Today in History: May 31

1433: Sigismund is crowned emperor of Rome.

1678: The Godiva procession, commemorating Lady Godiva’s legendary ride while naked, becomes part of the Coventry Fair.

1862: At the Battle of Fair Oaks, Union General George B. McClellan defeats Confederates outside of Richmond.

1879: New York’s Madison Square Garden opens its doors for the first time.

1889: Johnstown, Pennsylvania is destroyed by a massive flood.

1900: U.S. troops arrive in Peking to help put down the Boxer Rebellion.

1902: The Boer War ends with the Treaty of Vereeniging.

1909: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) holds its first conference.

1913: The 17th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for direct election of senators, is ratified.

1915: A German zeppelin makes an air raid on London.

1916: British and German fleets fight in the Battle of Jutland.

1928: The first flight over the Pacific takes off from Oakland.

1941: An armistice is arranged between the British and the Iraqis.

1955: The Supreme Court orders that states must end racial segregation "with all deliberate speed."

1962: Adolf Eichmann, the former SS commander, is hanged near Tel Aviv, Israel.

1969: John Lennon and Yoko Ono record "Give Peace a Chance."

1974: Israel and Syria sign an agreement on the Golan Heights.

1979: Zimbabwe proclaims its independence.

1988: President Ronald Reagan arrives in Moscow, the first American president to do so in 14 years.

Today in History: May 30

1416: Jerome of Prague is burned as a heretic by the Church.

1431: Joan of Arc is burned at the stake by the English.

1527: The University of Marburg is founded in Germany.

1539: Hernando de Soto lands in Florida with 600 soldiers in search of gold.

1783: The first American daily newspaper, The Pennsylvania Evening Post, begins publishing in Philadelphia.

1814: The First Treaty of Paris is declared, returning France to its 1792 borders.

1848: William Young patents the ice cream freezer.

1854: The Kansas-Nebraska Act repeals the Missouri Compromise.

1859: The Piedmontese army crosses the Sesia River and defeats the Austrians at Palestro.

1862: Union General Henry Halleck enters Corinth, Mississippi.

1868: Memorial Day begins when two women place flowers on both Confederate and Union graves.

1889: The brassiere is invented.

1912: U.S. Marines are sent to Nicaragua to protect American interests.

1913: The First Balkan War ends.

1921: The U.S. Navy transfers the Teapot Dome oil reserves to the Department of the Interior.

1942: The Royal Air Force launches the first 1,000 plane raid over Germany.

1971: NASA launches Mariner 9, the first satellite to orbit Mars.

Today in History: May 29

1453: Constantinople falls to Muhammad II, ending the Byzantine Empire.

1660: Charles II is restored to the English throne, succeeding the short-lived Commonwealth.

1721: South Carolina is formally incorporated as a royal colony of England.

1790: Rhode Island becomes last of the original thirteen colonies to ratify the Constitution.

1848: Wisconsin becomes the thirtieth state.

1849: A patent for lifting vessels is granted to Abraham Lincoln.

1862: Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard retreats to Tupelo, Mississippi.

1911: The first running of the Indianapolis 500.

1913: The premier of the ballet Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) in Paris causes rioting in the theater.

1916: U.S. forces invade the Dominican Republic.

1922: Ecuador becomes independent.

1922: The U.S. Supreme Court rules organized baseball is a sport not subject to antitrust laws.

1942: The German Army completes its encirclement of the Kharkov region of the Soviet Union.

1951: C. F. Blair becomes the first man to fly over the North Pole in single engine plane.

1953: Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay become the first men to reach the top of Mount Everest.

1974: President Richard Nixon agrees to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts.

1990: Boris Yeltsin is elected the president of Russia.

Today in History: May 28

585BC: A solar eclipse interrupts a battle outside of Sardis in western Turkey between Medes and Lydians. The battle ends in a draw.

1805: Napoleon is crowned in Milan, Italy.

1830: Congress authorizes Indian removal from all states to the western Prairie.

1863: The 54th Massachusetts, a regiment of African-American recruits, leaves Boston, headed for Hilton Head, South Carolina.

1859: The French army launches a flanking attack on the Austrian army in Northern France.

1871: The Paris commune is suppressed by troops from Versailles.

1900: Britain annexes the Orange Free State in South Africa.

1940: Belgium surrenders to Germany.

1953: Melody, the first animated 3-D cartoon in Technicolor, premiers.

1961: Amnesty International, a human rights organization, is founded.

Today in History: May 27

1564: John Calvin, one of the dominant figures of the Protestant Reformation, dies in Geneva.

1647: Achsah Young becomes the first woman known to be executed as a witch in Massachusetts.

1668: Three colonists are expelled from Massachusetts for being Baptists.

1813: Americans capture Fort George, Canada.

1907: The Bubonic Plague breaks out in San Francisco.

1919: A U.S. Navy seaplane completes the first transatlantic flight.

1929: Colonel Charles Lindbergh marries Anne Spencer Murrow.

1935: The Supreme Court declares President Franklin Roosevelt’s National Recovery Act unconstitutional.

1937: San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge opens.

1941: The German battleship Bismarck is sunk by British naval and air forces.

1942: German General Rommel begins a major offensive in Libya with his Afrika Korps.

1944: American General MacArthur lands on Biak Island in New Guinea.

1960: A military coup overthrows the democratic government of Turkey.

1969: Construction begins on Walt Disney World in Florida.

1972: President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet Communist Party chief Leonid Brezhnev sign an arms reduction agreement.

1999: The international war crimes tribunal indicts Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for war atrocities.

Today in History: May 25

585 BC: Thales of Greece makes the first known prediction of a solar eclipse.

1085: Alfonso VI takes Toledo, Spain from the Muslims.

1787: The Constitutional convention opens at Philadelphia with George Washington presiding.

1810: Argentina declares independence from Napoleonic Spain.

1851: Jose Justo de Urquiza of Argentina leads a rebellion against Juan Manuel de Rosas, his former ally.

1911: Porfirio Diaz, President of Mexico, resigns his office.

1914: The British House of Commons passes Irish Home Rule.

1925: John Scopes is indicted for teaching Darwinian theory in school.

1935: Jesse Owens sets six world records in less than an hour in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

1946: Jordan gains independence from Britain.

1953: The first atomic cannon is fired in Nevada.

Today in History: May 23

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: The Thirty Years War begins.

1701: Captain William Kidd, the Scottish pirate, is hanged on the banks of the Thames.

1785: Benjamin Franklin announces his invention of bifocals.

1788: South Carolina becomes the eighth state to ratify U.S. Constitution.

1861: Pro-Union and pro-Confederate forces clash in western Virginia.

1862: Confederate General "Stonewall" Jackson takes Front Royal, Virginia.

1864: Union General Ulysses Grant attempts to outflank Confederate Robert E. Lee in the Battle of North Anna, Virginia.

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.

1901: American forces capture Filipino rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo.

1915: Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary.

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: The Federal Republic of West Germany is proclaimed.

1960: Israel announces the capture of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina.

Today in History: May 22

1246: Henry Raspe is elected anti-king by the Rhenish prelates in France.

1455: King Henry VI is taken prisoner by the Yorkists at the Battle of St. Albans, during the War of the Roses.

1804: The Lewis and Clark Expedition officially begins as the Corps of Discovery departs from St. Charles, Missouri.

1856: U.S. Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beats Senator Charles Sumner with a cane for Sumner’s earlier condemnation of slavery, which included an insult to Brooks’ cousin, Senator Andrew Butler.

1863: Union General Ulysses S. Grant’s second attack on Vicksburg fails and a siege begins.

1868: The "Great Train Robbery" takes place as seven members of the Reno Gang make off with $98,000 in cash from a train’s safe in Indiana.

1872: The Amnesty Act restores civil rights to Southerners.

1882: The United States formally recognizes Korea.

1908: The Wright brothers register their flying machine for a U.S. patent.

1939: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini sign a "Pact of Steel" forming the Axis powers.

1947: The Truman Doctrine brings aid to Turkey and Greece.

1967: The children’s program Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood premiers.

1972: Ceylon becomes the Republic of Sri Lanka as its constitution is ratified.

1985: Baseball player Pete Rose passes Hank Aaron as National League run scoring leader with 2,108.

1990: In the Middle East, North and South Yemen merge to become a single state.

1992: Johnny Carson’s final appearance on The Tonight Show on NBC, after 30 years as the program’s host.

2004: An EF4 tornado with a record-setting width of 2.5 miles wipes out Hallam, Nebraska, killing 1 person.

2004: Farenheit 9-11, directed by Michael Moore, becomes the first documentary ever to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

2010: Following a 200-year search for the tomb of Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus his remains are reburied in Frombork Cathedral

2011: An EF5 tornado kills at least 158 people in Joplin, Missouri, the largest death toll from a tornado since record-keeping began in 1950.

2015: The Republic of Ireland, long known as a conservative, predominantly Catholic country, becomes the first nation in the world to legalize gay marriage in a public referendum.

Today in History: May 21

996: Sixteen year old Otto III is crowned the Roman Emperor.

1471: King Henry VI is killed in the Tower of London. Edward IV takes the throne.

1506: Christopher Columbus dies.

1536: The Reformation is officially adopted in Geneva, Switzerland.

1620: Present-day Martha’s Vineyard is first sighted by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold.

1790: Paris is divided into 48 zones.

1832: The Democratic party holds its first national convention.

1856: Lawrence, Kansas is captured and sacked by pro-slavery forces.

1863: The siege of the Confederate Port Hudson, Louisiana, begins.

1881: The American Red Cross is founded by Clara Barton.

1927: Charles Lindbergh lands in Paris completing the first solo air crossing of the Atlantic.

1940: British forces attack German General Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division at Arras, slowing his blitzkrieg of France.

1941: The first U.S. ship, the S.S. Robin Moor, is sunk by a U-boat.

1951: The U.S. Eighth Army counterattacks to drive the Communist Chinese and North Koreans out of South Korea.

1961: Governor Patterson declares martial law in Montgomery, Alabama.

1970: The U.S. National Guard mobilizes to quell disturbances at Ohio State University.

1991: In Madras, India, a suicide bomber kills the former Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi.

Today in History: May 20

325: The Ecumenical council is inaugurated by Emperor Constantine in Nicea.

1303: A peace treaty is signed between England and France.

1347: Cola di Rienzo takes the title of tribune in Rome.

1520: Hernando Cortes defeats Spanish troops sent against him in Mexico.

1690: England passes the Act of Grace, forgiving followers of James II.

1674: John Sobieski becomes Poland’s first king.

1774: Parliament passes the Coercive Acts to punish the colonists for their increasingly anti-British behavior. The acts close the port of Boston.

1775: North Carolina becomes the first colony to declare its independence.

1784: The Peace of Versailles ends a war between France, England, and Holland.

1799: Napoleon Bonaparte orders a withdrawal from his siege of St. Jean d’Acre in Egypt.

1859: A force of Austrians collides with Piedmontese cavalry at the village of Montebello, in northern Italy.

1861: North Carolina becomes the last state to secede from the Union.

1862: President Lincoln signs the Homestead Act, providing 250 million acres of free land to settlers in the West.

1874: Levi Strauss begins marketing blue jeans with copper rivets.

1902: The U.S. military occupation of Cuba ends.

1927: Charles Lindbergh takes off from New York for Paris.

1930: The first airplane is catapulted from a dirigible.

1932: Amelia Earhart lands near Londonderry, Ireland, to become the first woman fly solo across the Atlantic.

1939: Pan American Airways starts the first regular passenger service across the Atlantic.

1941: Germany invades Crete by air.

1942: Japan completes the conquest of Burma.

1951: During the Korean War, U.S. Air Force Captain James Jabara becomes the first jet air ace in history.

1961: A white mob attacks civil rights activists in Montgomery, Alabama.

1969: In South Vietnam, troops of the 101st Airborne Division reach the top of Hill 937 after nine days of fighting entrenched North Vietnamese forces.

1970: 100,000 people march in New York, supporting U.S. policies in Vietnam.

Today in History: May 19

715: St. Gregory II begins his reign as Catholic Pope.

1535: French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail for North America.

1536: Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, is headed on Tower Green.

1568: Defeated by the Protestants, Mary, Queen of Scots, flees to England where Queen Elizabeth imprisons her

1588: The Spanish Armada sets sail from Lisbon, Spain.

1608: The Protestant states from the Evangelical Union of Lutherans and Calvinists.

1635: Cardinal Richelieu of France intervenes in the great conflict in Europe by declaring war on the Hapsburgs in Spain.

1780: Near total darkness on New England at noon. No explanation is found.

1856: Senator Charles Sumner speaks out against slavery.

1858: A pro-slavery band led by Charles Hameton executes unarmed Free State men near Marais des Cygnes on the Kansas-Missouri border.

1863: Union General Ulysses S. Grant’s first attack on Vicksburg is repulsed.

1864: The Union and Confederate armies launch their last attacks against each other at Spotsylvania, Virginia.

1921: Congress sharply curbs immigration, setting a national quota system.

1935: The National Football League adopts an annual college to draft to begin in 1936.

1964: U.S. diplomats find at least 40 microphones planted in the American embassy in Moscow.

1967: U.S. planes bomb Hanoi for the first time

Today in History: May 18

526: St. John I ends his reign as Catholic Pope.

1643: Queen Anne, the widow of Louis XIII, is granted sole and absolute power as regent by the Paris parliament, overriding the late king’s will.

1652: A law is passed in Rhode Island banning slavery in the colonies but it causes little stir and seems unlikely to be enforced.

1792: Russian troops invade Poland.

1802: Britain declares war on France.

1804: Napoleon Bonaparte becomes the Emperor of France.

1828: The Battle of Las Piedras, between Uruguay and Brazil, ends.

1860: Abraham Lincoln is nominated for president.

1864: The fighting at Spotsylvania in Virginia, reaches its peak at the Bloody Angle.

1896: The Supreme Court’s decision on Plessy v. Ferguson upholds the "separate but equal" policy in the United States.

1904: Brigand Raizuli kidnaps American Ion H. Perdicaris in Morocco.

1917: The U.S. Congress passes the Selective Service act, calling up soldiers to fight World War I.

1931: Japanese pilot Seiji Yoshihara crashes his plane in the Pacific Ocean while trying to be the first to cross the ocean nonstop. He is picked up seven hours later by a passing ship.

1933: President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Tennessee Valley Authority Act.

1942: New York ends night baseball games for the rest of World War II.

1944: The Allies finally capture Monte Cassino in Italy.

1951: The United Nations moves its headquarters to New York City.

1969: Two battalions of the 101st Airborne Division assault Hill 937 but cannot reach the top because of muddy conditions.

1974: India becomes sixth nation to explode an atomic bomb.

1980: After rumbling for two months, Mount Saint Helens, in Washington, erupts 3 times in 24 hours.

Today in History: May 17

1540: Afgan chief Sher Khan defeats Mongul Emperor Humayun at Kanauj.

1630: Italian Jesuit Niccolo Zucchi sees the belts on Jupiter’s surface.

1681: Louis XIV sends and expedition to aid James II in Ireland. As a result, England declares war on France.

1756: Britain declares war on France.

1792: Merchants form the New York Stock Exchange at 70 Wall Street.

1814: Denmark cedes Norway to Sweden.

1863: Union General Ulysses Grant continues his push towards Vicksburg at the Battle of the Big Black River Bridge.

1875: The first Kentucky Derby is run in Louisville.

1881: Frederick Douglass is appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, D.C.

1940: Germany occupies Brussels, Belgium and begins the invasion of France.

1954: The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rules for school integration in Brown v. Board of Education.

1973: The Senate Watergate Committee begins its hearings.

1987: In the Persian Gulf the American guided missile frigate USS Stark is struck by 2 Exocet missiles fired by an Iraqi aircraft; only one detonates, but 37 sailors are killed and 21 are wounded. Whether the launch was deliberate or a mistake is still debated.

Today in History: May 16

1770: Marie Antoinette marries future King Louis XVI of France.

1863: At the Battle of Champion’s Hill, Union General Ulysess S. Grant repulses the Confederates, driving them into Vicksburg.

1868: President Andrew Johnson is acquitted during Senate impeachment, by one vote, cast by Edmund G. Ross.

1879: The Treaty of Gandamak between Russia and England sets up the Afghan state.

1920: Joan of Arc is canonized in Rome.

1928: The first Academy Awards are held in Hollywood.

1943: A specially trained and equipped Royal Air Force squadron destroys two river dams in Germany.

1951: Chinese Communist Forces launch second step, fifth-phase offensive and gain up to 20 miles of territory.

1960: A Big Four summit in Paris collapses because of the American U-2 spy plane affair.

1963: After 22 Earth orbits, Gordon Cooper returns to Earth, ending the last mission of Project Mercury.

Today in History: May 15

756: Abd-al-Rahman is proclaimed emir of Cordoba, Spain.

1213: King John submits to the Pope, offering to make England and Ireland papal fiefs. Pope Innocent III lifts the interdict of 1208.

1602: English navigator Bartholomew Gosnold discovers Cape Cod.

1614: An aristocratic uprising in France ends with treaty of St. Menehould.

1618: Johannes Kepler discovers his harmonics law.

1702: The War of Spanish Succession begins.

1730: Following the resignation of Lord Townshend, Robert Walpole becomes the sole minister in the English cabinet.

1768: By the Treaty of Versailles, France purchases Corsica from Genoa.

1795: Napoleon enters the Lombardian capital of Milan in triumph.

1820: The U.S. Congress designates the slave trade a form of piracy.

1849: Neapolitan troops enter Palermo, Sicily.

1862: The Union ironclad Monitor and the gunboat Galena fire on Confederate troops at the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia.

1864: At the Battle of New Market, Virginia Military Institute cadets repel a Union attack.

1886: Emily Dickinson dies in Amherst, Mass., where she had lived in seclusion for the previous 24 years.

1916: U.S. Marines land in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.

1918: Pfc. Henry Johnson and Pfc. Needham Roberts receive the Croix de Guerre for their services in World War I. They are the first Americans to win France’s highest military medal.

1930: Ellen Church becomes the first airline stewardess.

1942: The United States begins rationing gasoline.

1958: Sputnik III is launched by the Soviet Union.

1963: The last Project Mercury space flight, carrying Gordon Cooper, is launched.

1968: U.S. Marines relieve army troops in Nhi Ha, South Vietnam after a fourteen-day battle.

1972: George Wallace is shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Maryland.

1975: The merchant ship Mayaguez is recaptured from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge.

1988: Soviets forces begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Today in History: May 13

1607: English colonists land near the James River in Virginia.

1648: Margaret Jones of Plymouth is found guilty of witchcraft and is sentenced to be hanged.

1779: The War of Bavarian Succession ends.

1846: The United States declares war on Mexico after fighting has already begun.

1861: Britain declares its neutrality in the American Civil War.

1864: The Battle of Resaca commences as Union General Sherman fights towards Atlanta.

1888: Slavery is abolished in Brazil.

1912: The Royal Flying Corps is established in England.

1913: Igor Sikorsky flies the first four-engine aircraft.

1944: Allied forces in Italy break through the German Gustav Line into the Liri Valley.

1958: French troops take control of Algiers.

1968: Peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam begin in Paris.

1981: Pope John Paul II survives an assassination attempt.

Today in History: May 12

254: St. Stephen I begins his reign as Catholic Pope.

1588: King Henry III flees Paris after Henry of Guise triumphantly enters the city.

1641: The chief advisor to Charles I, Thomas Wentworth, is beheaded in the Tower of London

1780: Charleston, South Carolina falls to British forces.

1851: The Tule River War ends.

1863: With a victory at the Battle of Raymond, Mississippi, Union General Ulysses S. Grant closes in on Vicksburg.

1864: Union General Benjamin Butler attacks Drewry’s Bluff on the James River.

1865: The last land battle of the Civil war occurs at Palmito Ranch, Texas. It is a Confederate victory.

1881: Tunisia, in North Africa become a French protectorate.

1885: In the Battle of Batoche, French Canadians rebel against the Canadian government.

1926: The Airship Norge becomes the first vessel to fly over the North Pole.

1932: The body of Charles Lindbergh’s baby is found.

1935: Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio by "Bill W.," a stockbroker, and "Dr. Bob S.," a heart surgeon.

1940: The Nazi conquest of France begins with the crossing Muese River.

1942: The Soviet Army launches its first major offensive of the war, taking Kharkov in the eastern Ukraine.

1943: Axis forces in North Africa surrender.

1949: The Berlin Blockade ends.

1969: Viet Cong sappers try unsuccessfully to overrun Landing Zone Snoopy in Vietnam.

1975: The U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez is seized by Cambodian forces.

Today in History: May 11

1573: Henry of Anjou becomes the first elected king of Poland.

1689: French and English navies battle at Bantry Bay.

1690: In the first major engagement of King William’s War, British troops from Massachusetts seize Port Royal in Acadia (Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) from the French.

1745: French forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army at Fontenoy.

1792: The Columbia River is discovered by Captain Robert Gray.

1812: British prime Minster Spencer Perceval is shot by a bankrupt banker in the lobby of the House of Commons.

1857: Indian mutineers seize Delhi.

1858: Minnesota is admitted as the 32nd U.S. state.

1860: Giuseppe Garibaldi lands at Marsala, Sicily.

1862: Confederates scuttle the CSS Virginia off Norfolk, Virginia.

1864: Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart is mortally wounded at Yellow Tavern.

1960: Israeli soldiers capture Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires.

1967: The siege of Khe Sanh ends, the base is still in American hands.

Today in History: May 10

1285: Philip III of Spain is succeeded by Philip IV ("the Fair").

1503: Christopher Columbus discovers the Cayman Islands.

1676: Bacon’s Rebellion begins in the New World.

1773: To keep the troubled East India Company afloat, Parliament passes the Tea Act, taxing all tea in the American colonies.

1774: Louis XVI succeeds his father Louis XV as King of France.

1775: American troops capture Fort Ticonderoga from the British.

1794: Elizabeth, the sister of King Louis XVI, is beheaded.

1796: Napoleon Bonaparte wins a brilliant victory against the Austrians at Lodi bridge in Italy.

1840: Mormon leader Joseph Smith moves his band of followers to Illinois to escape the hostilities they experienced in Missouri.

1857: The Bengal Army in India revolts against the British.

1863: General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson succumbs to illness and wounds received during the Battle of Chancellorsville.

1865: Union cavalry troops capture Confederate President Jefferson Davis near Irvinville, Georgia.

1869: The Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah.

1859: French emperor Napoleon III leaves Paris to join his troops preparing to battle the Austrian army in Northern Italy.

1872: Victoria Woodhull becomes first woman nominated for U.S. president.

1917: Allied ships get destroyer escorts to fend off German attacks in the Atlantic.

1924: J. Edgar Hoover is appointed head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

1928: WGY-TV in Schenectady, New York, begins regular television programming.

1933: Nazis begin burning books by "unGerman" writers such as Heinrich Mann and Erich Maria Remarque, author ofAll Quiet on the Western Front.

1940: German forces begin a blitzkrieg of the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, skirting France’s "impenetrable" Maginot Line.

1940: Winston Churchill succeeds Neville Chamberlain as British Prime Minister.

1941: England’s House of Commons is destroyed during the worst of the London Blitz: 550 German bombers drop 100,000 incendiary bombs.

1960: The USS Nautilus completes first circumnavigation of globe underwater.

1994: Nelson Mandela is sworn in as South Africa’s first black president.

Today in History: May 9

1502: Christopher Columbus leaves Spain on his final trip to New World.

1754: The first newspaper cartoon in America appears.

1813: U.S. troops under William Henry Harrison take Fort Meigs from British and Canadian troops.

1864: Union General John Sedgwick is shot and killed by a Confederate sharpshooter during fighting at Spotsylvania. His last words are: "They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist–"

1859: Threatened by the advancing French army, the Austrian army retreats across the River Sesia in Italy.

1915: German and French forces fight the Battle of Artois.

1926: Explorer Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett make the first flight over the North Pole.

1936: Fascist Italy captures the city of Addis Abba, Ethiopia and annexes the country.

1941: The German submarine U-110 is captured at sea along with its Enigma machine by the Royal Navy.

1946: King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy abdicates his throne and is replaced by Umberto.

1962: A laser beam is successfully bounced off the moon for the first time.

1974: The House Judiciary Committee begins formal hearings on Nixon impeachment.