TODAY IN HISTORY

 

Police kill famous outlaws Bonnie and Clyde

On May 23, 1934, notorious criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are shot to death by Texas and Louisiana state police while driving a stolen car near Sailes, Louisiana.

Bonnie Parker met the charismatic Clyde Barrow in Texas when she was 19 years old and her husband (she married when she was 16) was serving time in jail for murder. Shortly after they met, Barrow was imprisoned for robbery. Parker visited him every day, and smuggled a gun into prison to help him escape, but he was soon caught in Ohio and sent back to jail. When Barrow was paroled in 1932, he immediately hooked up with Parker, and the couple began a life of crime together.

After they stole a car and committed several robberies, Parker was caught by police and sent to jail for two months. Released in mid-1932, she rejoined Barrow. Over the next two years, the couple teamed with various accomplices to rob a string of banks and stores across five states—Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, New Mexico and Louisiana. To law enforcement agents, the Barrow Gang—including Barrow’s childhood friend, Raymond Hamilton, W.D. Jones, Henry Methvin, Barrow’s brother Buck and his wife Blanche, among others—were cold-blooded criminals who didn’t hesitate to kill anyone who got in their way, especially police or sheriff’s deputies. Among the public, however, Parker and Barrow’s reputation as dangerous outlaws was mixed with a romantic view of the couple as “Robin Hood”-like folk heroes.

Their fame was increased by the fact that Bonnie was a woman—an unlikely criminal—and by the fact that the couple posed for playful photographs together, which were later found by police and released to the media. Police almost captured the famous duo twice in the spring of 1933, with surprise raids on their hideouts in Joplin and Platte City, Missouri. Buck Barrow was killed in the second raid, and Blanche was arrested, but Bonnie and Clyde escaped once again. In January 1934, they attacked the Eastham Prison Farm in Texas to help Hamilton break out of jail, shooting several guards with machine guns and killing one.

Texan prison officials hired a retired Texas Ranger, Captain Frank Hamer, as a special investigator to track down Parker and Barrow. After a three-month search, Hamer traced the couple to Louisiana, where Henry Methvin’s family lived. Before dawn on May 23, Hamer and a group of Louisiana and Texas lawmen hid in the bushes along a country road outside Sailes. When Parker and Barrow appeared, the officers opened fire, killing the couple in a hail of bullets.

All told, the Barrow Gang was believed responsible for the deaths of 13 people, including nine police officers. Parker and Barrow are still seen by many as romantic figures, however, especially after the success of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1921

"Shuffle Along," the first major African American hit musical, premieres on Broadway

Deeply in debt and relegated to a shabby theater, the musical Shuffle Along debuts at the Sixty-Third Street Music Hall on May 23, 1921. The odds are stacked against the revue-style show, written and performed by African Americans, but it will run for over a year, making it the first major Black American musical on the Great White Way. Shuffle Along was written by Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, vaudeville veterans who worked together for over six decades. Loosely based around the story of two crooked friends, Sam and Steve, each of whom runs for mayor of “Jimmytown, USA” promising to make the other police chief if he wins, Shuffle Along had its roots in vaudeville, jazz and minstrelsy. Modern critics grapple with the question of whether Shuffle Along perpetuated racist minstrel tropes or represented the moment at which African Americans broke out of the confines of blackface minstrelsy; the answer may be both. In fact, even as they broke barriers by performing an all-Black show, the Black performers still had to wear blackface to avoid making white audiences uncomfortable. At the same time, the show featured a developed romance plot between two Black characters, something unheard of in mainstream theater at the time.

21ST CENTURY

2015

Ireland legalizes same-sex marriage

On May 23, 2015 thousands of LGBTQ activists celebrated as Ireland became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage through referendum. The referendum passed with 62% of voters (1.2 million people) voting yes. The vote attracted a large turnout, with 60.5% of eligible voters—and an unprecedented amount of young people—making their way to the polls. Support was overwhelming. All but one of the 43 parliamentary constituencies voted in favor, and approval was never really in doubt. When the polls closed, Dublin Castle, a major Irish government complex, became a sea of color and bodies, as roughly 2,000 activists gathered to celebrate. The crowd cheered, rainbow flags were waved, tears were shed and couples kissed, as Ireland hit a pivotal point in its history.

HOLOCAUST

1960

High-ranking Nazi official Adolf Eichmann captured

On May 23, 1960, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion announces to the world that Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann has been captured and will stand trial in Israel. Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer who organized Adolf Hitler’s “final solution of the Jewish question,” was seized by Israeli agents in Argentina on May 11 and smuggled to Israel nine days later. Eichmann was born in Solingen, Germany, in 1906. In November 1932, he joined the Nazi’s elite SS (Schutzstaffel) organization, whose members came to have broad responsibilities in Nazi Germany, including policing, intelligence, and the enforcement of Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies. Eichmann steadily rose in the SS hierarchy, and with the German annexation of Austria in 1938, he was sent to Vienna with the mission of ridding the city of Jews. He set up an efficient Jewish deportment center and in 1939 was sent to Prague on a similar mission. That year, Eichmann was appointed to the Jewish section of the SS central security office in Berlin.

EARLY 20TH CENTURY US

1911

New York Public Library dedicated

In a ceremony presided over by President William Howard Taft, the New York Public Library, the largest marble structure ever constructed in the United States, is dedicated in New York City. Occupying a two-block section of Fifth Avenue between 40th and 42nd Streets, the monumental beaux-arts structure took 14 years to complete at a cost of $9 million. The day after its dedication, the library opened its doors to the public, and some 40,000 citizens passed through to make use of a collection that already consisted of more than a million books.

GREAT BRITAIN

1701

Captain Kidd is executed

At London’s Execution Dock, British privateer William Kidd, popularly known as Captain Kidd, is hanged for piracy and murder. Born in Strathclyde, Scotland, Kidd established himself as a sea captain before settling in New York in 1690, where he bought property and married. 

WORLD WAR II

1945

Nazi SS Chief Heinrich Himmler dies by suicide

On May 23, 1945, Heinrich Himmler, chief of the SS, assistant chief of the Gestapo, and architect of Hitler’s program to exterminate European Jews, dies by suicide one day after being arrested by the British. As head of the Waffen-Schutzstaffel (the military arm of the  Nazi Party) and assistant chief of the Gestapo (the secret police), Himmler was able over time to consolidate his control over all police forces of the Reich. The power he would ultimately wield would rival that of the German army; it would also prove highly effective in eliminating all opposition to Hitler and the party, as well as in carrying out the Fuhrer’s Final Solution. It was Himmler who organized the creation of death camps throughout Eastern Europe and a pool of enslaved laborers.

WORLD WAR II

1941

Lord Mountbatten, cousin to a king, sunk by German dive-bombers

On May 23, 1941, Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten, second cousin of King George VI of Britain and the only man other than the king to hold rank in all three military services simultaneously, is among those thrown into the Mediterranean Sea when his destroyer, the HMS Kelly, is sunk. Mountbatten’s ship was among several British cruisers, destroyers, and battleships sunk off Crete by German dive-bombers. The Kelly was attacked by 24 bombers alone; 130 crewmembers were killed. Mountbatten was still on the bridge of the ship when it finally flipped over; nevertheless, he managed to swim to shore and take control of the rescue operation. He would ultimately accept, as senior Allied officer present, the surrender of Japanese land forces within Southeast Asia by General Sieshiro Itagaki.

U.S. PRESIDENTS

2004

George W. Bush recovers from bicycle accident

On May 23, 2004, as reported in the Washington Post, President George Bush recovers from a bicycle accident he’d had the day before. Bush had taken up mountain biking for exercise at the suggestion of physicians. Reporter Dana Milbank recounted how Bush fell from his mountain  bike while completing a 17-mile course on his ranch in Crawford, Texas. Despite scrapes and scratches on his chin, lip, nose, hand and knees, Bush–who was wearing a helmet at the time–got back on his bike and finished the course. Afterwards, a White House spokesperson warned reporters that Bush might show up for his daughter Jenna’s graduation party the next Saturday sporting a bandage on his chin.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1979

Tom Petty defies his record label and files for bankruptcy

The music industry is notorious for its creative accounting practices and for onerous contracts that can keep even some top-selling artists perpetually in debt to their record labels. In a typical recording contract, a record label advances an artist a certain sum of money against future earnings from royalties. But because the cost of things like studio time, marketing support and tour expenses must be “recouped” by the label before an artist earns any royalties, many artists who sign recording contracts never sell enough records to “earn out” their advance. Where this system truly breaks down is when a top-selling artist or group like TLC or Run-DMC finds itself deeply in debt to its record label despite having sold millions of records. Those are but two groups that have pursued a strategy made famous by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Tom Petty when he declared bankruptcy on May 23, 1979 in an effort to free himself from his contract with Shelter Records.

NATURAL DISASTERS & ENVIRONMENT

1960

Deadly tsunami hits Hawaii

A tsunami caused by an earthquake off the coast of Chile travels across the Pacific Ocean and kills 61 people in Hilo, Hawaii, on May 23, 1960. The massive 9.5-magnitude quake had killed thousands in Chile the previous day. The earthquake, involving a severe plate shift, caused a large displacement of water off the coast of southern Chile at 3:11 p.m. Traveling at speeds in excess of 400 miles per hour, the tsunami moved west and north. On the west coast of the United States, the waves caused an estimated $1 million in damages, but were not deadly.

COLD WAR

1949

Federal Republic of Germany is established

The Federal Republic of Germany (popularly known as West Germany) is formally established as a separate and independent nation. This action marked the effective end to any discussion of reuniting East and West Germany. In the period after World War II, Germany was divided into four occupation zones, with the British, French, Americans, and Soviets each controlling one zone. The city of Berlin was also divided in a like fashion. This arrangement was supposed to be temporary, but as Cold War animosities began to harden, it became increasingly evident that the division between the communist and non-communist controlled sections of Germany and Berlin would become permanent. In May 1946, the United States halted reparation payments from West Germany to the Soviet Union. In December, the United States and Great Britain combined their occupation zones into what came to be known as Bizonia. France agreed to become part of this arrangement, and in May 1949, the three zones became one.

AMERICAN REVOLUTION

1777

Meigs Expedition claims Patriot victory on Long Island

At Sag Harbor, New York, Patriot troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs capture several British vessels and burn Redcoat supplies. With the help of two local men, Meigs and his Connecticut raiders grabbed the British commander from his bed in the wee hours of the morning, firing only one gunshot. Instead of guns, the Patriots used silent but deadly bayonets to capture the British fort, successfully avoiding announcing their presence with gunfire.

WORLD WAR I

1915

Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary

On May 23, 1915, Italy declares war on Austria-Hungary, entering World War I on the side of the Allies—Britain, France and Russia. When World War I broke out in the summer of 1914, Italy declared itself neutral in the conflict, despite its membership in the so-called Triple Alliance alongside Germany and Austria-Hungary since 1882. Over the course of the months that followed, Italy and its leaders weighed their options; wooed by both sides, they carefully considered how to gain the greatest benefit from participation in the war. The decision to join the fray on the side of the Allies was based largely on the assurances Italy received in the Treaty of London, signed in April 1915. By its terms, Italy would receive the fulfillment of its national dream: control over territory on its border with Austria-Hungary stretching from Trentino through the South Tyrol to Trieste. In addition, the Allies promised the Italians parts of Dalmatia and numerous islands along Austria-Hungary’s Adriatic coast; the Albanian port city of Vlore (Italian: Valona) and a central protectorate in Albania; and territory from the Ottoman Empire.