TODAY in HISTORY

Today is Monday, May 29, the 149th day of 2017. There are 216 days left in the year. 1167 Battle of Monte Porzio: A Roman Army supporting Pope Alexander III is defeated by Christian of Buch and Rainald of Dassel. 1328 Philip VI is crowned King of France.

1453 Fall of Constantinople: Ottoman armies under Sultan Mehmed II Fatih capture Constantinople after a 53-day siege, ending the Byzantine Empire.

1660 English Restoration: Charles II is restored to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland.

1727 Peter II becomes Tsar of Russia.

1733 The right of Canadians to enslave natives is upheld at Quebec City.

1790 Rhode Island becomes the last of the original United States' colonies to ratify the Constitution and is admitted as the 13th US state.

1807 Mustafa IV became Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of Islam.

1848 Wisconsin is admitted as the 30th US state.

1886 The pharmacist John Pemberton places his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, which appeared in the Atlanta Journal.

1918 Armenia defeats the Ottoman Army in the Battle of Sardarabad.

1919 Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is tested

1931 Michele Schirru, a citizen of the United States, is executed by Italian military firing squad for intent to kill Benito Mussolini.

1932 World War I veterans begin to assemble in Washington, D.C.

1950 The St. Roch, the first ship to circumnavigate North America, arrives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

1953 Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest on Tenzing Norgay’s (adopted) 39th birthday.

1973 Tom Bradley is elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles, California.

1982 Pope John Paul II becomes the first pontiff to visit Canterbury Cathedral.

1985 Heysel Stadium disaster: Thirty-nine association football fans die and hundreds are injured when a dilapidated retaining wall collapses.

1988 US President Ronald Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union.

1989 Signing of an agreement between Egypt and the United States, allowing the manufacture of parts of the F-16 jet fighter plane in Egypt.

1990 The Russian parliament elects Boris Yeltsin as President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

1999 Space Shuttle Discovery completes the first docking with the International Space Station.