NOW & THEN
A trooper of Canada’s Mounted police, established on this day in 1873, with members of the Blackfoot tribe
23 MAY
1430:
English took Joan of Arc prisoner.
Henry VIII divorced Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn. The result was a break with the Church in Rome.
William of Orange defeated Spanish force at Heiligerlee in Holland, marking start of Revolt of the Netherlands.
Constitution of Argentine Republic went into effect.
The North-west Mounted Police were established in Canada – their name was changed to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1920.
London traffic was restricted to 10mph at Hyde Park Corner, an accident blackspot.
Lebanon was proclaimed a republic by France.
Parliament approved plan for independent Palestine by 1949, which later was denounced by Jews and Arabs in Palestine.
Heinrich Himmler, notorious Nazi chief of police, committed suicide.
The German Federal Republic, with Bonn as the capital, came into existence.
Israel announced detention of the former Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann.
South Moluccan exiles in Netherlands held 161 hostages in elementary school and hijacked train in effort to get Dutch help in their fight for independence from Indonesia.
South African fighter planes rocketed alleged guerrilla bases in Mozambique in retaliation for car-bomb attack near air force headquarters in Pretoria three days earlier.
Hungary’s Communist Party outlined sweeping political and economic changes designed to salvage nation’s faltering economy.
The General Medical Council allowed doctors to advertise their services for the first time in 130 years.
Rajiv Gandhi’s Italianborn widow, Sonia, rejected offer to become president of Congress Party, effectively ending dynastic power of family in Indian politics.
The anti-mafia judge Giovanni Falcone was killed when a huge bomb blew up a motorway on the outskirts of the Sicilian capital, Palermo.
The “55 parties” clause of the Kyoto protocol was reached after its ratification by Iceland.
1533:
1568:
1853:
1873:
1913:
1926:
1939:
1945:
1949:
1960:
1977:
1983:
1988:
1990:
1991:
1992:
2002:
2004:
Part of Paris-charles de Gaulle Airport’s Terminal 2E collapsed, killing four people and injuring three others.
Alaskan stratovolcano Mount Cleveland erupted.
The UK’S military operation in Iraq officially ended. At its peak the operation, which began in 2003, involved some 46,000 personnel.
Winds of up to 100mph caused travel disruption on Scotland’s road, rail and ferry networks, and thousands of homes were without power.
Fire devastated the Glasgow School of Art – Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s architectural masterpiece, which the Royal Institute of British Architects had recently voted the finest British building of the past 175 years. The iconic Mackintosh library and studio were lost in the blaze.
2006:
2011:
2011:
2014:
BIRTHDAYS
Births:
Deaths:
British actress, 87
Rubens Barrichello, racing driver, 48; Marvin Hagler, US boxer, 66; Graeme Hick MBE, English cricketer, 54; Anatoly Karpov, Russian world chess champion, 69; Graham Marshall, Scottish rugby player, 60; John Newcombe OBE, Australian tennis player, 76; Phil Selway, British rock drummer (Radiohead), 53.
ANNIVERSARIES
1883 Douglas Fairbanks senior, film actor; 1912 Marius Goring, actor; 1918 Denis Compton, Test cricketer, footballer; 1921 Humphrey Lyttelton, jazz trumpeter; 1926 Desmond Carrington, radio presenter; 1928 Rosemary Clooney, singer; 1928 Nigel Davenport, British actor.
1701 Captain William Kidd, Scottish privateer and pirate (hanged at Execution Dock in London); 1868 Kit Carson, American frontiersman and Indian agent; 1906 Henrik Ibsen, Swedish playwright; 1934 Bonnie Parker, 23, and Clyde Barrow, 25, US bank robbers (shot dead in police ambush in Louisiana); 1937 John D Rockefeller, American philanthropist; 2017 Sir Roger Moore KBE, actor and UNICEF goodwill ambassador