On May 23, 1430, Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English.
In 1533 the marriage of England’s King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void.
In 1701 Capt. William Kidd was hanged in London for piracy and murder.
In 1707 botanist Carolus Linnaeus, who created the system for defining genera and species of organisms, was born in Sweden.
In 1734 physician Franz Anton Mesmer, who developed the forerunner of hypnosis, was born in present-day Germany.
In 1788 South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
In 1906 playwright Henrik Ibsen died at 78 in Christiania, Norway.
In 1934 bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were killed in a police ambush in Bienville Parish, La.
In 1937 industrialist John D. Rockefeller died at 97 in Ormond Beach, Fla.
In 1945 imprisoned Nazi official Heinrich Himmler, 45, committed suicide in Luneburg, Germany.
In 1960 Israel announced it had captured Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. (He was hanged in 1962.)
In 1991 the Supreme Court upheld regulations barring federally subsidized family-planning clinics from discussing abortion with pregnant women.
In 1994 “Pulp Fiction” by American director Quentin Tarantino won the Golden Palm for best movie at the 47th Cannes Film Festival.
In 1995 the nine-story hulk of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was demolished.
In 2002 golfer Sam Snead died at 89 in Hot Springs, Va.
In 2003 Congress sent President Bush the third tax cut of his presidency — a $330 billion package of rebates and lower rates for families and new breaks for businesses and investors.
In 2004 a roof collapsed in a new passenger terminal at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, killing four people.
In 2006 Lloyd Bentsen, the ex-senator and ex-Treasury secretary, died at 85 in Houston.
