May 22

What happened that day?

• 192: Dong Zhuo is assassinated by his adopted son Lü Bu.
• 760: Fourteenth recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet.
• 853: A Byzantine fleet sacks and destroys the undefended Damietta in Egypt.
• 1176: The Hashshashin (Assassins) attempt to murder Saladin near Aleppo.
• 1200: King John of England and King Philip II of France sign the Treaty of Le Goulet.
• 1246: Henry Raspe is elected anti-king of the Kingdom of Germany, in opposition to Conrad IV.
• 1254: Serbian King Stefan Uroš I and the Republic of Venice sign a peace treaty.
• 1370: The [Brussels](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels) massacre: Several Jews are murdered and the rest of the Jewish community is banished from Brussels.
• 1377: Pope Gregory XI issues five papal bulls to denounce the doctrines of English theologian John Wycliffe.
• 1455: Start of the Wars of the Roses: At the First Battle of St Albans, Richard, Duke of York, defeats and captures King Henry VI of England.
• 1570: The first atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, is published with 70 maps.
• 1629: Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II and Danish King Christian IV sign the Treaty of Lübeck to end the Danish intervention in the Thirty Years' War.
• 1762: Sweden and Prussia sign the Treaty of Hamburg.
• 1762: Trevi Fountain in Rome is officially completed and inaugurated by Pope Clement XIII.
• 1804: The Lewis and Clark Expedition officially began as the Corps of Discovery departed from St. Charles, Missouri.
• 1807: A grand jury indicts former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr on a charge of treason.
• 1809: On the second and last day of the Battle of Aspern-Essling (near Vienna, Austria), Napoleon I is repelled by an enemy army for the first time.
• 1816: A mob in Littleport, Cambridgeshire, England, riots over high unemployment and rising grain costs, which spreads to Ely the next day.
• 1819: The SS Savannah leaves port at Savannah, Georgia, United States, on a voyage to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.
• 1826: HMS Beagle departs on its first voyage.
• 1840: The transportation of British convicts to the New South Wales colony is abolished.
• 1848: Slavery is abolished in Martinique.
• 1849: Future U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is issued a patent for an invention to lift boats, making him the only U.S. President to ever hold a patent.
• 1856: Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina severely beats Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane in the hall of the United States Senate for a speech Sumner had made regarding Southerners and slavery.
• 1863: American Civil War: Union forces begin the Siege of Port Hudson which lasts 48 days, the longest siege in U.S. military history.
• 1864: American Civil War: After ten weeks, the Union Army's Red River Campaign ends in failure.
• 1872: Reconstruction Era: President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Amnesty Act into law, restoring full civil and political rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers.
• 1900: The Associated Press is formed in New York City as a non-profit news cooperative.
• 1906: The Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their "Flying-Machine".
• 1915: Lassen Peak erupts with a powerful force, the only volcano other than Mount St. Helens to erupt in the contiguous U.S. during the 20th century.
• 1915: Three trains collide in the Quintinshill rail disaster near Gretna Green, Scotland, killing 227 people and injuring 246.
• 1926: Chiang Kai-shek replaces communists in Kuomintang China.
• 1927: Near Xining, China, a 8.3 quake causes 200,000 deaths in one of the world's most destructive earthquakes.
• 1939: World War II: Germany and Italy sign the Pact of Steel.
• 1941: During the Anglo-Iraqi War, British troops take Fallujah.
• 1942: Mexico enters World War II on the side of the Allies.
• 1943: Joseph Stalin disbands the Comintern.
• 1947: The Truman Doctrine goes into effect, aiding Turkey & Greece.
• 1957: South Africa's government approves racial separation in universities.
• 1958: The 1958 riots in Ceylon become a watershed in the race relationship of various ethnic communities of Sri Lanka. The total deaths is estimated at 300, mostly Tamils.
• 1960: The Great Chilean earthquake, measuring 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale, hits southern Chile. It is the most powerful earthquake ever recorded.
• 1962: Continental Airlines Flight 11 crashes after bombs explode on board.
• 1963: Greek left-wing politician Grigoris Lambrakis is shot in an assassination attempt and dies five days later.
• 1964: Lyndon B. Johnson launches the Great Society.
• 1967: Egypt closes the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping.
• 1967: The L'Innovation department store in Brussels, Belgium, burns down, resulting in 323 dead or missing and 150 injured, the most devastating fire in Belgian history.
• 1968: The nuclear-powered submarine the USS Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard, 400 miles southwest of the Azores.
• 1969: Apollo 10's lunar module flies within 8.4 nautical miles (16 km) of the moon's surface.
• 1972: Ceylon adopts a new constitution, becoming a Republic, changes its name to Sri Lanka, and joins the Commonwealth of Nations.
• 1972: Over 400 women in Derry, Northern Ireland attack the offices of Sinn Féin following the shooting by the Irish Republican Army of a young British soldier on leave.
• 1987: Hashimpura massacre in Meerut, India.
• 1987: First ever Rugby World Cup kicks off with New Zealand playing Italy at Eden Park in Auckland, New Zealand.
• 1990: North and South [Yemen](https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Yemen) are unified to create the Republic of Yemen.
• 1992: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Slovenia join the United Nations.
• 1994: A worldwide trade embargo goes into effect against Haiti to punish its military rulers for not reinstating the country's ousted elected leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
• 1996: The Burmese military regime jails 71 supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi in a bid to block a pro-democracy meeting.
• 1998: A U.S. federal judge rules that U.S. Secret Service agents can be compelled to testify before a grand jury concerning the Lewinsky scandal involving President Bill Clinton.
• 2000: In Sri Lanka, over 150 Tamil rebels are killed over two days of fighting for control in Jaffna.
• 2002: Civil Rights Movement: A jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicts former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murders of four girls in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.
• 2010: An Air India Express Boeing 737 goes over a cliff and crashes upon landing at Mangalore, India, killing 158 of the 166 people on board. It is the worst crash involving a Boeing 737.
• 2011: An EF5 tornado strikes Joplin, Missouri, killing 162 people and wreaking $2.8 billion in damage—the costliest and seventh-deadliest single tornado in U.S. history.
• 2012: Tokyo Skytree opens to the public. It is the tallest tower in the world (634 m), and the second tallest man-made structure on Earth, after Burj Khalifa (829.8 m).
• 2014: General Prayut Chan-o-cha becomes interim leader of Thailand in a military coup d'état, following six months of political turmoil.
• 2014: An explosion occurs in Ürümqi, the capital of China's far-western Xinjiang region, resulting in at least 43 deaths and 91 injuries.
• 2015: The Republic of Ireland becomes the first nation in the world to legalize gay marriage in a public referendum.
• 2017: 22 people are killed at an Ariana Grande concert in the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing.