Sunday, May 22

This Day In History

• 1761   The first life insurance policy in the United States was issued, in Philadelphia.
• 1813   Composer Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig, Germany.
• 1868   The Great Train Robbery took place near Marshfield, Ind., as seven members of the Reno gang made off with $96,000 in cash, gold and bonds.
• 1939   Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini signed a "Pact of Steel" committing Germany and Italy to a military alliance.
• 1969   The lunar module of Apollo 10 separated from the command module and flew to within nine miles of the moon's surface in a dress rehearsal for the first lunar landing.
• 1972   The first U.S. president to visit Moscow did so on this day. President Richard Nixon met with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
• 1972   The island nation of Ceylon became the republic of Sri Lanka with the adoption of a new constitution.
• 1990   After years of conflict, North Yemen and South Yemen merged to form the Republic of Yemen.
• 1992   Johnny Carson hosted NBC's ''Tonight Show'' for the last time after nearly 30 years in the job.
• 1997   Kelly Flinn, the Air Force's first female bomber pilot certified for combat, accepted a general discharge, thereby avoiding court-martial on charges of adultery, lying and disobeying an order.
• 1998   Voters in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland cast ballots giving resounding approval to a Northern Ireland peace accord.
• 2002   A jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicted former Ku Klux Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry of murder in a 1963 church bombing that killed four black girls.
• 2002   The remains of Chandra Levy, the federal intern who had disappeared more than a year earlier, were found in a Washington park.
• 2003   The U.N. Security Council gave the U.S. and Britain a mandate to rule Iraq, ending 13 years of economic sanctions.
• 2003   Annika Sorenstam became the first woman since 1945 to tee off against the men on the pro tour, playing in the first round of the Colonial golf tournament in Fort Worth, Texas.

Happy Birthday To

• 1859   Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (physician; writer: Sherlock Holmes: 56 short stories, 3 novels: The Sign of Four, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Valley of Fear; died July 7, 1930)
• 1938   Susan Strasberg (actress: The Marriage, Toma, Picnic, Rollercoaster, Delta Force; died Jan 21, 1999)