1431 – Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in Rouen, France, at the age of 19.
1539 – Hernando de Soto, the Spanish explorer, landed in Florida with 600 soldiers to search for gold.
1783 – The first daily newspaper was published in the U.S. by Benjamin Towner called “The Pennsylvania Evening Post”
1814 – The First Treaty of Paris was declared, which returned France to its 1792 borders.
1848 – W.G. Young patented the ice cream freezer.
1854 – The U.S. territories of Nebraska and Kansas were established.
1868 – Memorial Day was observed widely for the first time in the U.S.
1912 – The U.S. Marines were sent to Nicaragua to protect American interests.
1913 – The First Balkan War ended.
1943 – American forces secured the Aleutian island of Attu from the Japanese during World War II.
1958 – Unidentified soldiers killed in World War II and the Korean conflicts were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
1971 – Mariner 9, the American deep space probe blasted off on a journey to Mars.
1981 – In Chittagong, Bangladesh, President Ziaur Rahman was assassinated.
1982 – Spain became the 16th NATO member. Spain was the first country to enter the Western alliance since West Germany in 1955.
1983 – Peru’s President Fernando Belaunde Terry declared a state of emergency and suspended civil rights after bombings by leftist rebels.
1989 – The “Goddess of Democracy” statue (33 feet height) was erected in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators.
