23rd May

[chenrezig]

878 The Saxon King Alfred defeated the Danes at Edington, Wiltshire. As part of the peace agreement, the Danish King, Guthrum, accepted Christianity and was baptized as a Christian.

1169 'The First Conquerors' landed in Ireland. They were Normans from Wales enlisted by Dermot MacMurrough to recover his kingdom of Leinster.

1430 Burgundian troops captured Joan of Arc and delivered her to the English.

1533 To the annoyance of the Pope, the English Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declared Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon to be void and his marriage to Anne Boleyn, to be legal. The result was a break with the church in Rome despite Henry’s title as ‘Protector of the Faith’.

1701 At London's Execution Dock, British privateer Captain Kidd was hanged for piracy and murder. Commissioned by the British crown in 1695 to apprehend pirates in the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, Kidd apparently turned to piracy himself in 1697.

1706 In the Battle of Ramillies (Belgium) John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, defeated a French army under the command of Marshal Villeroi.

1795 Sir Charles Barry, the English architect who designed the Houses of Parliament, was born.

1797 A cartoon by Gilray was published which gave the Bank of England its nickname, 'The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.'

1918 The birth of Denis Compton CBE, English cricketer and footballer He played in 78 Test matches, spent the whole of his cricket career with Middlesex and most of his football career at Arsenal F.C.

1921 The birth of Humphrey Lyttelton, English jazz musician and broadcaster.

1933 Joan Collins, English actress was born.

1945 World War II: Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, committed suicide by means of a potassium cyanide capsule while in Allied custody, awaiting trial with other German leaders as a war criminal at Nuremberg.

1956 The first large-scale nuclear power station was opened at Calder Hall, Cumbria. It was decommissioned after producing electricity for almost 50 years.

1966 The British government declared a state of emergency a week after the nation's seamen strike began.

1984 Sixteen people died and dozens more were injured in an underground explosion whilst visiting a water treatment plant in the village of Abbeystead, near Lancaster.

1995 Twelve members of a Royal British Legion tour party on a day trip were killed when their coach plunged down an embankment on the M4 near the Severn Bridge.

[annie]

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