Today:
1. 1430: Joan of Arc was captured by Burgundians while leading an army to relieve Compiègne, France.
2. 1498: Girolamo Savonarola, an Italian Dominican friar, was burned at the stake in Florence on orders of Pope Alexander VI.
3. 1701: The infamous pirate Captain William Kidd was executed in London for piracy and murder.
4. 1934: Notorious American outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were killed in a police ambush near Gibsland, Louisiana.
5. 1945: Heinrich Himmler, one of Hitler’s top officials, committed suicide while in Allied custody after being captured during World War II.
6. 1949: The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was officially established.
7. 1951: Tibet was formally annexed by China, leading to a long-standing Tibetan independence movement led by the Dalai Lama.
8. 1977: South Moluccan militants took 105 children and six teachers hostage at a primary school in the Netherlands, leading to a tense standoff.
9. 1992: Italian judge Giovanni Falcone, a prominent anti-Mafia prosecutor, was assassinated in a bombing in Sicily.
10. 2015: American mathematician John Nash, known for his work in game theory and subject of the film “A Beautiful Mind,” died in a car crash.