Today in History

Israel announces the capture of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina.

The Federal Republic of West Germany is proclaimed.

Jane Kenyon, poet (Let Evening Come, Otherwise).

Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi Gestapo, commits suicide after being captured by Allied forces.

Robert A. Moog, electrical engineer, creator of the Moog synthesizer.

Rosemary Clooney, singer.

Helen O’Connell, big band vocalist.

Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary.

Artie Shaw, bandleader and clarinetist.

John Bardeen, physicist, co-inventor of the transistor.

Civil War hero Sgt. William H. Carney becomes the first African American to receive the Medal of Honor, thirty-seven years after the Battle of Fort Wagner.

Par Lagerkvist, Swedish writer (The Dwarf, Barabbas).

Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., president and chairman of the board for General Motors.

Union General Ulysses Grant attempts to outflank Confederate Robert E. Lee in the Battle of North Anna, Virginia.

Confederate General “Stonewall” Jackson takes Front Royal, Virginia.

Pro-Union and pro-Confederate forces clash in western Virginia.

James Buchanan Eads, engineer of the Eads Bridge in St. Louis

Margaret Fuller, writer and critic.

South Carolina becomes the eighth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

Benjamin Franklin announces his invention of bifocals.

Friedrich Anton Mesmer, physician and hypnotist.

Carl Linnaeus [Carl von Linné], Swedish botanist.

Captain William Kidd, the Scottish pirate, is hanged on the banks of the Thames.

The Thirty Years War begins.

Henry VIII‘s marriage to Catherine of Aragon is declared null and void.

Burgundians capture Joan of Arc and sell her to the English.