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.