Carney’s heroism at Battery Wagner was finally honored on May 23, 1900, when he was awarded the Medal of Honor. That was nearly 37 years after he took part in what was termed, “One Gallant Rush” with the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. He was the first black soldier to receive the award. When asked about his actions on that day, he simply said, “I only did my duty.”

Carney’s Medal of Honor citation reads:
“When the color sergeant was shot down, this soldier grasped the flag, led the way to the parapet, and planted the colors thereon. When the troops fell back he brought off the flag, under fierce fire in which he was twice severely wounded.”

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1430 – Joan of Arc was captured by Burgundians. She was then sold to the English.

1533 – Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void.

1618 – The Thirty Years War began when three opponents of the Reformation were thrown through a window.

1701 – In London, Captain William Kidd was hanged after being convicted of murder and piracy.

1785 – Benjamin Franklin wrote in a letter that he had invented bifocals.

1788 – South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify U.S. Constitution.

1827 – The first nursery school in the U.S. was established in New York City.

1846 – Arabella Mansfield (Belle Aurelia Babb) was born. She was the first woman in the U.S. to pass the bar exam, though she never used her law degree.

1873 – Canada’s North West Mounted Police force was established. The organization’s name was changed to Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1920.

1876 – Boston’s Joe Borden pitched the very first no-hitter in the history of the National League.

1879 – The first U.S. veterinary school was established by Iowa State University.

1895 – The New York Public Library was created with an agreement that combined the city’s existing Astor and Lenox libraries.

1900 – Civil War hero Sgt. William H. Carney became the first African American to receive the Medal of Honor, 37 years after the Battle of Fort Wagner.

1901 – American forces captured Filipino rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo.

1908 – Part of the Great White Fleet arrived in Puget Sound, WA.

1915 – During World War I, Italy joined the Allies as they declared war on Austria-Hungary.

1922 – The play “Abie’s Irish Rose” opened in New York City.

1922 – “Daylight Saving Time” was debated in the first debate ever to be heard on radio in Washington, DC.

1926 – The French captured the Moroccan Rif capital.

1934 – In Bienville Parish, LA, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were ambushed and killed by Texas Rangers. The bank robbers were riding in a stolen Ford Deluxe.

1937 – Industrialist John D. Rockefeller died.

1938 – “LIFE” magazine’s cover pictured Errol Flynn as a glamour boy.

1945 – In Luneburg Germany, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi Gestapo, committed suicide while imprisoned by the Allied forces.

1949 – The Republic of West Germany was established.

1960 – Israel announced the capture of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina.

1962 – The National Basketball Association (NBA) agreed to transfer the Philadelphia Warriors to San Francisco, CA. The team became the San Francisco Warriors (and later the Golden State Warriors).

1962 – Joe Pepitone of the New York Yankees set a major league baseball record by hitting two home runs in one inning.

1981 – In Barcelona, Spain, gunmen seized control of the Central Bank and took 200 hostages.

1985 – Thomas Patrick Cavanagh was sentenced to life in prison for trying to sell Stealth bomber secrets to the Soviet Union.

1992 – In Lisbon, Portugal , the U.S. and four former Soviet republics signed an agreement to implement the START missile reduction treaty that had been agreed to by the Soviet Union before it was dissolved.

1994 – “Pulp Fiction” won the “Golden Palm” for best film at the 47th Cannes Film Festival.

1995 – The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was demolished.

1998 – British Protestants and Irish Catholics of Northern Ireland approved a peace accord.

1999 – In Kansas City, MO, Owen Hart (Blue Blazer) died when he fell 90 feet while being lowered into a WWF wrestling ring. He was 33 years old.

1999 – Gerry Bloch, at age 81, became the oldest climber to scale El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. He broke his own record that he set in 1986 when he was 68 years old.

2013 – Google acquired Makani Power for use for its Project Wing.

The first major wagon train to the northwest departs from Elm Grove, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail.

Although U.S. sovereignty over the Oregon Territory was not clearly established until 1846, American fur trappers and missionary groups had been living in the region for decades, to say nothing of the Native Americans who had settled the land centuries earlier. Dozens of books and lectures proclaimed Oregon’s agricultural potential, piquing the interest of white American farmers. The first overland migrants to Oregon, intending primarily to farm, came in 1841 when a small band of 70 pioneers left Independence, Missouri. They followed a route blazed by fur traders, which took them west along the Platte River through the Rocky Mountains via the easy South Pass in Wyoming and then northwest to the Columbia River. In the years to come, pioneers came to call the route the Oregon Trail.

In 1842, a slightly larger group of 100 pioneers made the 2,000-mile journey to Oregon. The next year, however, the number of emigrants skyrocketed to 1,000. The sudden increase was a product of a severe depression in the Midwest combined with a flood of propaganda from fur traders, missionaries, and government officials extolling the virtues of the land. Farmers dissatisfied with their prospects in Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee, hoped to find better lives in the supposed paradise of Oregon.

On this day in 1843, some 1,000 men, women, and children climbed aboard their wagons and steered their horses west out of the small town of Elm Grove, Missouri. The train comprised more than 100 wagons with a herd of 5,000 oxen and cattle trailing behind. Dr. Elijah White, a Presbyterian missionary who had made the trip the year before, served as a guide.

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Source: history.com

On May 22, 1981, police staking out a bridge over the Chattahoochee River near Atlanta, Georgia, hear a loud splash, and begin chasing Wayne Williams as he attempts to drive away in a station wagon. After questioning him about his involvement in the unprecedented string of child murders in Atlanta over the two previous years, Williams was released. He was arrested one month later, on June 21, 1981.

In a spree that began in July 1979, 29 Black children and young men disappeared or were killed in the Atlanta area. The only clue detectives had to go on was that many of the bodies had the same rare yellow-green nylon fiber on them, leading investigators to believe that all of the killings were connected.

As they desperately searched for the manufacturer of the fiber, a newspaper reported on the significance of the fiber evidence. Fearing that he was on the verge of being discovered, the killer then began dumping the bodies of his victims in the Chattahoochee River. This, in turn, inspired the police surveillance that ensnared Williams on May 22.

The rare fiber was eventually identified as a yarn that was sold to a Georgia carpet company, West Point Pepperell, which used it to make a line called Luxaire. The color of the fibers found on the bodies, including Nathaniel Cater, matched Luxaire English Olive; this was the type of carpet found in Williams’ home.

Experts estimated that one in approximately 8,000 Atlanta area homes contained Luxaire English Olive carpet. Prosecutors used this probability, along with fiber and hair evidence from Williams’ car and dog, to establish the fact that it was an extremely small chance that anyone other than Williams could be the killer. Adding to the already damning evidence against him, the killings immediately stopped after Williams was arrested.

On February 27, 1982, the jury found Wayne Williams guilty of the murders of Cater and Jimmy Ray Payne, and he was sentenced to life in prison. After the verdict, the Atlanta police department closed 22 other cases, but Williams was never tried, or charged, for those crimes. 

Source: history.com