On May 30, a future U.S. president killed a man in a duel, three public executions took place, a tornado wiped out a town, and floods inundated others.
AD 70. During the Siege of Jerusalem, Titus and his Roman legions breach the Second Wall of Jerusalem. The Jewish defenders retreat to the First Wall. The Romans built a circumvallation -- a line of fortifications -- for which all trees within fifteen kilometres were cut down.
1416. The Council of Constance, called by the Emperor Sigismund, a supporter of Antipope John XXIII, burns Jerome of Prague following a trial for heresy. Jerome of Prague was one of the chief followers and most devoted friends of John Hus. Jerome was an outspoken critic of the degenerate church of his day, and it was for his criticisms rather than for heresy that his death was ordered.
1431. In Rouen, France, 19-year-old Joan of Arc is burned at the stake on the orders of an English-dominated tribunal. Before the pyre was lit, she instructed a priest to hold high a crucifix for her to see and to shout out prayers loud enough to be heard above the roar of the flames.
As a source of military inspiration, Joan of Arc helped turn the Hundred Years War firmly in France's favor. By 1453, Charles VII had reconquered all of France except for Calais, which the English relinquished in 1558. In 1920, Joan of Arc, one of the great heroes of French history, was recognized as a Christian saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Her feast day is May 30.
1536. King Henry VIII of England marries Jane Seymour, a lady-in-waiting to his first two wives. Jane was reportedly the wife Henry loved most; she died shortly after giving birth to his only son.
1539. In Florida, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto lands at Tampa Bay with 600 soldiers with the goal of finding gold.
1588. The last ship of the Spanish Armada sets sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel.
1593. Playwright Christopher Marlowe, 29, is killed in a brawl over a bar tab. Marlowe, born two months before William Shakespeare, was the son of a Canterbury shoemaker. A bright student, he won scholarships to prestigious schools and earned his B.A. from Cambridge in 1584. While still in school, Marlowe wrote his play
Tamburlaine the Great, about a 14th century shepherd who became an emperor. The blank verse drama caught on with the public, and Marlowe wrote five more plays before his death in 1593, including
The Jew of Maltaand
Dr. Faustus.
In May of 1593, Marlowe's former roommate, playwright Thomas Kyd, was arrested and tortured for treason. He told authorities that "heretical" papers found in his room belonged to Marlowe, who was subsequently arrested. While out on bail, Marlowe became involved in a fight over a tavern bill and was stabbed to death.
1631. La Gazette, the first French newspaper, is published. Before the advent of the printed
Gazette, reports on current events usually circulated as hand-written papers (
nouvelles à la main).
La Gazette quickly became the center of France for the dissemination of news, and thus an excellent means for controlling the flow of information in a highly centralized state.
La Gazette remained silent about the birth of the French Revolution, and didn't even mention the storming of the Bastille on the 14th of July in 1789.
1635. The Peace of Prague is signed in the Thirty Years' War. The Peace of Prague was a treaty between the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II and the Electorate of Saxony representing most of the Protestant states 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.
1730. Royal mistress Arabella Churchill dies. She was the mistress of King James II, and the mother of four of his children (surnamed FitzJames Stuart, that is "son of James Stuart"). Arabella was the child of Sir Winston Churchill (an ancestor of the Prime Minister of the same name) and
Elizabeth Drake.
An older sister of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, she began her relationship with James, then Duke of York, around 1665, while he was still married to Anne Hyde. Arabella became the duchess's lady-in-waiting in that year, and gave birth to two children during Anne's lifetime. Some time after 1674, she married Charles Godfrey and had three more children.
1806. Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel after the man had accused Jackson's wife of bigamy. Charles Dickinson was a 19th century American and nationally famous duelist. An expert marksman, Dickinson's dueling career included 26 kills before it was ended at the hands of future President Andrew Jackson.
Jackson's political opponents convinced Dickinson to insult Jackson's wife, assuming Jackson would not survive. At a party near Hillsboro, Maryland at the Daffin House plantation, he met Andrew Jackson and struck up a conversation about horse racing. Later the two would meet again when Dickinson had relocated to Nashville, Tennessee. A duel was arranged between the two. The men rode from their homes in Tennessee to Kentucky, where dueling was legal, in order to settle their deadly feud as gentlemen.
Jackson attempted to fire, but his pistol misfired. Dickinson then proceeded to shoot, and Jackson took one ball in the ribs. Without wavering, Jackson then fatally wounded Dickinson with a .70-caliber shot to his middle, severing an artery, technically breaking the rules of the duel. He died a few hours later, the only man Jackson ever killed in any of his 103 duels.
1842. John Francis attempts to murder Queen Victoria as she drives down Constitution Hill, London with Prince Albert. This was the second of three attempted assassinations. The Queen survived them all to become Britain's longest reigning monarch,
1868. Decoration Day (the predecessor of the modern Memorial Day) is observed in the United States for the first time in accordance with a proclamation by Commander-in-chief of the Grand Army of the Republic John A. Logan.
1879. An F4 tornado strikes Irving, Kansas, killing 18 and injuring 60.
1911. At the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the first Indianapolis 500 ends with Ray Harroun becoming the first winner of the 500-mile auto race in his
Marmon Wasp.
1922. In Washington, D.C., the Lincoln Memorial is dedicated. The building is in the form of a Greek Doric temple and contains a large seated sculpture of Abraham Lincoln and inscriptions of two well-known speeches by Lincoln. It is open to the public 24 hours a day.
1927. The Kentucky River peaks during a massive flood that kills 89 people and leaves thousands homeless. Torrential rains caused this unprecedented flood. This flood had a serious long-term impact on the communities of the region: 12,000 people were left homeless and men were out of work for months as the mines in which most worked had to be shut down.
1935. Babe Ruth plays in his last baseball game, in the uniform of the Boston Braves.
1942. In World War II, a thousand-plane raid on the German city of Cologne is launched by Great Britain. Almost 1,500 tons of bombs rain down in 90 minutes, delivering a devastating blow to the Germans' medieval city as well as its morale. 600 acres of the city sustained heavy damage, 45,000 Germans were left homeless and 469 were killed.
1948. A dike along the flooding Columbia River breaks, obliterating Vanport, Oregon within minutes. Fifteen people die and tens of thousands are left homeless.
The Vanport Flood parallels the more recent Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans. In both cases, public officials led the population to believe that the damage would be slight, and in both cases the government response to the disaster was harshly criticized.
1958. On Memorial Day, the bodies of several unidentified soldiers killed in action during World War II and the Korean War are buried at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery.
1959. The world's first hovercraft is tested at Cowes, England.
1961. Long time Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo is assassinated in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
1966. Former Congolese Prime Minister Evariste Kimba and several other politicians are publicly executed in Kinshasa on the orders of President Joseph Mobutu.
1968. Charles de Gaulle reappears publicly after his flight to Baden-Baden, Germany, and dissolves the French National Assembly by a radio appeal. Immediately afterwards, about one million of his supporters march on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. This is the turning point of May 1968 in France.
The May 1968 protest was historically significant for being the first wildcat general strike ever, and for being the largest general strike ever, bringing the economy of an advanced industrial country to a virtual standstill. It began as a long series of
student strikes that broke out at a number of universities and lycées in Paris, following confrontations with university administrators and the police. The De Gaulle administration's attempts to quell those strikes by police action only inflamed the situation further, leading to street battles with the police in the Latin Quarter, followed by a general strike by students and strikes throughout France by eleven million French workers, roughly two-thirds of the French workforce. The protests reached such a point that government leaders feared civil war or revolution. De Gaulle fled to a French military base in Germany, where he created a military operations headquarters to deal with the unrest, dissolved the National Assembly, and called for new parliamentary elections for 23 June 1968. Violence evaporated almost as quickly as it arose and workers went back to their jobs. When the elections were finally held in June, the Gaullist party emerged even stronger than before.
1971. The U.S. unmanned space probe
Mariner 9 is launched on a mission to gather scientific information on Mars, the fourth planet from the sun. The 1,116-pound spacecraft entered the planet's orbit on November 13, 1971, and circled Mars twice each day for almost a year, photographing the surface and analyzing the atmosphere with infrared and ultraviolet instruments.
Mariner 9 revealed a planet that boasted enormous volcanoes and a gigantic canyon stretching 3,000 miles across its surface. The spacecraft's cameras also recorded what appeared to be dried riverbeds, suggesting the ancient presence of water and perhaps life on the planet. The first spacecraft to orbit a planet other than earth,
Mariner 9 sent back more than 7,000 pictures of the "Red Planet" and succeeded in photographing the entire planet.
Mariner 9 also sent back the first close-up images of the Martian moons. Its transmission ended on October 27, 1972.
1972. The Angry Brigade goes on trial over a series of 25 bombings throughout Britain. The Angry Brigade was a British anarchist-communist terrorist group responsible for a long string of bomb attacks around Britain between 1970 and 1972. Their targets included banks, embassies and the homes of Tory MPs. In total, 25 bombings were attributed to them by the police.
The actions of the Brigade came to an end in one of the longest criminal trials of English history (it lasted from May 30 to December 6, 1972). As a result of the trial, John Barker, Jim Greenfield, Hilary Creek and Anna Mendleson received prison sentences of 10 years.
1982. Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles plays in the first of a record 2,632 consecutive major league baseball games.
1989. During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the 33-foot high "Goddess of Democracy" statue is unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators.
1990. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev arrives in Washington, D.C., for three days of talks with President George Bush.
1998. A magnitude 6.6 earthquake hits northern Afghanistan, killing up to 5,000.
2005. American teenager Natalee Holloway, during a visit to Aruba, was last seen leaving a bar with three young men before disappearing. Her fate remains unknown.
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