TODAY IN HISTORY

1430: Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English.

1533: The marriage of England’s King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer.

1915: Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary during World War I.

1934: Bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were shot to death in a police ambush in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.

1937: Industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, founder of the Standard Oil Co. and the Rockefeller Foundation, died in Ormond Beach, Fla., at age 97.

1939: The Navy submarine USS Squalus sank during a test dive off the New England coast. Thirty-two crew members and one civilian were rescued, but 26 others died; the sub was salvaged and recommissioned the USS Sailfish.

1944: During World War II, Allied forces bogged down in Anzio began a major breakout offensive.

1945: Nazi official Heinrich Himmler committed suicide by biting into a cyanide capsule while in British custody in Luneburg, Germany.

1967: Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, an action that helped precipitate war between Israel and its Arab neighbors the following month.

1975: Comedian Jackie “Moms” Mabley, 81, died in White Plains, New York.

1984: Surgeon General C. Everett Koop issued a report saying there was “very solid” evidence linking cigarette smoke to lung disease in non-smokers.

2007: President George W. Bush, speaking at the U.S. Coast Guard commencement, portrayed the Iraq war as a battle between the U.S. and al-Qaida and said Osama bin Laden was setting up a terrorist cell in Iraq to strike targets in America.

2013: President Barack Obama, in a speech to the National Defense University, defended America’s controversial drone attacks as legal, effective and a necessary linchpin in an evolving U.S. counterterrorism policy, but acknowledged the targeted strikes were no “cure-all” and said he was haunted by the civilians who were unintentionally killed. The Boy Scouts of America threw open its ranks to gay Scouts but not to gay Scout leaders.