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.