Today in History
On May 23, 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.
In 1945, Nazi official Heinrich Himmler committed suicide by biting into a cyanide capsule while in British custody in Luneburg, Germany.
In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeals of former Nixon White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman and former Attorney General John N. Mitchell in connection with their Watergate convictions.
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.
In 1984, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop issued a report saying there was "very solid" evidence linking cigarette smoke to lung disease in non-smokers.
In 1992, top anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone was killed in a remote-controlled highway bombing outside Palermo, Sicily, along with his wife and three police escorts.
President George W. Bush, speaking at the U.S. Coast Guard commencement, portrayed the Iraq war as a battle between the U.S. and al-Qaida and said Osama bin Laden was setting up a terrorist cell in Iraq to strike targets in America.
Egypt held the Arab world's first competitive presidential vote (Islamist Mohammed Morsi was ultimately named the winner following a runoff).
A Pakistani doctor who helped the CIA hunt down Osama bin Laden was convicted of conspiring against the state and was sentenced to 33 years in prison; U.S. officials had urged Pakistan to release Dr. Shakil Afridi.
During his visit to Asia, President Barack Obama, eager to banish lingering shadows of the Vietnam War, lifted the U.S. embargo on selling arms to America's former enemy.
Prosecutors failed for the second time in their bid to hold Baltimore police accountable for the arrest and death of Freddie Gray when an officer was acquitted in the racially charged case that triggered riots a year earlier.
The Supreme Court upended the conviction and death sentence of a black Georgia man because prosecutors had improperly excluded African-Americans from his all-white jury.