May 31 in History
455 — Emperor Petronius Maximus of Western Rome is stoned to death by an angry mob after a reign of just 75 days while fleeing Rome.The Vandals (an ancient Germanic people) sack the city for two weeks, actions that give rise to the term vandalism.
1832 — Évariste Galois, 20, French mathematician who developed a general theory of equations, dies from wounds suffered in a duel the previous day. His work laid the foundations for the Galois theory and group theory, two major branches of abstract algebra, and the subfield of Galois connections.
1859 — Big Ben, the four-faced striking clock at London’s Palace of Westminster, starts keeping time.
1879 — Siemens & Halske presents the world’s first electric train in which power is supplied through the rails at the Berlin Trades Exposition. The little electric locomotive, on which the driver sits, pulls three small carriages — with six passengers each — around a 300m-long circular track through the grounds.
1902 — The three-year Anglo-Boer War ends with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging (agreed upon by Boer leaders in a tent at Vereeniging and accepted by the British government) in Pretoria. The South African (Transvaal) and Orange Free State republics accept British sovereignty, but the treaty promises eventual self-government, and concedes a general amnesty, a grant of £3m for restoring and restocking Boer farms and generous loans.
1910 — The Union of South Africa is founded as a self-governing dominion of the British Empire. It combines the Cape Colony, Natal Colony, Transvaal Colony and Orange River Colony.
1930 — Clint Eastwood, actor (“The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”, “Dirty Harry”, “Million Dollar Baby”, “The Mule”), director, producer, composer, businessman, politician, is born in San Francisco.
1961 — South Africa becomes a republic, following a 52% vote in favour of moving away from the monarchy in a referendum on October 5 1960.
1962 — Adolf Eichmann, 56, Nazi war criminal, is hanged at Ayalon Prison in Ramla, Israel, for his role in the Holocaust. He escaped from a prison camp after the war and arrived in Buenos Aires on July 14 1950. Thanks to information supplied by Lothar Hermann, a blind half-Jewish refugee who lived in Argentina since 1938, and his daughter Sylvia, who had dated Eichmann’s son Klaus, Mossad agents captured “factory worker Ricardo Klement” on May 11 1990.
2009 — Police in Egypt report that a 25-year-old man cut off his own penis to spite his family after he was refused permission to marry a girl from a lowerclass family. He was rushed to hospital, but doctors were unable to do a reattachment.