0996 – Sixteen year old Otto III was crowned the Roman Emperor.

1471 – King Henry VI was killed in the tower of London. Edward IV took the throne.

1536 – The Reformation was officially adopted in Geneva, Switzerland.

1840 – New Zealand was declared a British colony.

1927 – Charles A. Lindberg completed the first solo nonstop airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean. The trip began May 20.

1956 – The U.S. exploded the first airborne hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean over Bikini Atoll.

1968 – The nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, was last heard from. The remains of the sub were later found on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.

1982 – The British landed in the Falkland Islands and fighting began.

1991 – In Madras, India, the former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi was killed by a bouquet of flowers that contained a bomb.