On May 22, 1761, the first life insurance policy in the U.S. was issued, in Philadelphia.
In 1813 composer Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany.
In 1819 the American steamship Savannah set out for Liverpool, England, from Savannah, Ga. — the first steam-powered vessel to cross the Atlantic.
In 1868 seven members of the Reno gang made off with $96,000 in cash, gold and bonds in the Great Train Robbery near Seymour, Ind.
In 1939 Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini signed a “Pact of Steel” committing Germany and Italy to a military alliance.
In 1972 the South Asian island nation of Ceylon became the republic of Sri Lanka.
In 1992, after nearly 30 years, Johnny Carson stepped down as host of NBC’s ”Tonight” show.
In 2000 the Supreme Court struck down a federal law that shielded children from sex-oriented cable-TV channels.
In 2001 Ford Motor Co. said it planned to spend more than $2 billion to replace up to 13 million Firestone tires on its vehicles because of safety concerns.
In 2002 a jury in Birmingham, Ala., convicted former Ku Klux Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry of murder in a 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls. Also, the remains of Chandra Levy, the federal intern who had disappeared a year earlier, were found in a Washington park.
In 2003 the UN Security Council gave the U.S. and Britain a mandate to rule Iraq, ending 13 years of economic sanctions.
In 2005 voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft, who supplied Tony the Tiger’s ”They’re grrrrreeeat!” for more than 50 years, died in Fullerton, Calif.; he was 91.
In 2006 Braxton Bilbrey, 7, of Arizona swam from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco in 47 minutes.
