THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― MAY 30

May 30 is the 150th day of the year(151st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 216 days remaining until the end of the year. It is also the traditional date of Memorial Day, and my anniversary. 

NATIONAL WATER A FLOWER DAY 


70 – The Siege of Jerusalem: Titus and his Roman legions breach the Second Wall of Jerusalem. Jewish defenders retreat to the First Wall. The Romans build a circumvallation, cutting down all trees within fifteen kilometres.

1431 – Hundred Years' War: In Rouen, France, the 19-year-old Joan of Arc is burned at the stake by an English-dominated tribunal. The Roman Catholic Church remembers this day as the celebration of Saint Joan of Arc.

1536 – King Henry VIII of England marries Jane Seymour, a lady-in-waiting to his first two wives.

1539 – In Florida, Hernando de Soto arrives in Tampa Bay with 600 soldiers with the goal of finding gold.

1635 – Thirty Years' War: The Peace of Prague is signed. The treaty was  signed by the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II and Elector John George I of Saxony representing most of the Protestant Estates of the Holy Roman Empire. It effectively brought to an end the civil war aspect of the Thirty Years' War; however, the combat actions still carried on due to the continued intervention on German soil by Spain, Sweden, and, from mid-1635, France, until the Peace of Westphalia was concluded in 1648.

1806 – Future U.S. President Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel. Dickinson accused Jackson of reneging on a horse bet, calling Jackson a coward and an equivocator. Dickinson also called Rachel Jackson a bigamist. (Rachel had married Jackson not knowing her first husband had failed to finalize their divorce.) After the insult to Rachel and a statement published in the National Review in which Dickinson called Jackson a worthless scoundrel and, again, a coward, Jackson challenged Dickinson to a duel.

1814 – Napoleonic Wars: War of the Sixth Coalition ― A coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and a number of German states finally defeated France. The Treaty of Paris (1814) is signed returning French borders to their 1792 extent. Napoleon is exiled to Elba.

1842 – John Francis attempts to murder Queen Victoria as she drives down Constitution Hill in London with Prince Albert. 

1854 – The Kansas–Nebraska Act becomes law establishing the U.S. territories of Kansas and Nebraska. Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, and President Franklin Pierce were the principles. The initial purpose of the Kansas–Nebraska Act was to open up many thousands of new farms and make feasible a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad. The popular sovereignty clause of the law led pro- and anti-slavery elements to flood into Kansas with the goal of voting slavery up or down, resulting in Bleeding Kansas.

1868 – In recognition of the dead following the Civil war, Decoration Day (the predecessor of the modern "Memorial Day") is observed in the United States for the first time (by "Commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic" John A. Logan's proclamation on May 5).

1922 – The Lincoln Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C. In 1867, Congress passed the first of many bills incorporating a commission to erect a monument for the sixteenth president. The matter lay dormant until the start of the 20th century, when, under the leadership ofSenator Shelby M. Cullom of Illinois, six separate bills were introduced in Congress for the incorporation of a new memorial commission. The sixth bill (Senate Bill 9449), introduced on December 13, 1910, passed. The Lincoln Memorial Commission had its first meeting the following year and U.S. President William H. Taft was chosen as the commission's president. Progress continued at a steady pace and by 1913 Congress had approved of the Commission's choice of design and location. The architect was Henry Bacon; the designer of the primary statue – Abraham Lincoln, 1920 – was Daniel Chester French; the Lincoln statue was carved by the Piccirilli Brothers; and the painter of the interior murals was Jules Guerin.

1937 – Memorial Day massacre: Chicago police shoot and kill ten labor demonstrators. The incident arose after U.S. Steel signed a union contract but smaller steel manufacturers (called 'Little Steel'), including Republic Steel, refused to do so. In protest, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC) of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) called a strike.

1942 – World War II: One thousand British bombers launch a 90-minute attack on Cologne, Germany (code name, Operation Millennium). The number reported killed was between 469 and 486, of whom 411 were civilians and 58 combatants. 5,027 people were listed as injured and 45,132 as "bombed out". This was the first of 262 such bombing raids on the city. The city's huge Gothic cathedral was never hit.

1943 – The Holocaust: Josef Mengele becomes chief medical officer of the Zigeuner familienlager (Romani family camp) at Auschwitz concentration camp. Mengele was a notorious member of the team of doctors responsible for the selection of victims to be killed in the gas chambers and for performing deadly human experiments on prisoners. Hunted continuously after WWII he was never captured. After his death, his grave was located and  the remains were exhumed on 6 June 1985, and extensive forensic examination confirmed with a high degree of probability that the body was Mengele's.
1958 – Memorial Day: The remains of two unidentified American servicemen, killed in action during World War II and the Korean War respectively, are buried at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

1966 – Launch of Surveyor 1, the first US spacecraft to land on an extraterrestrial body, the moon.

1972 – In Tel Aviv, Israel, members of the Japanese Red Army (recruited by the Palestinian group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-External Operations) carry out the Lod Airport massacre, killing 24 people and injuring 78 others.

1998 – Nuclear Testing: Pakistan conducts an underground test in the Kharan Desert. It is reported to be a plutonium device with yield of 20kt.

2003 – Depayin massacre: At least 70 people associated with the National League for Democracy are killed by government-sponsored mob in Burma (Myanmar). Aung San Suu Kyi fled the scene, but is arrested soon afterwards.

2005 – American student Natalee Holloway disappears while on a high school graduation trip to Aruba, and caused a media sensation in the United States.

2013 – Nigeria passes a law banning same-sex marriage.

BORN TODAY 

Too tired.

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