On May 22nd...

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1455 At the First Battle of St Albans, Richard, Duke of York, defeated and captured King Henry VI of England.

1570 The first atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, with 70 maps, was published by Abraham Ortelius in Antwerp, Belgium.

1629 Emperor Ferdinand II and King Christian IV of Denmark signed the Peace of Lubeck.

1659 France, England, and Netherlands signed the Hedges Concerto Treaty.

1667 Pope Alexander VII died.

1761 The first life insurance policy in the United States was issued in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1762 Sweden and Prussia signed the Treaty of Hamburg.

1802 Martha Washington, wife of U. S. President George Washington, died.

1807 Former U. S. Vice-President Aaron Burr was indicted on charges of treason.

1813 Composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner was born.

1840 The transporting of British convicts to New South Wales was abolished.

1843 Painter Mary Cassatt was born.

1849 Abraham Lincoln patented a device for lifting a boat over shoals and obstructions.

1856 U. S. Congressman Preston Brooks beat U. S. Senator Charles Sumner with a cane on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

1858 Confederación Granadina (now Colombia) was formed.

1859 Author Arthur Conan Doyle was born.

1863 The Siege of Vicksburg (Virginia) began.

1868 The Reno Brothers Gang robbed a train at Marshfield, Indiana, and made off with $98,000.

1872 U. S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Amnesty Act of 1872 into law, restoring full civil rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers.

1877 Billy Walker rode Baden-Baden to victory in the Kentucky Derby.

1885 Jim McLaughlin rode Tecumseh to victory in the Preakness.
1885 Author Victor Hugo died.

1888 Leroy Buffington patented a system for building skyscrapers.

1892 Washington Sheffield invented the toothpaste tube.

1897 The Blackwell Tunnel under the River Thames at London, England, opened.

1900 Associated Press was organized in New York City, New York.
1900 Edmund S. Votey patented the pneumatic piano player.

1902 John Bullman rode Mastermam to victory in the Belmont Stakes.

1906 The Wright Brothers received a patent for their "flying machine."
1906 Walter Miller rode Whimsical to victory in the Preakness.

1915 A local train collided with a troop train in Gretna, Scotland, killing 226 persons.

1907 Actor Laurence Olivier was born.

1910 Game show announcer Johnny Olson was born.

1919 A. E. Douglass established the relative ages of two archaeological sites using ancient wood samples.

1922 Television producer Quinn Martin was born.

1927 A magnitude 8.3 earthquake struck Tsinghai, China, killing over 40,900 people.

1928 Businessman T. Boone Pickens was born.

1930 Harvey Milk, Supervisor of San Francisco, California, was born.

1933 John Mackay made the first reported sighting of the Loch Ness Monster.

1934 Pianist Peter Nero was born.

1936 Aer Lingus was founded as the national airline of the Republic of Ireland.

1938 Actor Richard Benjamin was born.

1939 Playwright Ernst Toller committed suicide.

1940 Television news anchor Bernard Shaw was born.

1942 The United Steelworkers was formed.
1942 Ted Kaczynski, aka "The Unabomber," was born.

1943 Baseball player Tommy John was born.
1943 Helen Taft, wife of U. S. President William Howard Taft, died.

1946 The first U. S. rocket to reach the edge of space was fired from WhiteSands Missile Range in New Mexico.
1946 Soccer player George Best was born.

1947 The "Truman Doctrine" was signed into law.
1947 The first U. S. ballistic missile was launched.

1950 Songwriter Bernie Taupin was born.

1951 Kenneth Bianchi, half of the "Hillside Strangler" duo, was born.

1954 Hasty Road, ridden by Johnny Adams, won the Preakness.

1956 The last episode of "The Bob Hope Show" aired on NBC-TV.

1960 Chile was hit by an 8.5 magnitude earthquake, followed by a tsunami triggered by that earthquake.
1960 Fifty-four miners were killed in a coal mine blast at Ostrava, Czechoslovakia.

1961 An explosion at the Allegheny Ballistics Laboratory in Rocket Center, West Virginia, destroyed 2 buildings and killed 9 persons.
1961 The first ever revolving restaurant opened atop Seattle, Washington's, Space Needle.
1961 Actress Joan Davis died.

1967 "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" debuted.
1967 Actress Brooke Smith was born.
1967 Author James Langston Hughes died.

1969 Thousands of students seized control of a 50-block area in the center of Rosario, Argentina.

1970 Palestinian guerrillas ambushed an Israeli school bus near the Lebanese border and killed 12 persons, 9 of them children.
1970 Model Naomi Campbell was born.

1972 U. S. President Richard Nixon and his wife arrived in Moscow, Russia.
1972 Ceylon broke its ties with the British crown and proclaimed itself the Republic of Sri Lanka.
1972 Poet Cecil Dat-Lewis died.

1975 Baseball player Lefty Grove died.

1982 Olympic speed skater Apolo Anton Ohno was born.

1986 Actor Martin Gabel died.

1988 Sherri Turner won the LPGA Championship.
1988 Comedian/singer Dennis Day died.

1990 North and South Yemen merged to form the Republic of Yemen.
1990 The final episode of "Newhart" aired on CBS-TV.
1990 Boxer Rocky Graziano died.

1992 Johnny Carson ended his 30-year career as host of "The Tonight Show."

1993 Riddick Bowe TKO'd Jesse Ferguson in the second round for the heavyweight boxing title.

1997 The U. S. Post Office issued a stamp commemorating Bugs Bunny.

2001 Actor Whitman Mayo died.

2002 A Birmingham, Alabama, jury found Bobby Frank Cherry guilty of the 1963 murders of four girls in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church.

2003 Annika Sörenstam became the first woman in 58 years to play in the PGA Tour, in Fort Worth, Texas.

2004 Hallam, Nebraska, was wiped out by a 2.5-mile-wide tornado that also killed one resident.

2005 Voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft died.

2010 13-year old Jordan Romero became the youngest person ever to reach the peak of Mount Everest.

2011 An EF-5 tornado killed 158 persons in Joplin, Missouri.

2012 Wesley Brown, the first black graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy, died.

2014 General Prayut Chan-o-cha led a military coup in Thailand.

2015 Ireland became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote.

2017 A suicide bombing at Manchester (England) Arena after an Ariana Grande concert killed 22 persons and injured 59 others.
2017 Motorcycle racer Nicky Hayden died.

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This page was last updated on June 25, 2018.