes the first commercial spacecraft to successfully rendezvous and berth with the International Space Station.

2020 – George Floyd, under arrest for passing counterfeit money in Minneapolis, Minnesota, dies while in police custody. The arresting officer is later charged and convicted of murder.

May 24

1218 – The armies of King Andrew II of Hungary and Duke Leopold VI of Austria, leave Acre in the attempt to take Cairo Egypt, beginning the Fifth Crusade

1607 – Under the leadership of Captain Christopher Newport, the first 100 English settlers arrive to established Jamestown settlement at the mouth of the James River on the Virginia coast, the first permanent English colony in America.

1626 – Peter Minuit buys ‘the Island of Manhattes’ – Manhattan NY –  from the Canarsee Indians of the Lenape Tribe in exchange for trade goods worth 60 guilders, which currently equals about $950.

1738 – John Wesley starts his own evangelical ministry in London, which people called Methodism for “the methodical way in which they carried out their Christian faith”.

1775 – John Hancock is unanimously elected President of the Continental Congress at Philadelphia.

1813 – Leading the invasion of Venezuela, Simón Bolívar enters Mérida in the northwest of the country and is proclaimed El Libertador

1844 – Samuel Morse sends the first Morse Code message “What hath God wrought”, a biblical quotation from Numbers 23:23, from Washington D.C. to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland, beginning commercial telegraph service between  the two cities.

1856 – In response to the sack of Lawrence Kansas, John Brown and his followers raid Pottawatomie Creek Kansas, killing 5 men.

1883 – The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City is completed and opens to traffic.

1935 – The first night game in Major League Baseball history is played in Cincinnati, Ohio, with the Cincinnati Reds beating the Philadelphia Phillies 2–1 at Crosley Field.

1940 – Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single rotor helicopter flight.

1941 – During World War II, the German battleship Bismarck sinks the Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS Hood, in the Denmark Straight, with the loss of 1415 of 1418 crewmen.

1948 – During the Arab–Israeli War, Egypt attacks and occupies the Israeli kibbutz of Yad Mordechai.

1958 – The United Press and the International News Service merge to form the United Press International.

1962 – During Project Mercury, astronaut Scott Carpenter aboard Aurora 7 is launched from Cape Canaveral and orbits the Earth 3 times before splashing down northeast of Puerto Rico.

1994 – 4 of the 6 moslem terrorists who were involved in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, convicted in March of the bombing, are each sentenced to 240 years in prison.

2002 – Russia and the United States sign the Strategic Offensive Reductions (SORT) Treaty, agreeing to limit each nation’s arsenal. of nuclear weapons.

2022 – A mass shooting occurs at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, resulting in the deaths of 21 people, including 19 children, while over 300 law enforcement officers wait in fear for over an hour, before members of the U.S. Border Patrol arrive, charge the shooter and kill him.

May 23

1430 – Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to raise the Siege of Compiègne.

1609 – The Second Virginia Charter a ” further Enlargement and Explanation of the said Grant, Privileges, and Liberties”, for the London Company  is ratified, more than doubling the area granted from the first charter.

1701 – After being convicted of piracy and of murdering William Moore, Captain William Kidd is hanged in London.

1788 – South Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution as the 8th American state.

1846 – In response to the U.S. declaration of war on the 13th, Mexican President Mariano Paredes reciprocates with his first manifesto of defense.

1895 – The libraries of the Astor and Lenox  Foundations are merged, and using the funds of the Tilden Trust, form and build the New York Public Library.

1900 – Sergeant William Harvey Carney is awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism in the Assault on Battery Wagner in 1863, the first action where a black soldier would be awarded the Medal.

1932 – In Brazil, 4 students are shot and killed during a protest against the Brazilian dictator Getúlio Vargas, which resulted in the outbreak of the Constitutionalist Revolution several weeks later.

1934 – Bank robbers and murderers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are ambushed by police and killed in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.

1939 – The U.S. Navy’s Sargo class submarine, USS Squalus sinks off the coast of New Hampshire during a test dive with the loss 26 of 59 sailors and civilian technicians aboard.

1945 – Heinrich Himmler, head of the Nazi SS  – Schutzstaffel –  cheats the hangman, committing suicide by taking cyanide after being detained for investigation of his false identity documents by British forces.

1949 – The Western occupying powers approve the ‘Basic Law’,  Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, which establishes a new German state, the Federal Republic of Germany.

1960 – A tsunami caused by an 9.5 Moment Scale earthquake in Chile the previous day hits Hilo, Hawaii, killing 61 people.

1995 – Sun Microsystems in  Menlo Park, California releases the first version of the Java programming language.

2006 –  Mount Cleveland on the western end of Chuginadak Island of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, erupts.

2013 – A freeway bridge carrying Interstate Highway 5 over the Skagit River at Mount Vernon, Washington, collapses, precipitating 2 vehicles into the river, but with all 3 riders rescued.

2014 – 6 people are killed and 14 wounded by gunshot, stabbing and vehicle ramming in a killing spree by a lone perpetrator near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara before being shot by police, then committing suicide.

2015 – 46 people are killed in Texas and Oklahoma as a result of flooding caused by an extensive storm system moving through the area.

May 22

337 – Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus, otherwise known as Constantine the Great, the first ‘official’  Christian Emperor of Rome, dies at age 65 in Nicomedia, Bithynia province.

1176 – Hashshashins fail in their attempt to assassinate  Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb, more well known in the west as Saladin, near Aleppo, Syria.

1520 – Conquistador and Deputy governor Pedro de Alvarado, on learning that the festival of Tóxcatl that Emperor Montezuma had requested, included a human sacrifice, has his troops interrupt the ceremony and in the process kill almost all the Aztecs in the temple of Tezcatlipoca.

1804 – With the arrival of William Clark and men from Camp Dubois, the Lewis and Clark Expedition departs from St. Charles, Missouri.

1807 – A grand jury indicts former Vice President Aaron Burr on a charge of treason for allegedly attempting to help Mexico overthrow Spanish control there.

1819 – SS Savannah, a hybrid sail/sidewheel steamship, leaves port at Savannah, Georgia on a voyage to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

1846 – The Associated Press is formed in New York City as a non-profit news cooperative.

1849 – Abraham Lincoln is issued a patent for an invention to lift boats, the only U.S. president to ever hold a patent.

1856 – Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina severely beats Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane in the hall of the  Senate for a speech Sumner had made regarding Southerners and slavery.

1858 –  The Confederación Granadina (now the separate nations of Panama, Colombia & parts of Brazil) is formed by the congress of the Republic of New Granada at Bogotá passing a change in the constitution

1866 – Buying and reorganizing the New Haven Arms Company, Oliver Winchester founds the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.

1872 – President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Amnesty Act into law, restoring full civil and political rights to all but a few Confederate sympathizers.

1900 – The Associated Press is formed in New York City as a non-profit news cooperative.

1906 – The Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their “Flying-Machine”.

1915 – Mount Lassen in northern California erupts, the only volcano besides Mount St. Helens to erupt in the contiguous U.S. during the 20th century.

1948 – Thomas C. Wasson, the US Consul General to Israel, is shot in Jerusalem by an unknown assassin, dying the next day.

1962 – Continental Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 707, crashes in Unionville, Missouri after what is determined to be a suicide detonating a dynamite bomb on board for an insurance payout, killing 44 of 45 crew and passengers on board with 1 passenger dying later at a hospital.

1964 – Lyndon B. Johnson launches the Great Society program.

1968 – The Skipjack class nuclear powered submarine USS Scorpion sinks  400 miles southwest of the Azores with the loss of all 99 men aboard.

1969 – Commander Thomas P. Stafford and Lunar Module Pilot John W. Young, flying the Apollo 10 Lunar Module Snoopy, separate from the Command Module Charlie Brown and descend to within 8.4 nautical miles of the moon’s surface before returning to rendezvous with the Command Module.

1998 – U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson rules that U.S. Secret Service agents can be compelled to testify before a grand jury concerning the Lewinsky scandal involving President Bill Clinton.

2002 – A jury in Birmingham, Alabama convicts former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murder of four girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

2011 – An EF5 force tornado strikes Joplin, Missouri, killing 158 people and causing $2.8 billion in damage, the costliest single tornado in U.S. history.

2017 – President Donald Trump visits the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and becomes the 1st sitting U.S. president to visit the Western Wall of the temple Mount.

May 21

1403 – Henry III of Castile sends Ruy González de Clavijo as ambassador to Tamerlane to discuss the possibility of an alliance between him and Castile against the moslem Ottoman Empire.

1758 – 10 year old Mary Campbell is abducted in Pennsylvania by Lenape indians during the French and Indian War. She is returned 6 1/2 years later.

1851 – The Colombian Congress enacts a law freeing all slaves on January 1, 1852.

1856 – Lawrence, Kansas, founded by abolitionists, is raided by pro slavery forces, with several buildings sacked and burned. The only casualty is one of the raiders who was accidentally killed. This begins the time of ‘Bleeding Kansas’.

1881 – The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton in Washington, D.C.

1917 – The Great Atlanta Fire causes $5.5 million in damage, destroying 2,000 buildings, but causing only 1 fatality due to a heart attack.

1924 – University of Chicago students Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb murder 14 year old Bobby Franks in a “thrill killing”.

1927 – Charles Lindbergh lands at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris.

1932 – Amelia Earhart lands at Londonderry, Northern Ireland, completing  the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot.

1934 – Oskaloosa, Iowa, becomes the first municipality in the United States to fingerprint all of its citizens. No reason can be found for this.

1946 – During an experiment with the plutonium core that would have been the 3rd nuclear bomb dropped on Japan, if needed, physicist Louis Slotin is the second man fatally irradiated in the second criticality incident with the ‘demon core’ at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1972 – Michelangelo’s Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome is damaged by a  mentally disturbed vandal.

1976 – A chartered school bus transporting 52 members of the Yuba City High School a cappella choir, crashes after running off an elevated ramp on the I-680 highway in Martinez, California, killing 28 students and an adult adviser.

1981 – Transamerica Corporation agrees to sell United Artists to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $380 million after the box office failure of the 1980 film Heaven’s Gate.

2000 – An East Coast Aviation Services chartered British Aerospace BAe-3101 Jetstream 3101, runs out of fuel and crashes into mountainous terrain in Bear Creek Township, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania after missing a landing approach to Scranton International Airport and circling to try again, killing all 19 passengers and crew aboard.

2005 – The tallest roller coaster in the world, the 456 feet tall, Kingda Ka opens at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey.

2011 – Radio broadcaster Harold Camping’s prediction that the world would end on this date fails to come to pass.

2012 – A suicide bombing killing more than 120 people in Sana’a, the capital city of Yemen, causes certain U.S. counter terrorist advisors to decide to exercise the better part of valor and relocate a forward post back across the Red Sea.

2017 – Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus performs their final show at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York.

May 20

325 – Called by Emperor Constantine, the First Council of Nicaea is formally opened, starting the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church.

1497 – Commissioned by King Henry VII of England, John Cabot sets sail from Bristol aboard his ship Matthew to explore the northern new world to find a route to the west.

1861 – The State of Kentucky proclaims its neutrality in the Civil war on the same day that the State of North Carolina secedes from the Union.

1862 – President Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act into law, opening 84 million acres of public land to settlers.

1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for denim jeans secured with copper rivets.

1875 –  17 nations sign the Metre Convention in Paris beginning the process of establishing the International System of Units.

1891 – Thomas Edison displays the prototype of his kinetoscope at the  convention of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs in Washington D.C.

1902 – Cuba gains independence from the United States after being a protectorate since the Spanish-American War.

1927 – Piloting the Ryan NYP Spirit of St. Louis, Charles Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field, New York City, attempting to fly the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean from New York to Paris, and win the $25,000 Orteig Prize

1932 – Piloting a Lockheed Vega 5B, Amelia Earhart takes off from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, attempting to fly the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot.

1949 – The U.S. Armed Forces Security Agency, the predecessor to the National Security Agency, is established.

1956 – As part of Operation Redwing, the 3.8 megaton Cherokee device, is the first airborne hydrogen bomb dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

1964 – Unable to account for an excess temperature noise on a microwave antenna at the Bell Telephone Laboratory’s Crawford Hill, New Jersey site, Robert Woodrow Wilson and Arno Penzias discover the 4.2°Kelvin cosmic microwave background radiation.

1969 –The Battle of Dong Ap Bia (Hamburger Hill) during the Vietnam War ends with a final victorious frontal assault by U.S. troops.

1983 – The journal Science publishes an article by Luc Montagnier about his discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS.

1985 – Radio Martí, part of the Voice of America service, begins broadcasting to Cuba.

1996 – In the case of Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court, citing the court’s previous ruling in Bowers v. Hardwick in 1986, rules against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of homosexuals, which is later overturned by Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, and Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015.

2013 – An EF5 force tornado strikes the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, killing 24 people and injuring 377 others.

May 19

1535 – French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail on his second voyage to North America with 3 ships & 110 men along with the 2 sons of Iroquois Chief Donnacona, whom Cartier had kidnapped during his first voyage.

1743 – French physicist Jean-Pierre Christin develops the centigrade temperature scale.

1749 – King George II of Great Britain grants the Ohio Company of Virginia a charter of 500,000 acres in the Ohio Valley between the Kanawha and the Monongahela Rivers.

1828 – U.S. President John Quincy Adams signs the Tariff of 1828 into law, to protect industrial manufacturers in the northern states, but an unintended consequence is to increase the prices of imported goods that the southern agrarian states depend on.

1848 – Mexico ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with the U.S., officially ending the Mexican-American war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern states to the United States for $15 million.

1883 –  Steam is observed to be venting from Perboewatan, the northernmost of the three volcanic cones on Krakatoa Island.
William F Cody’s 1st Buffalo Bill’s Wild West opens in Omaha, Nebraska.

1921 – Congress passes the Emergency Quota Act establishing national quotas on immigration.

1950 – A barge containing 600 tons of munitions destined for Pakistan explodes in the harbor at South Amboy, New Jersey, killing 27 people.

1962 – At a birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, Marilyn Monroe sings “Happy Birthday”.

1986 – The Firearm Owners Protection Act, including the ‘Hughes amendment’ – 18 US Code § 922 (o) – that bans the further production of automatic firearms that can be legally possessed by the public, is signed into law by President Reagan.

1993 – SAM Colombia Flight 501, a Boeing 727-46, crashes on approach to José María Córdova International Airport in Medellín, Colombia, killing all 132 people aboard.

1996 – Shuttle Endeavour launches from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-77, to operate the Astrotech SPACEHAB module with various experiments.

2000 – Shuttle Atlantis launches from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-101 to resupply the International Space Station.

2015 – An oil pipeline break north of Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County, California spills 142,000 gallons of crude oil onto the coastline.

May 18

1268 – The crusader forces holding the city of Antioch are defeated by the forces of the moslem Mamluk Sultan Rukn al-Din Baibars

1291 – The crusader forces holding the city of Acre are defeated by the forces of the moslem Mamluk Sultan Salāh ad-Dīn Khalil, ending the presence of crusaders in the Holy Land.

1565 – Ottoman moslem forces besiege the island of Malta, held by the Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, more commonly known as Knights Hospitaller.

1631 – John Winthrop takes the oath of office as the first Governor of Massachusetts in Dorchester.

1841 – The Bartleson–Bidwell Party, led by Captain John Bartleson and John Bidwell, became the first American emigrants to attempt a wagon crossing from Missouri to California using the Oregon Trail.

1860 – Abraham Lincoln wins the Republican Party presidential nomination over William H. Seward.

1896 – In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court rules that the “separate but equal” racial doctrine is constitutional.

1917 – Congress passes the Selective Service Act of 1917, giving the President the power of conscription for military service.

1927 – 43 people, including 38 children, are killed by dynamite bombs planted under the Bath Consolidated School in Bath Township, Michigan, by disgruntled school board member Andrew Kehoe, so far the most deadly attack on a school.

1933 – President Roosevelt signs an act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority.

1953 – Piloting the only CL-13 Mark 3 version of the F-86 Sabre over Edwards Air Force Base, California, U.S. Air Force Reserve LTC Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier

1969 – Apollo 10, the dress rehearsal for the moon landing, with astronauts Thomas P. Stafford, John W. Young and Eugene A. Cernan aboard is launched from the Kennedy Space Center.

1980 – Mount St. Helens in Skamania County, Washington, erupts, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage.

2005 – The Hubble Space Telescope takes a photo that astronomers will use to confirm that Pluto has 2 additional moons, adding Nix and Hydra to Charon, Kerberos and Styx.

2015 – At least 78 people die in a landslide caused by heavy rains in the Colombian town of Salgar.

2018 – Using a shotgun and a revolver, a student at the high school in Santa Fe, Texas kills 10 people including 8 students and wounds 13 others before being wounded by police and surrendering.

May 17

1527 – Pánfilo de Narváez departs Spain to explore Florida with 600 men on what turns out to be a disastrous voyage of discovery – by 1536 only 4 men, which don’t include Narváez survive to reach Sinaloa, Mexico

1395 –  The warlords of ancient Wallachia defeat invading Turks at Rovine, near the Argeș River in Romania.

1642 – Paul de Chomedey, Sieur de Maisonneuve founds the Ville Marie de Montréal, current day Montreal, Quebec.

1673 – Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette begin exploring the Mississippi River for the French.

1756 – The Seven Years’ War, more commonly known in the U.S. as the French and Indian War, formally begins when Great Britain declares war on France.

1792 – Under terms of the Buttonwood Agreement of 24 stockbrokers and merchants on Wall Street in New York City, the New York Stock Exchange is formed.

1875 –  Jockey Oliver Lewis riding aboard Aristides wins the first Kentucky Derby in 2 minutes, 37.75 seconds.

1900 – The novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum, is published in the U.S.

1939 – The Columbia Lions and the Princeton Tigers play in the U.S. first televised sporting event, a collegiate baseball game in New York City.

1943 – No. 617 Squadron RAF, still in service and currently based at RAF Marham in Norfolk,  bomb the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams in Germany during World War II.

1954 – In the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the Supreme Court hands down a unanimous decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools.

1974 – Police in Los Angeles raid the Symbionese Liberation Army’s headquarters, killing 6 members of the terrorist group.

1977 – Nolan Bushnell opens the first ShowBiz Pizza Place, later renamed Chuck E. Cheese, in San Jose, California.

1983 – In response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Appalachian Observer newspaper, the U.S. Department of Energy declassifies documents confirming 4.2 million pounds of mercury pollution in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

1987 – During the Iran–Iraq War, an Iraqi Dassault Mirage F1 fighter jet fires two missiles into the U.S. Navy warship USS Stark, killing 37 sailors and injuring 21.

1989 – Class 2-89 of Delta Company, 2nd Battalion, 10th Infantry Regiment U.S. Army, graduates Basic Combat Training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri

1995 –  Shawn Nelson steals an M60 tank from a National Guard armory in San Diego, California and goes on a rampage, destroying numerous vehicles and other property before being shot by the police who forcibly enter the tank.

2006 – The aircraft carrier CVA-34 USS Oriskany is purposefully sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, off Panama City, Florida to become ‘The Great Carrier Reef’.

 

May 16

1771 – The Battle of Alamance, a pre-Revolutionary War battle between local Militia and a group of rebels called the “Regulators”, occurs in present day Alamance County, North Carolina.

1842 – The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail from Elm Grove, Missouri.

1866 – Beginning the replacement of the silver ‘half dime’, Congress establishes the 5¢ coin, called the ‘nickel’, being made of 75% copper and 25% nickel. Today, the only U.S. coin in circulation that is actually worth as much, or more, than the face amount.

1868 – The Senate fails to convict President Andrew Johnson at his impeachment trial by 1 vote.

1888 – Nikola Tesla delivers a lecture at the American Institute of Electrical Engineers in New York City, describing the equipment which will allow efficient generation and use of alternating currents to transmit electric power over long distances.

1891 – The International Electrotechnical Exhibition opens in Frankfurt, Germany, featuring the world’s first long distance transmission of high power, three-phase alternating electric current transmitted from a powerplant 75 miles away.

1916 – Great Britain and France sign the secret wartime Sykes-Picot Agreement, partitioning former Ottoman territories in Arabia.

1918 – Congress passes the Sedition Act of 1918, making criticism of the government during wartime an criminal offense.

1919 – A U.S Navy Curtiss NC-4 aircraft commanded by Albert Cushing Read leaves Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight.

1943 – The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is finally defeated, with the survivors taken to the Majdanek and Treblinka death camps.

1951 – The first regularly scheduled transatlantic flights begin between Idlewild Airport – now John F Kennedy International Airport – and Heathrow Airport in London

1960 – At Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser.

1988 – A report by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine.

1991 – Queen Elizabeth II becomes the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.

2011 – On its 25th and final flight, Shuttle Endeavour launches on mission STS-134, International Space Station assembly flight ULF6, from the Kennedy Space Center.

May 15

1252 – Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad extirpanda, which authorizes, but also limits, the torture of heretics in the Inquisition.

1536 – Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, stands trial in London on charges of treason, adultery and incest and is condemned to death by a specially selected jury.

1602 – Aboard Concord, English Captain Bartholomew Gosnold sites land that he names Cape Cod for the abundant fish seen there.

1618 – Johannes Kepler confirms his previously rejected discovery of the third law of planetary motion (the period for a planet to orbit the Sun increases as the radius of its orbit increases), first discovered on March 8.

1817 – The first private mental health hospital in the U.S., the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason, now Friends Hospital, opens in Philadelphia.

1864 – At New Market, Virginia, students from the Virginia Military Institute fight alongside the Confederate army to force Union General Franz Sigel and his troops out of the Shenandoah Valley.

1896 – A massive tornado strikes Sherman, Texas, destroying 50 homes and killing 73 people.

1905 – The city of Las Vegas is founded in Nevada.

1911 – In the case of Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, the Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an “unreasonable” monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up

1929 – A fire in the nitrocellulose based X-ray film stock stored in the basement at the Crile Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio kills 125 people.

1940 – Richard and Maurice McDonald open the first McDonald’s restaurant.

1941 – New York Yankees Center Fielder Joe DiMaggio begins a never yet broken, Major League record, of a streak of making at least one base hit in 56 games straight.

1942 – The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) act is signed into law.

1948 – President Harry Truman becomes the first world leader to recognize the State of  Israel.

1957 – Evangelist Billy Graham launches his “crusade” in front of 18,000 people at Madison Square Garden in NYC

1963 – Project Mercury ends with the launch of Mercury-Atlas 9 with astronaut Gordon Cooper on board the capsule Faith 7. He becomes the first American to spend more than a day in space, and the last American to go into space alone.

1968 – A tornado strikes Jonesboro Arkansas, killing 33 people.

1970 – President Nixon appoints Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington as the first female United States Army Brigadier General Officers.

1972 – Okinawa and the rest of the Ryukyu Islands, under U.S. military governance since 1945, revert to Japanese control.

1974 – Terrorists of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine attack and take hostages at the Netiv Meir Elementary School in Ma’alot Israel, killing 31 people including 22 schoolchildren and wounding 68 more.

1988 – The Soviet Army begins to withdraw 115,000 troops from Afghanistan after occupying the country for 9 years.

1997 – Shuttle Atlantis launches on mission STS-84 to dock with the Russian space station Mir.

2001 – CSX Transportation EMD SD40-2 locomotive #8888 rolls out of Stanley train yard in Walbridge, Ohio, with 47 freight cars attached, after its engineer fails to reboard it after setting a yard switch. It travels south, driverless for 66 miles until it was brought to a halt near Kenton, Ohio. The incident becoming the inspiration for the 2010 film Unstoppable.

2010 – Australian Jessica Watson becomes the youngest person to sail, non-stop and unassisted around the world solo.

2019 – The U.S. birthrate statistics for 2018 are released, showing the lowest rate in 32 years.