This Week in History: May 18-24

May 18

1096 – Crusaders massacre Jews of Worm.
1268 – The Principality of Antioch, a crusader state, falls to the Mamluk Sultan Baibars in the Battle of Antioch.
1642 – Montreal, Canada, founded.
1756 – England declares war on France.
1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed Emperor of France.
1860 – Republican Party nominates Abraham Lincoln for president.
1897 – Dracula, a novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, is published.
1969 – Apollo 10 (Stafford/Cernan/Young) launched toward lunar orbit.
1980 – Mount St. Helens blows its top in Washington State, 60 die.

May 19

1848 – Mexico gives Texas to U.S., ending war.
1939 – Churchill signs British-Russian anti-Nazi pact.
1951 – U.N. begins counter-offensive in Korea.
1992 – 27th Amendment ratified, prohibits Congress from raising its salary.

May 20

1498 – Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrives in Calcutta, India.
1631 – Magdeburg in Germany seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire under Earl Johann Tilly; most inhabitants massacred in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years’ War.
1845 – H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror with 134 men under John Franklin sail from the River Thames in England, beginning a disastrous expedition to find the Northwest Passage. All hands are lost.
1861 – North Carolina becomes 11th and last state to secede from Union.
1902 – U.S. military occupation of Cuba (since Jan 1, 1899) ends.

May 21

1420 – Treaty of Troyes signed; French King Charles VI gives France to English.
1804 – Lewis & Clark Expedition begins.
1881 – American Red Cross founded by Clara Barton.
1918 – House of Representatives pass amendment allowing women to vote.
1927 – Lindburgh lands in Paris, after first solo air crossing of Atlantic.
1945 – German war criminal Heinrich Himmler captured.
1982 – British troops lands on Falkland Islands.

May 22

334 BC – The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus.
1863 – General Grant begins siege on Vicksburg.
1906 – Wright Brothers patents an aeroplane.
1943 – First jet fighter is tested.
1947 – First U.S. ballistic missile fired.
1973 – President Nixon confesses his role in Watergate cover-up.

May 23

1430 – Joan of Arc is captured at Compiegne and sold to the English.
1701 – After being convicted of piracy and of murdering William Moore, Captain William Kidd is hanged in London.
1915 – Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary and Germany during WW I.
1922 – Walt Disney incorporates his first film company Laugh-O-Gram Films.
1945 – Heinrich Himmler, German Nazi leader and Gestapo leader, commits suicide in prison at 44.
1977 – Supreme Court refuses to hear appeals of Watergate wrong doers H.R. Halderman, John Ehrlichman, and John Mitchell.

May 24

1798 – Irish Rebellion of 1798 led by the United Irishmen against British rule begins.
1844 – Samuel Morse taps out “What hath God wrought,” the first telegraph message.
1958 – Cuban President Batista opens offensive against Fidel Castro’s rebellion.
1982 – Liberation of Khorramshahr occurs; Iranians recapture the port city of Khorramshahr from the Iraqis during the Iran-Iraq War.
1993 – Eritrea achieved independence from Ethiopia after thirty-year civil war.