On This Day: 23 May

Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians, while leading an army to raise the Siege of Compiègne, and sold to the English		1430
Girolamo Savonarola, priest and reformer, is strangled and burnt at the stake in Florence		1498
Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon is annulled		1533
Dutch rebels led by Louis of Nassau, defeat Jean de Ligne, Duke of Arenberg, and his loyalist troops in the Battle of Heiligerlee, opening the Eighty Years' War		1568
Imperial agents are 'defenestrated' in Prague, leading to the Thirty Years' War		1618
Captain William Kidd hanged for piracy and murder in London		1701
Battle of Ramillies: Marlborough defeats a French army under Marshal François de Neufville, duc de Villeroy		1706
South Carolina ratifies the US Constitution, becoming the eighth state		1788
Troops quell an uprising in Paris prompted by bread shortages		1795
A merchant in Shiraz, calling himself Báb, declares himself a prophet, effectively founding the Bahái Faith		1844
The General German Workers' Association, a precursor of the modern Social Democratic Party of Germany, is founded in Leipzig		1863
The Canadian Parliament establishes the North–West Mounted Police – the forerunner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police		1873
The French crown jewels go on sale for 6,000,000 francs		1887
The Associated Press News Service is founded in New York		1900
Italy declares war on Austro–Hungary and joins the Allies, fulfilling its part of the Treaty of London (signed four weeks earlier)		1915
Whipsnade Zoo opens		1931
Bonnie & Clyde are killed by police ambush in Bienville Parish, Louisiana		1934
The British Parliament agrees a plan for the independence of Palestine; denounced by both Arabs and Jews. George Cross inaugurated		1939
Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, commits suicide while in Allied custody		1945
Winston Churchill resigns as Prime Minister and dissolves the wartime coalition government		1945
Britain's first post–war Jamaican immigrants leave Jamaica on the Empire Windrush		1948
The Western occupying powers approve the Basic Law and establish the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany)		1949
Tibetans sign the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet with China		1951
Hungary beat England 7–1 in Budapest		1954
Israel announces the capture of former Nazi chief Adolf Eichmann		1960
French former general Raoul Salan weeps, smiles and then laughs with relief on being sentenced to life imprisonment (rather than execution) for leading the Secret Army Organisation (OAS) – an organisation violently opposed to Algerian independence, which has carried out a campaign of terrorism in France over the last few years		1962
The UK Government declares a state of emergency, after a week of strike action by the National Union of Seamen has brought shipping to a standstill		1966
The BBC commissions Monty Python's Flying Circus		1969
South Moluccan terrorists take an estimated 50 hostages on a train in Groningen, north–east Holland, and 110 (105 children and five teachers) at a school in the town of Bovensmilde		1977
Sixteen people are killed and dozens more injured in an explosion at a water treatment plant in Abbeystead, near Lancaster, as people from the nearby village of St. Michael's–on–Wyre are being shown around the plant		1984
Jonathan Hunt, 6, handicapped by acute neonatal meningitis, wins "substantial" damages against The Sun which called him "The worst brat in Britain"		1991
The first version of the Java programming language is released		1995
Germany's Reichstag elects veteran Social Democrat Johannes Rau as president		1999
Israeli troops withdraw from South Lebanon after 22 years of occupation		2000
The Kyoto Protocol reaches its '55 parties' clause after its ratification by Iceland		2002
Roy Keane sent home from the Republic of Ireland's World Cup training camp in Japan after repeatedly criticising the squad's preparations for the tournament which begins on 31 May		2002
Five people killed when a new terminal building collapses at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris		2004
The Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River collapses in Mount Vernon, Washington		2013
22–year–old Elliot Rodger kills six people and injures fourteen others near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara, before killing himself inside his vehicle		2014
184 people are killed, and at least 200 injured, in eight bombings carried out by ISIS in Jableh and Tartus, coastline cities in Syria		2016

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On This Day: 23 May