On this day

1430 – Siege of Compiègne: Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to relieve Compiègne. They then sold her to the English.

1533 - To the annoyance of the Pope, the English Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declared Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon to be void and his marriage to Anne Boleyn, to be legal.

1701 – After being convicted of piracy and of murdering William Moore, Captain William Kidd is hanged in London.

1785 - Benjamin Franklin announced his invention of bifocals.

1873 – The Canadian Parliament establishes the North-West Mounted Police, the forerunner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

1911 – The New York Public Library is dedicated.

1934 – American bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Black Lake, Louisiana.

1960 - Israel announced the arrest (after abduction in Argentina) of Adolf Eichmann, who had been responsible for organizing the Germans' mass extermination of Jews in World War II.

1992 – Italy's most prominent anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone, his wife and three body guards are killed by the Corleonesi clan with a half-ton bomb near Capaci, Sicily. His friend and colleague Paolo Borsellino will be assassinated less than 2 months later, making 1992 a turning point in the history of Italian Mafia prosecutions.

1998 – The Good Friday Agreement is accepted in a referendum in Northern Ireland with 75% voting yes.

2004 – Part of Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport's Terminal 2E collapses, killing four people and injuring three others.

1543 - Nicolaus Copernicus published proof of a sun-centered planetary system.

1809 - Dartmoor Prison was opened to accommodate French prisoners of war. From 1850 it becomes a prison for convicts.

1830 – Mary Had a Little Lamb by Sarah Josepha Hale is published.

1883 - The Brooklyn Bridge, linking Brooklyn and Manhattan, was opened. It took 14 years to construct; 27 people died working on it.

1930 – Amy Johnson lands in Darwin, Northern Territory, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).

1940 – Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.

1941 - World War II: The German battleship Bismarck sank the Royal Navy's largest warship HMS Hood off Greenland with the loss of more than 1,400 lives. The ship exploded when a German shell hit the Hood's ammunition store.

1956 – The first Eurovision Song Contest is held in Lugano, Switzerland.

1970 – The drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins in the Soviet Union.

1976 - British Airways and Air France Concordes arrived at Dulles International Airport, Washington D.C. having made their first commercial crossing of the North Atlantic.

1988 – Section 28 of the United Kingdom's Local Government Act 1988, a controversial amendment stating that a local authority cannot intentionally promote homosexuality, is enacted. (Repealed on 21 June 2000 in Scotland, and on 18 November 2003 in the rest of Great Britain).

1994 - Four men convicted of bombing New York's World Trade Center were each sentenced to 240 years in prison.

1878 - Gilbert and Sullivan's parody of HMS Pinafore opens at the Opera Comique in London. It ran for 571 performances - the second longest run of any musical theatre piece up to that time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.M.S._Pinafore

1962 - The last remaining overnight steamboat company in the US, the Baltimore Steam Packet Company, goes out of business.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_S...et_Company

1963 - Leaders of 32 different African nations form the Organisation of African Unity. It would give them a united voice against white rule for the first time in the continent's history.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...502771.stm

1967 - Celtic become the first British football team to win the European Cup when they defeat Internazionale 2-1 in front of 70,000 people at the Portuguese National Stadium in Lisbon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...071020.stm

1979 - Etan Patz, an American child of New York, disappeared on his way to the school bus stop. He became the first missing child to have his photograph placed on a milk carton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearan...appearance

1994 - Camelot wins the rights to host Britain's National Lottery, which would start later that year in November.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates...502883.stm

2002 - Latvia wins the Eurovision Song Contest held in Tallinn, Estonia. Singer Marie N scores a tight victory with 176 points over second placed Malta (164 pts), with the UK, Estonia and France all tied for third place (111 pts).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurovision_...ntest_2002

1659 - Lord protector Richard Cromwell, son of Oliver, resigned his position - leading to the restoration of the monarchy and the crowning of Charles II in 1660.

1768 - Captain James Cook sailed on his first voyage of discovery, on which he explored the Society Islands and charted the coasts of New Zealand and West Australia.

1871 - The House of Commons passed the Bank Holiday Act, creating public holidays on Easter Monday, Whit Monday and Christmas Day.

1895 - At the end of a sensational trial, Irish writer Oscar Wilde was convicted of gross indecency in his relations with the son of the Marquess of Queensberry. He was sentenced to two years hard labour.

1953 – Nuclear testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conduct their first and only nuclear artillery test.

1961 – Apollo program: U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces before a special joint session of the Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the Moon" before the end of the decade.

1977 – Star Wars (retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope in 1981) is released in theaters, inspiring the Jediism religion and Geek Pride Day holiday.

2001 – 32-year-old Erik Weihenmayer, of Boulder, Colorado, becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

2009 – North Korea allegedly tests its second nuclear device. Following the nuclear test, Pyongyang also conducted several missile tests building tensions in the international community.

1637 – Pequot War: A combined Protestant and Mohegan force under English Captain John Mason attacks a Pequot village in Connecticut, massacring approximately 500 Native Americans.

1670 - Charles II and Louis XIV signed a secret treaty in Dover, ending hostilities between England and France.

1798 - Income Tax was introduced into Britain - a 10% tax on all incomes over £200 a year.

1805 – Napoléon Bonaparte assumes the title of King of Italy and is crowned with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in the Duomo di Milano, the gothic cathedral in Milan.

1897 - Dracula, a novel by Irish author Bram Stoker was published.

1940 - The evacuation of Allied forces from Dunkirk began. Besides the efforts of the Royal Navy, 700 small ships set off from Britain to rescue 385,000 soldiers over the following nine days. The mission was codenamed Operation Dynamo.

1946 - A patent was filed in the United States for the H-bomb.

1954 - The Egyptian pharaoh Cheops's funeral ship was found.

1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 10 returns to Earth after a successful eight-day test of all the components needed for the forthcoming first manned moon landing.

1983 – A strong 7.7 magnitude earthquake strikes Japan, triggering a tsunami that kills at least 104 people and injures thousands. Many people go missing and thousands of buildings are destroyed.

1998 – The Supreme Court of the United States rules that Ellis Island, the historic gateway for millions of immigrants, is mainly in the state of New Jersey, not New York.

2008 – Severe flooding begins in eastern and southern China that will ultimately cause 148 deaths and force the evacuation of 1.3 million.

1153 - Malcolm IV became King of Scotland. He was noted for his religious zeal and interest in knighthood and warfare. For much of his reign he was in poor health and died, unmarried, at the age of twenty-four.

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

1679 - Britain passed the Habeas Corpus Act which made it illegal to hold anyone in prison without a trial.

1703 - After winning access to the Baltic Sea through his victories in the Great Northern War, Czar Peter I founded the city of St. Petersburg as the new Russian capital.

1930 – The 1,046 feet (319 m) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public.

1931 - In a balloon launched from Germany, Paul Kipfer and Auguste Piccard became the first to reach the stratosphere, rising almost 10 miles during their flight.

1936 - Britain's 80,733 tonne liner Queen Mary left Southampton on her maiden voyage to New York with more than 1800 passengers.

1937 – In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County, California.

1941 - The British navy sank the German battleship Bismarck off France, with the German death toll over 2,000.

1967 – Australians vote in favor of a constitutional referendum granting the Australian government the power to make laws to benefit Indigenous Australians and to count them in the national census.

1986 - Irish-born singer Bob Geldof was made an honorary Knight of the Realm by Queen Elizabeth II for his efforts to raise money for the starving of Africa.

1986 – The game credited as setting the template for role-playing video games, Dragon Quest is released in Japan.

1999 – The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Milošević and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo.

1644 - As part of the English Civil War, Royalist troops slaughter 1,600 people in the Bolton Massacre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolton_Massacre

1964 - The BBC receives over 8,000 post applications for tickets to the Rolling Stones' appearance on Juke Box Jury.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juke_Box_Jury

1968 - Kylie Minogue's birthday!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylie_Minogue

1975 - Sixteen west African countries sign the Treaty of Lagos and establish the Economic Community of West African States.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Co...can_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Lagos

1987 - German pilot Mathias Rust flies his Cessna 172 through the Soviet air defence system, landing in Red Square, Moscow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust

2003 - Peter Hollingworth resigns as Governor-General of Australia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Hollingworth

2010 - A train derailment in the Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal, India claims 141 lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jnaneswari_...derailment

1503 - James IV of Scotland and Margaret Tudor were married by Pope Alexander VI. A 'Treaty of Everlasting Peace' between Scotland and England was signed on that occasion. The everlasting peace lasted just ten years.

1533 - The Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declared that the marriage of King Henry VIII of England to Anne Boleyn was valid. Shortly afterwards, the Pope decreed sentences of excommunication against both Henry and Cranmer.

1929 - Warner Brothers debuted the first all-color talking picture, On With the Show.

1937 – The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, is officially opened by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., who pushes a button signaling the start of vehicle traffic over the span.

1945 - World War II: the English broadcaster of Nazi propaganda, William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) was captured near Hamburg. He was later tried for treason, found guilty, and hanged.

1961 - The Orient Express, from Paris to Bucharest, made its last journey after operating for 78 years. It was revived in 1982.

1995 – The Russian town of Neftegorsk is hit by a 7.6 magnitude earthquake that kills at least 2,000 people, half of the total population.

1999 - Leonardo da Vinci's newly-restored masterpiece The Last Supper is put back on display in Milan, Italy.

2002 – The Mars Odyssey finds signs of large ice deposits on the planet Mars.

1279 BC – Rameses II (The Great) (19th dynasty) becomes pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.

1578 - English explorer Martin Frobisher sailed from Harwich to Frobisher Bay in Canada. He brought home 1500 tons of 'gold ore', but after years of smelting, it was realized that the presumed gold was merely worthless iron pyrite (fool's gold) that was later used to pave streets in London, leading to the myth that the streets of London were paved with gold.

1678 - Lady Godiva's husband agreed to repeal the taxes in Coventry if she would strip naked and ride through town. She agreed, but only if the people stayed indoors and shut their windows, but one person, a tailor known ever afterwards as Peeping Tom, disobeyed and was struck blind.

1859 – The clock tower at the Houses of Parliament (which houses Big Ben), starts keeping time.

1884 - Dr. John Harvey Kellogg applied for a patent for flaked cereal.

1929 – The first talking cartoon of Mickey Mouse, "The Karnival Kid", is released.

1669 – Citing poor eyesight, Samuel Pepys records the last event in his diary.

1916 – World War I: Battle of Jutland – The British Grand Fleet under the command of Sir John Jellicoe & Sir David Beatty engage the Kaiserliche Marine under the command of Reinhard Scheer & Franz von Hipper in the largest naval battle of the war, which proves indecisive

1927 – The last Ford Model T rolls off the assembly line after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles.

1941 – A Luftwaffe air raid in Dublin, Ireland, claims 38 lives.

1962 – Adolf Eichmann is hanged in Israel.

1983 – Jack Dempsey died, American boxer (b. 1895)

1996 – Timothy Leary died, American professor and LSD advocate (b. 1920)

2009 – Danny La Rue died, British entertainer (b. 1927)