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Today in History
May 15

756   Abd-al-Rahman is proclaimed emir of Cordoba, Spain.
1213   King John submits to the Pope, offering to make England and Ireland papal fiefs. Pope Innocent III lifts the interdict of 1208.
1602   English navigator Bartholomew Gosnold discovers Cape Cod.
1614   An aristocratic uprising in France ends with treaty of St. Menehould.
1618   Johannes Kepler discovers his harmonics law.
1702   The War of Spanish Succession begins.
1730   Following the resignation of Lord Townshend, Robert Walpole becomes the sole minister in the English cabinet.
1768   By the Treaty of Versailles, France purchases Corsica from Genoa.
1795   Napoleon enters the Lombardian capital of Milan in triumph.
1820   The U.S. Congress designates the slave trade a form of piracy.
1849   Neapolitan troops enter Palermo, Sicily.
1862   The Union ironclad Monitor and the gunboat Galena fire on Confederate troops at the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia.
1864   At the Battle of New Market, Virginia Military Institute cadets repel a Union attack.
1886   Emily Dickinson dies in Amherst, Mass., where she had lived in seclusion for the previous 24 years.
1916   U.S. Marines land in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.
1918   Pfc. Henry Johnson and Pfc. Needham Roberts receive the Croix de Guerre for their services in World War I. They are the first Americans to win France’s highest military medal.
1930   Ellen Church becomes the first airline stewardess.
1942   The United States begins rationing gasoline.
1958   Sputnik III is launched by the Soviet Union.
1963   The last Project Mercury space flight, carrying Gordon Cooper, is launched.
1968   U.S. Marines relieve army troops in Nhi Ha, South Vietnam after a fourteen-day battle.
1972   George Wallace is shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Maryland.
1975   The merchant ship Mayaguez is recaptured from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge.
1988   Soviets forces begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Born on May 15
1773   Prince Clemens Von Metternich, Chancellor of Austria.
1856   Lyman Frank Baum, author (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz).
1858   Emily Folger, Shakespeare scholar.
1859   Pierre Curie, physicist.
1860   Ellen Louise Axson Wilson, first wife of President Woodrow Wilson.
1890   Katherine Anne Porter, novelist (Ship of Fools).
1891   Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian novelist (Notes of a Dead Man, Heart of a Dog).
1902   Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago through the 1960s and early 1970’s.
1923   Richard Avedon, photographer.
1926   Anthony Shaffer, English playwright (Sleuth), twin brother of Peter Shaffer.
1926   Peter Shaffer, English playwright (Equus, Amadeus), twin brother of Anthony Shaffer.
1930   Jasper Johns, Jr., painter, leader of the Pop Art movement.

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