THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― MAY 23

May 23 is the 143rd day of the year (144th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 222 days remaining until the end of the year. 

NATIONAL LUCKY PENNY DAY 



1430 – Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to raise the Siege of Compiègne. She had begun making private preparations for war in March, but she had not been granted command of a substantial force since the failed attack on Paris the previous September. By April she had assembled a company of a 300 - 400 volunteers. She departed for Compiègne, possibly without the king's knowledge, and arrived at the city on 14 May. As the battle ensued, she was captured when the city closed it's gates while her troops retreated. 

1498 – Girolamo Savonarola is burned at the stake in Florence, Italy. He was an Italian Dominican friar and preacher active in Renaissance Florence. In 1495 when Florence refused to join Pope Alexander VI’s Holy League against the French, the Vatican summoned Savonarola to Rome. He disobeyed and further defied the pope by preaching under a ban. On May 12, 1497, Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Savonarola and threatened the Florentines with an interdict if they persisted in harboring him. On the morning of May 23, 1498, the three friars were led out into the Piazza della Signoria where, before a tribunal of high clerics and government officials, they were condemned as heretics and schismatics, and sentenced to die forthwith. Stripped of their Dominican garments in ritual degradation, they mounted the scaffold in their thin white shirts. Each on a separate gallows, they were hanged, while fires were ignited below them to consume their bodies. To prevent devotees from searching for relics, their ashes were carted away and scattered in the Arno River.

1701 – After being convicted of piracy and of murdering William Moore, Captain William Kidd is hanged in London, England. Kidd  was a Scottish sailor who was tried and executed for piracy after returning from a voyage to the Indian Ocean. Some modern historians deem his piratical reputation unjust, as there is evidence that Kidd acted only as a privateer.

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

1900 – American Civil War: Sergeant William Harvey Carney is awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism in the Assault on the Battery Wagner in 1863. Because his actions preceded those of other medal honorees, he is considered to be the first African American to be granted the Medal of Honor.

1911 – The New York Public Library is dedicated. 

1915 – World War I: Italy joins the Allies, fulfilling its part of the Treaty of London.


1934 – The American bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.  Their exploits captured the attention of the American public during the "Public Enemy Era", between 1931 and 1935. Though known today for his dozen-or-so bank robberies, Barrow preferred to rob small stores or rural gas stations. The gang is believed to have killed at least nine police officers and several civilians.

1945 – World War II: Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Schutzstaffel, commits suicide while in Allied custody. Shortly afterward, Himmler's body was buried in an unmarked gravenear Lüneburg. The grave's location remains unknown.

1951 – Tibetans sign the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet with China. The signing of the Seventeen-Point agreement was later contested as invalid in the Tibetan exile community, who charged that the Tibet delegates were forced to sign under duress and that the Chinese allegedly used forged Tibetan government seals. The exile community and their supporters continue to assert that the Tibetan representatives were not allowed to suggest any alterations and that the Chinese government did not allow the Tibetan representatives to communicate with Lhasa.

2002 – The "55 parties" clause of the Kyoto Protocol is reached after its ratification by Iceland. The Kyoto Protocol implemented the objective of the UNFCCC to fight global warming by reducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

2009 – Former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun commits suicide, jumping from a 45-meter cliff in Bongha, Gimhae, South Korea.

2013 – The Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River collapses in Mount Vernon, Washington. Three people in two different vehicles fell with the span; they were rescued by boat and did not sustain serious injury. The cause of the collapse was determined to be an oversize load striking several overhead support beams on the bridge, which led to an immediate collapse of the northernmost span.

2014 – Seven people, including the perpetrator, are killed and another 14 injured in a killing spree near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara. 

2015 – At least 46 people are killed as a result of floods caused by a tornado in Texas and Oklahoma.

BORN TODAY 

1718 – William Hunter, Scottish-English anatomist and physician, the outstanding obstetrician of his day (d. 1783) 

1820 – James Buchanan Eads, American engineer, designed the Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River at St. Louis (d. 1887)

1824 – Ambrose Burnside, American general (Civil War) and politician, 30th Governor of Rhode Island (d. 1881)

1917 – Edward Norton Lorenz, American mathematician and meteorologist (d. 2008)

1934 – Robert Moog, American businessman, invented the Moog synthesizer (d. 2005)

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.