1302 – The weaver Peter de Coningk led a massacre of the Flemish oligarchs.

1642 – Montreal, Canada, was founded.

1643 – Queen Anne, the widow of Louis XIII, was granted sole and absolute power as regent by the Paris parliament, overriding the late king’s will.

1652 – In Rhode Island, a law was passed that made slavery illegal in North America. It was the first law of its kind.

1792 – Russian troops invaded Poland.

1798 – The first Secretary of the U.S. Navy was appointed. He was Benjamin Stoddert.

1802 – Great Britain declared war on Napoleon’s France.

1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed emperor by the French Senate.

1828 – Battle of Las Piedras ended the conflict between Uruguay and Brazil.

1896 – The U.S. Supreme court upheld the “separate but equal” policy in the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision. The ruling was overturned 58 years later with Brown vs. Board of Education.

1897 – A public reading of Bram Stoker’s new novel, “Dracula, or, The Un-dead,” was performed in London.

1904 – Brigand Raizuli kidnapped American Ion H. Perdicaris in Morocco.

1917 – The U.S. Congress passed the Selective Service act, which called up soldiers to fight in World War I.

1926 – Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson vanished while visiting a beach in Venice, CA. She reappeared a month later with the claim that she had been kidnapped.

1931 – Japanese pilot Seiji Yoshihara crashed his plane in the Pacific Ocean while trying to be the first to cross the ocean nonstop. He was picked up seven hours later by a passing ship.

1933 – The Tennessee Valley Authority was created.

1934 – The U.S. Congress approved an act, known as the “Lindberg Act,” that called for the death penalty in interstate kidnapping cases.

1942 – New York ended night baseball games for the duration of World War II.

1944 – Monte Cassino, Europe’s oldest Monastic house, was finally captured by the Allies in Italy.

1949 – Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America was incorporated

1951 – The United Nations moved its headquarters to New York City.

1953 – The first woman to fly faster than the speed of sound, Jacqueline Cochran, piloted an F-86 Sabrejet over Californiaat an average speed of 652.337 miles-per-hour.

1974 – India became the sixth nation to explode an atomic bomb.

1980 – Mt. Saint Helens erupted in Washington state. 57 people were killed and 3 billion in damage was done.

1983 – The U.S. Senate revised immigration laws and gave millions of illegal aliens legal status under an amnesty program.

1994 – Israel’s three decades of occupation in the Gaza Strip ended as Israeli troops completed their withdrawal and Palestinian authorities took over.

1998 – The U.S. federal government and 20 states filed a sweeping antitrust case against Microsoft Corp., saying the computer software company had a “choke hold” on competitors which denied consumer choices by controlling 90% of the software market.

1998 – U.S. federal officials arrested more than 130 people and seized $35 million. This was the end to an investigation of money laundering being done by a dozen Mexican banks and two drug-smuggling cartels.

2012 – Facebook Inc. held its initial public offering and began trading on the NASDAQ. The company was valued at $104 billion making it the largest valuation to date for a newly listed public company.

2014 – Russian President Putin signed a bill to absorb Crimea into the Russian Federation.

1954 – The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled for school integration in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. The ruling declared that racially segregated schools were inherently unequal.

May 17, 1954 – In Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that segregation of public schools “solely on the basis of race” denies black children “equal educational opportunity” even though “physical facilities and other ‘tangible’ factors may have been equal.

Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Thurgood Marshall had argued the case before the Court. He went on to become the first African American appointed to the Supreme Court.

source: history.com and youtube.com

1540 – Afghan chief Sher Khan defeated Mongul Emperor Humayun at Kanauj.

1630 – Italian Jesuit Niccolo Zucchi saw the belts on Jupiter’s surface.

1681 – Louis XIV sent an expedition to aid James II in Ireland. As a result, England declares war on France.

1756 – Britain declared war on France, beginning the French and Indian War.

1792 – The New York Stock Exchange was founded at 70 Wall Street by 24 brokers.

1814 – Denmark ceded Norway to Sweden. Norway’s constitution, which provided a limited monarchy, was signed.

1875 – The first Kentucky Derby was run at Louisville, KY.

1877 – The first telephone switchboard burglar alarm was installed by Edwin T. Holmes.

1881 – Frederick Douglass was appointed recorder of deeds for Washington, DC.

1926 – The U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires was damaged by bombs that were believed set by sympathizers of Sacco and Vanzetti.

1932 – The U.S. Congress changed the name “Porto Rico” to “Puerto Rico.”

1939 – The first fashion to be shown on television was broadcast in New York from the Ritz-Carleton Hotel.

1940 – Germany occupied Brussels, Belgium and began the invasion of France.

1946 – U.S. President Truman seized control of the nation’s railroads, delaying a threatened strike by engineers and trainmen.

1948 – The Soviet Union recognized the new state of Israel.

1954 – The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled for school integration in Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka. The ruling declared that racially segregated schools were inherently unequal.

1956 – The first synthetic mica (synthamica) was offered for sale in Caldwell Township, NJ.

1973 – The U.S. Senate Watergate Committee began its hearings.

1975 – NBC TV bought the rights to show “Gone With the Wind.” The one time rights cost NBC $5,000,000.

1980 – Rioting erupted in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood after an all-white jury in Tampa acquitted four former Miami police officers of fatally beating black insurance executive Arthur McDuffie. Eight people were killed in the rioting.

1985 – Bobby Ewing died on the season finale of “Dallas” on CBS-TV. He returned the following season.

1987 – Eric ‘Sleepy’ Floyd of the Golden State Warriors set a playoff record for points in a single quarter with 29.

1987 – An Iraqi warplane attacked the U.S. Navy frigate Stark in the Persian Gulf, killing 37 American sailors. Iraq and the United States called the attack a mistake.

1996 – U.S. President Clinton signed a measure requiring neighborhood notification when sex offenders move in. Megan’s Law was named for 7-year-old Megan Kanka, who was raped and killed in 1994.

1997 – Rebel leader Kabila declared himself president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire.

1998 – New York Yankees pitcher David Wells became the 13th player in modern major league baseball history to throw a perfect game.

1999 – Eric Ford, a tabloid photographer, was sentenced to 6 months at a halfway house, 3 years probation and 150 hours of community service. The sentence stemmed from a charge that Ford had eavesdropped on a call between Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman and then sold a recording of the conversation.
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2000 – Thomas E. Blanton Jr. and David Luker surrendered to police in Birmingham, AL. The two former Ku Klux Klan members were arrested on charges from the bombing of a church in 1963 that killed four young black girls.

2000 – Austria, the U.S. and six other countries agreed on the broad outline of a plan that would compensate Nazi-Era forced labor.

2000 – It was announced that Terra Networks SA and Lycos would be merging with the new name to be Terra Lycos. Terra made the deal happen with the purchase of $12.5 billion in stock.

2001 – The U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp based on Charles M. Schulz’s “Peanuts” comic strip.

2002 – Legoland Deutschland opened in Günzburg, Germany.

2006 – The U.S. aircraft carrier Oriskany was sunk about 24 miles off Pensacola Beach. It was the first vessel sunk under a Navy program to dispose of old warships by turning them into diving attractions. It was the largest man-made reef at the time of the sinking.

2007 – Trains crossed the border dividing North and South Korea for the first time since 1953.

Q: Can you be a federal judge and NOT have info or know what the rule of law is on this racist educational decision … 1954

Tell Congress to Say NO to Wendy Vitter

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was a landmark 1954 Supreme Court case in which the justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was one of the cornerstones of the civil rights movement, and helped establish the precedent that “separate-but-equal” education and other services were not, in fact, equal at all.

history.com

1770 – Marie Antoinette, at age 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.

1866 – The U.S. Congress authorized the first 5-cent piece to be minted.

1868 – U.S. President Andrew Johnson was acquitted during the Senate impeachment, by one vote.

1879 – The Treaty of Gandamak between Russia and England set up the Afghan state.

1881 – In Germany, the first electric tram for the public started service.

1888 – The first demonstration of recording on a flat disc was demonstrated by Emile Berliner.

1888 – The capitol of Texas was dedicated in Austin.

1910 – The U.S. Bureau of Mines was authorized by the U.S. Congress.

1914 – The American Horseshoe Pitchers Association (AHPA) was formed in Kansas City, Kansas.

1920 – Joan of Arc was canonized in Rome.

1929 – The first Academy Awards were held in Hollywood.

1939 – The Philadelphia Athletics and the Cleveland Indians met at Shibe Park in Philadelphia for the first baseball game to be played under the lights in the American League.

1946 – “Annie Get Your Gun” opened on Broadway.

1946 – Jack Mullin showed the world the first magnetic tape recorder.

1948 – The body of CBS News correspondent George Polk was found in Solonika Bay in Greece. It had been a week after he’d disappeared.

1960 – A Big Four summit in Paris collapsed due to the American U-2 spy plane incident.

1960 – Theodore Maiman, at Hughes Research Laboratory in California, demonstrated the first working laser.

1963 – After 22 Earth orbits Gordon Cooper returned to Earth, ending Project Mercury.

1965 – Spaghetti-O’s were sold for the first time.

1969 – Venus 5, a Russian spacecraft, landed on the planet Venus.

1971 – U.S. postage for a one-ounce first class stamp was increased from 6 to 8 cents.

1975 – Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1977 – Five people were killed when a New York Airways helicopter, idling on top of the Pan Am Building in Manhattan, toppled over, sending a huge rotor blade flying.

1985 – Michael Jordan was named Rookie of the Year in the NBA.

1987 – The Bobro 400 set sail from New York Harbor with 3,200 tons of garbage. The barge travelled 6,000 miles in search of a place to dump its load. It returned to New York Harbor after 8 weeks with the same load.

1988 – A report released by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop declared that nicotine was addictive in similar was as heroin and cocaine.

1988 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police do not have to have a search warrant to search discarded garbage.

1991 – Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.

1992 – The Endeavour space shuttle landed safely after its maiden voyage.

1996 – Admiral Jeremy “Mike” Boorda, the nation’s top Navy officer, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after some of his military awards were called into question.

1997 – In Zaire, President Mobutu Sese Seko gave control of the country to rebel forces ending 32 years of autocratic rule.

2000 – U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was nominated to run for U.S. Senator in New York. She was the first U.S.first lady to run for public office.

2005 – Sony Corp. unveiled three styles of its new PlayStation 3 video game machine.