Today In History...

In 1430 Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English.
In 1533 The marriage of England's King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void.
In 1701 Captain William Kidd was hanged in London after he was convicted of piracy and murder.
In 1785 Benjamin Franklin wrote in a letter that he had invented bifocals, making it unnecessary to carry two pairs of glasses.
In 1788 South Carolina became the 8th state to ratify the U.S. constitution.
In 1873 Canada established the North West Mounted Police.
In 1876 Joe Borden of Boston pitched the first National League no-hitter.
In 1895 The New York Public Library opened with an agreement combining the city's existing Astor and Lenox libraries.
In 1903 Nelson Jackson began the first transcontinental automobile trip, driving his Winton from San Francisco to New York.
In 1908 A dirigible exploded over San Francisco Bay, 16 passengers fell, but none were killed.
In 1915 Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in World War I.
In 1934 Bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are shot to death in a police ambush in Bienville, Louisiana.
In 1937 Industrialist John D. Rockefeller died in Ormond Beach, Florida.
In 1944 During World War II, Allied forces bogged down in Anzio and began a significant breakout offensive.
In 1945 Nazi official Heinrich Himmler committed suicide while imprisoned in Luneburg, Germany.
In 1950 The film "Annie Get Your Gun" opened.
In 1953 Oklahoma's record high May temperature of 110 degrees was set at Hollis.
In 1960 Israel announced it had captured former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann in Argentina.
In 1977 The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeals of former Nixon White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman and former Attorney General John Mitchell in connection with their Watergate convictions.
In 1984 The surgeon general reported that smokers may cause disease in others nearby.
In 1985 Thomas Patrick Cavanagh, an aerospace engineer who admitted to trying to sell "stealth" bomber secrets to the Soviet Union, was sentenced in Los Angeles to life in prison.
In 1986 President Reagan agreed to join "Hands Across America." to help raise millions of dollars for the nation's hungry and homeless.
In 1987 The Soviets announced they were giving up commercial whaling.
In 1989 An estimated one million people in Beijing and tens of thousands in other Chinese cities marched to demand Premier Li Peng resign.
In 1990 The Soviet Union unveiled an economic-reform program that included plans for a national referendum.
In 1990 Neil Bush, son of President George Bush, denied any wrongdoing as a director of a failed Denver savings-and-loan in testimony before Congress.
In 1991 The U.S. Supreme Court, 5-4, upheld regulations barring federally subsidized family planning clinics from discussing abortion with pregnant women.
In 1992 The U.S. and four former Soviet republics signed an agreement in Lisbon, Portugal, to implement the START missile reduction treaty.
In 1993 A jury in Baton Rouge, LA, acquitted Rodney Peairs of manslaughter in the shooting death of Yoshi Hattori, a Japanese exchange student he'd mistaken for an intruder.
In 1994 Funeral services are held at Arlington National Cemetery for former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
In 1994 "Pulp Fiction," directed by Quentin Tarantino, won the Golden Palm for best film at the 47th Cannes Film Festival.
In 1995 James Nichols, whose brother and a friend were charged in the Oklahoma bombing, was released from federal custody; the nine-story hulk of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was demolished.
In 1995 Leland William Modjeski, a 37-year-old graduate student, was shot and wounded on the White House lawn after scaling a fence with an unloaded gun.
In 1996 The House approved, by a vote of 281-144, to raise the minimum wage by 90 cents an hour.
In 1997 Iran elected a moderate president, Mohammad Khatami, over hard-liners in the ruling Muslim clergy.
In 1998 British Protestants and Irish Catholics of Northern Ireland approved a peace accord.
In 1999 Social Democrat Johannes Rau won the election as Germany's president.
In 1999 Wrestler Owen Hart, aka "The Blue Blazer," died when he fell 78 feet from a cable while lowered into the ring at a World Wrestling Federation show in Kansas City.
In 2000 Presidential candidate George W. Bush said he would slash America's nuclear arsenal as part of a broad national security review that would call for a missile-defense system.
In 2001 The U.S. Senate passed an 11-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut bill.
In 2003 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon agreed to submit the U.S.-backed "road map" for peace to the Israeli Cabinet.
In 2004 A large section of the roof of a new passenger terminal at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport collapsed, killing four people.