| YEAR | DAY | EVENT |
| 1059 | May 23 | Henri I crowned his son King Philip I of France. |
| 1153 | May 23 | David I (~68), king of Scotland (1124-53), died. |
| 1162 | May 23 | Thomas Becket was elected archbishop of Canterbury. |
| 1275 | May 23 | King Edward I of England ordered a cessation to the persecution of French Jews. |
| 1421 | May 23 | Jews of Austria were imprisoned and expelled. |
| 1423 | May 23 | Benedict XIII, [Pedro the Luna], Spanish Pope (1394-1423), died. He had been elected by the Avignon cardinals during the Great Western Schism. |
| 1430 | May 23 | Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English. |
| 1498 | May 23 | The body of Girolamo Savonarola (45), moral scourge of Florence (1494-98), was burned along with 2 Dominican companions. An enraged crowd burned the previously hanged body of Savonarola at the same spot where he had ordered cultural works burned the year before. In 2006 Lauro Martines authored “Fire in the City,” an account of Savonarola’s life. |
| 1533 | May 23 | The marriage of England’s King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void. |
| 1536 | May 23 | Pope Paul III installed the Portuguese Inquisition at the request of John III. Its most common accusation was maintaining outlawed Jewish practices in secret. The Inquisition was disbanded in 1821. |
| 1611 | May 23 | Matthias von Habsburg was chosen king of Bohemia. |
| 1706 | May 23 | Battle of Ramillies: Marlborough defeated the French and 17,000 were killed. |
| 1707 | May 23 | Carolus Linnaeus [Carl von Linné, d.1778], Swedish botanist, was born. |
| 1718 | May 23 | William Hunter (d.1783), obstetrician, surgeon, anatomy teacher, was born near Glasgow, Scotland. In 1768 he opened a medical school. The Glasgow Hunterian Museum opened in 1807. |
| 1734 | May 23 | Friedrich Anton Mesmer, physician and hypnotist, was born. |
| 1750 | May 23 | Carlo Goldoni’s “Il Bugiardo,” premiered in Mantua. |
| 1779 | May 23 | Benedict Arnold, military governor of Philadelphia, wrote a query to the British asking what they would pay for his services. He had already begun trading with the British for personal profit and faced charges. |
| 1785 | May 23 | Benjamin Franklin in Paris spoke of his invention of bifocals in a letter to friend and philanthropist George Whatley. |
| 1788 | May 23 | South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the U. S. Constitution. |
| 1799 | May 23 | Thomas Hood (d.1845), English poet, composer (Song of the Shirt), was born. “I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like silence, listening To silence.” |
| 1810 | May 23 | Margaret Fuller (d.1850), American social reformer, writer and critic, was born. She was the first female journalist for the New York Tribune. “Man is not made for society, but society is made for man. No institution can be good which does not tend to improve the individual.” |
| 1819 | May 23 | Bolivar’s revolutionary commanders met in the deserted village of Setenta, Venezuela, and planned a march across the Andes to attack Spanish forces in New Granada (Colombia). |
| 1820 | May 23 | James Buchanan Eads, engineer of the Eads Bridge in St. Louis, was born. |
| 1832 | May 23 | Samuel Sharp was hanged in Jamaica for leading a slave rebellion. He is survived by his immortal declaration: “I would rather die upon yonder gallows than live in slavery.” |
| 1848 | May 23 | Helmuth J.L. von Moltke, German general, chief of staff (WW I), was born. |
| 1861 | May 23 | Pro Union and pro Confederate forces clashed in Clarksburg, West Virginia. |
| 1862 | May 23 | Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson took Front Royal, Virginia, in the Valley Campaign. Jackson captured 691 federal soldiers. His success was based on information from Confederate spy Isabella Boyd. |
| 1863 | May 23 | In Germany the General German Workers’ Association (ADAV) was founded. In 1869 it became the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany (SDAP). In 1875 it became the Social Democratic Party (SPD). |
| 1864 | May 23 | Union General Ulysses Grant attempted to outflank Lee in the Battle of North Anna, Virginia. |
| 1865 | May 23 | The American flag was flown at full staff over White House for the 1st time since Lincoln was shot. Union Army’s Grand Review began in Washington DC. |
| 1867 | May 23 | Jesse James gang robbed a bank in Richmond, Missouri, with 2 killed and $4,000 taken. |
| 1868 | May 23 | Kit Carson (b.1809), American scout and frontiersman, died at Fort Lyon, Colorado. In 1999 David Roberts authored “A Newer World: Kit Carson, John C. Freemont and the Claiming of the American West.” |
| 1873 | May 23 | Canada’s North West Mounted Police force was established. The North West Mounted Police was formed by the Canadian government to protect new settlers in the territory between Manitoba and British Columbia. |
| 1875 | May 23 | Alfred Pritchard Sloan, Jr., president and chairman of the board for General Motors, was born. His foundation started the cancer research center Sloan-Kettering Institute. Sloan defined the modern automobile industry and helped rescue General Motors in 1920. |
| 1883 | May 23 | Douglas Fairbanks, actor, was born in Denver, CO. |
| 1887 | May 23 | The 1st transcontinental train arrived in Vancouver, BC. |
| 1891 | May 23 | Par Lagerkvist, Swedish writer (The Dwarf, Barabbas), was born. |
| 1871 | May 23 | In France extremists burned the Tuileries Palace. |
| 1895 | May 23 | The New York Public Library had its origins with an agreement combining the city’s existing Astor and Lenox libraries. James Lenox, the son of a wealthy Scottish merchant, started the NY Public Library. |
| 1900 | May 23 | Civil War hero Sgt. William H. Carney became the first African American to receive the Medal of Honor, thirty-seven years after the Battle of Fort Wagner. |
| 1901 | May 23 | American forces captured Philippine rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo. |
| 1903 | May 23 | Dr. Horatio Nelson Jackson set off to cross the US from San Francisco in his $2,500 Winton touring car with his mechanic Sewell Croker. They reached NYC July 26. |
| 1906 | May 23 | Henrik Ibsen (78), Norwegian playwright and poet died in Christiania, Norway. |
| 1908 | May 23 | John Bardeen, physicist, co-inventor of the transistor, was born. |
| 1910 | May 23 | Artie Shaw (d.2004), jazz bandleader and clarinetist, was born as Arthur Jacoby Arshawsky on the Lower East Side of NYC to poor Eastern European Jewish immigrants. |
| 1911 | May 23 | The NY Public Library building at 5th Avenue was dedicated by Pres Taft. In 2008 the central reference building at 42nd and Fifth Avenue was renamed “The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building following a $100 million contribution by Schwarzman (b.1947), co-founder of the Blackstone Group, toward the expansion of the New York Public Library. |
| 1915 | May 23 | Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in World War I. Italy entered World War I and came up against the Austro-Hungarian forces including many Slovenians in the Julian Alps near Trieste. Over 29 months 12 major battles were fought along the Soca River. |
| 1920 | May 23 | Helen O’Connell, big band vocalist, was born. |
| 1921 | May 23 | James [Benjamin] Blish, US-UK sci-fi author (Hugo, Black Easter, Star Trek Reader), was born. |
| 1922 | May 23 | “Abbie’s Irish Rose” opened for the 1st of over 2,500 performances. |
| 1928 | May 23 | Rosemary Clooney (d.2002), singer, was born in Maysville, Ky. |
| 1934 | May 23 | Robert A. Moog, electrical engineer, creator of the Moog synthesizer, was born. |
| 1939 | May 23 | British parliament planned to make Palestine independent by 1949. |
| 1940 | May 23 | Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, the Pied Pipers and featured soloist Frank Sinatra recorded “I’ll Never Smile Again” in New York for RCA. |
| 1943 | May 23 | Thomas Mann began writing his novel Dr. Faustus. |
| 1944 | May 23 | During World War II, Allied forces bogged down in Anzio began a major breakout offensive. |
| 1945 | May 23 | Winston Churchill, the head Britain’s coalition government, resigned pending the upcoming general election. He continued to serve as the head of the caretaker government which lasted till he lost the election on July 26 and officially resigned as PM. |
| 1949 | May 23 | The Federal Republic of (West) Germany with Bonn as the capital officially came into existence under a new constitution. |
| 1951 | May 23 | Anatoli Karpov, world chess champion (1975-85), was born in the USSR. |
| 1953 | May 23 | Schools 1st used Cliff’s Notes. |
| 1959 | May 23 | Presbyterian church accepted women preachers. |
| 1960 | May 23 | A tidal wave, due to a 9.5 earthquake off Chile, hit Hilo, Hawaii. It killed 61 people, wiped out the beaches and destroyed 537 buildings. It went on to hit Japan |
| 1962 | May 23 | Ruben Jaramillo, Mexican agrarian reformer, was assassinated along with his family by state forces. |
| 1964 | May 23 | In San Francisco 6 people died in a fire at All Hallows Catholic Church. Panic seized some 250 people after a Samoan fire dancer’s pan of gasoline exploded from a cigarette lighter. |
| 1965 | May 23 | David Smith (b.1906), American sculptor, died in Albany NY. His farm in upstate New York was named the Terminal Iron Works. His work included “Circle and Box,” “XI Books, III Apples,” “Lunar Arc,” “Becca” and “Rebecca Circle.” |
| 1969 | May 23 | The BBC ordered 13 episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. |
| 1971 | May 23 | In California poet Lou Welch (b.1926) walked away from Gary Snider’s residence in the Sierra foothills and was never seen again. |
| 1977 | May 23 | The US Supreme Court refused to hear appeals of former Nixon White House aides H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman & John Mitchell in connection with their Watergate convictions. |
| 1982 | May 23 | The British HMS Antelope was attacked. It sank the next day after an unexploded bomb detonates. Ten Argentine aircraft were destroyed. |
| 1983 | May 23 | Radio Moscow announcer Vladimir Danchev (35) praised Afghanistan Muslims standing up to Russia. He was removed from the air. Soviet sources said that Vladimir Danchev, the Radio Moscow news announcer who twice in six days described Soviet troops in Afghanistan as an occupying force, had been dismissed and was under investigation. |
| 1985 | May 23 | Thomas Patrick Cavanagh, an aerospace engineer who admitted trying to sell “stealth” bomber secrets to the Soviet Union, was sentenced in Los Angeles to life in prison. |
| 1986 | May 23 | Sterling Hayden (b.1916), actor and author, died in Sausalito, Ca. he appeared in 35 films and wrote two books, including his autobiography: “The Wanderer.” |
| 1987 | May 23 | Rescue workers and survivors searched through the rubble of a killer tornado in Saragosa, Texas, that had claimed 30 lives. Texas Gov. Bill Clements expressed his sorrow, and pledged all possible help. |
| 1988 | May 23 | Less than a week before a scheduled superpower summit in Moscow, Secretary of State George Shultz went to Capitol Hill to ask for a prompt Senate vote to ratify the intermediate-range nuclear missile treaty. |
| 1989 | May 23 | An estimated 1 million people in Beijing and tens of thousands in other Chinese cities marched to demand that Premier Li Peng resign. |
| 1990 | May 23 | Clinton’s campaign for a 5th term as governor of Arkansas received a $60,000 loan from the Perry County Bank. More cash was requested a few days later. |
| 1991 | May 23 | In a five-to-four vote, the US Supreme Court upheld regulations barring federally subsidized family planning clinics from discussing abortion with pregnant women, or from telling women where they could get abortions. |
| 1992 | May 23 | Pres. Bush issued Executive Order 12807 authorizing the repatriation of Haitian refugees interdicted by the Coast Guard. |
| 1993 | May 23 | A jury in Baton Rouge, La., acquitted Rodney Peairs of manslaughter in the shooting death of Yoshi Hattori, a Japanese exchange student he’d mistaken for an intruder. Peairs was later found liable in a civil suit brought by Hattori’s parents. |
| 1994 | May 23 | “Pulp Fiction” by American director Quentin Tarantino won the Golden Palm for best film at the 47th Cannes Film Festival. |
| 1995 | May 23 | Leland William Modjeski (37), a graduate student, was shot and wounded on the White House lawn after scaling a fence with an unloaded gun. |
| 1996 | May 23 | The US House approved, by a vote of 281-144, election-year legislation to raise the minimum wage by 90 cents an hour. |
| 1997 | May 23 | The defense at the Oklahoma City bombing trial suffered an embarrassing setback when one of its own witnesses provided testimony damaging to defendant Timothy McVeigh. |
| 1998 | May 23 | From Guatemala it was reported that the Pacaya volcano had erupted during the week and covered Guatemala City with a half-inch of grit. |
| 1999 | May 23 | Some 14,000 ethnic Albanians crossed the border from Kosovo to Macedonia in the last 2 days. |
| 2000 | May 23 | The US Nasdaq market fell 6% to 3,164.55. |
| 2001 | May 23 | The US Senate passed an 11-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut bill. |
| 2002 | May 23 | Pres. Bush at a Berlin press conference said that he expects Pres. Putin to “get on board” with America’s hard-line policy toward Iran and Iraq. Bush also addressed the German Parliament and said terrorist groups constitute a “new totalitarian threat,” and then flew on to Moscow. |
| 2003 | May 23 | Golfer Annika Sorenstam failed to make the 36-hole cut at the PGA Tour in Fort Worth, Texas, missing the cut by four strokes. She was the first woman to play in a PGA Tour event in 58 years. |
| 2004 | May 23 | Seattle’s new $165 million downtown Central Library, designed by Rem Koolhaas, officially opened. |
| 2005 | May 23 | US Senate moderates reached a bipartisan compromise agreeing on a yes-no vote on some disputed judicial nominees and not to block future ones except in extraordinary circumstances. Republicans agreed to back off a bid to end filibusters in such cases. |
| 2006 | May 23 | Pres. Bush met with Israel’s OM Olmert and urged him to reach out to Abbas as an alternative to dealing with Hamas. |
| 2007 | May 23 | President Bush, speaking at the US Coast Guard commencement, portrayed the Iraq war as a battle between the US and al-Qaida and contended that Osama bin Laden was setting up a terrorist cell in Iraq to strike targets in America. |
| 2008 | May 23 | Vallejo, Ca., officially declared Chapter 9 bankruptcy as it faced a $16 million deficit with no money in reserve for fiscal year 2008-2009. Vallejo, population 117,000, emerged from bankruptcy on Nov 1, 2011. Legal fees cost the city $8 million. |
| 2009 | May 23 | Pres. Obama selected Gen. Charles Bolden (62), a retired astronaut, to lead NASA. |
| 2010 | May 23 | In New Jersey a crowd of some 30-35 thousand gathered at the Statehouse in Trenton to protest Gov. Chris Christie’s proposed budget cuts. Christie has called for workers to accept wage freezes and contribute to their health benefits. |
| 2011 | May 23 | The US Supreme Court said California must reduce its prison population by over 30,000 in two years to address its inadequate prison health care system. |
| 2012 | May 23 | The US Interior Department announced a plan to allow periodic increases in the flow of Colorado River water through the Grand Canyon to help propel silt and sediment downstream. |
| 2013 | May 23 | Pres. Obama announced new restraints on targeted killings and outlined plans for winding down drone strikes. |
| 2014 | May 23 | The Standard & Poor’s 500 index climbed to a record close above 1900 for the first time rising .4% to 1900.53. |
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