Today is May 23. On this date in:
1915
Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary during World War I.
1934
Bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were shot to death in a police ambush in Louisiana.
1939
The Navy submarine USS Squalus sank during a test dive off the New England coast. Thirty-two crew members and one civilian were rescued, but 26 others died; the sub was salvaged and re-commissioned the USS Sailfish.
1945
Nazi official Heinrich Himmler committed suicide by biting into a cyanide capsule while in British custody in Luneburg, Germany.
1967
Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, an action which helped precipitate war between Israel and its Arab neighbors the following month.
1977
Moluccan extremists seized a train and a primary school in the Netherlands; the hostage drama ended June 11 as Dutch marines stormed the train, resulting in the deaths of six out of nine hijackers and two hostages, while the school siege ended peacefully.
1984
Surgeon General C. Everett Koop issued a report saying there was “very solid” evidence linking cigarette smoke to lung disease in nonsmokers.
1993
A jury in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, acquitted Rodney Peairs of manslaughter in the shooting death of Yoshi Hattori, a Japanese exchange student he’d mistaken for an intruder. (Peairs was later found liable in a civil suit brought by Hattori’s parents.)
2013
The Boy Scouts of America threw open its ranks to gay Scouts, but not to gay Scout leaders.
2018
NFL owners approved a new policy allowing players to protest during the national anthem by staying in the locker room, but forbidding players from sitting or taking a knee if they’re on the field.
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