May 23 in History

The Mexican–American War, also known in the United States as the Mexican War and in Mexico as the United States intervention in Mexico, was an invasion of Mexico by the United States. It followed the 1845 American annexation of Texas, which Mexico still considered its territory because it refused to recognize the Treaties of Velasco, signed by President Antonio López de Santa Anna after he was captured by the Texian Army during the 1836 Texas Revolution. The Republic of Texas was de facto an independent country, but most of its Anglo-American citizens who had moved from the United States to Texas after 1822 wanted to be annexed by the United States.

The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was a Canadian paramilitary police force, established in 1873, to maintain order in the new Canadian North-West Territories (NWT) following the 1870 transfer of Rupert's Land and North-Western Territory from the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada. The Red River Rebellion and reports of lawlessness in the West, demonstrated by the subsequent Cypress Hills Massacre and fears of United States military incursions into Canada's new hinterland had pushed the Canada government to provide the means of enforcement of law and order. The NWMP, later renamed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, combined military, police and judicial functions along similar lines to the Royal Irish Constabulary. A small, mobile police force was chosen as the best way to reduce potential for tensions with the United States and with First Nations. The NWMP uniforms included red coats deliberately reminiscent of British and Canadian military uniforms.

Abdülhamid II or Abdul Hamid II was the 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire, from 1876 to 1909, and the last sultan to exert effective control over the fracturing state. He oversaw a period of decline with rebellions, and presided over an unsuccessful war with the Russian Empire (1877–78), the loss of Egypt, Cyprus, Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, Tunisia, and Thessaly from Ottoman control (1877–1882), followed by a successful war against Greece in 1897, though Ottoman gains were tempered by subsequent Western European intervention.

The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress and one of the largest public libraries in the world. It is a private, non-governmental, independently managed, nonprofit corporation operating with both private and public financing.

Sheikh Mahmud Barzanji, also known as Mahmud Hafid Zadeh was a Kurdish leader of a series of Kurdish uprisings against the British Mandate of Iraq. He was sheikh of a Qadiriyah Sufi family of the Barzanji clan from the city of Sulaymaniyah, which is now in Kurdistan Region. He was named King of Kurdistan during several of these uprisings.

Bank robbery is the criminal act of stealing from a bank, specifically while bank employees and customers are subjected to force, violence, or a threat of violence. This refers to robbery of a bank branch or teller, as opposed to other bank-owned property, such as a train, armored car, or (historically) stagecoach. It is a federal crime in the United States.

The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and is designated as the navy of the United States in the Constitution. With 290 combat vessels, it is the world's second largest navy, behind the People's Liberation Army Navy, and by far the largest by displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft carrier fleet, with eleven in service, one undergoing trials, two new carriers under construction, and six other carriers planned as of 2024. The Navy is a part of the Department of Defense and is one of six armed forces and eight uniformed services of the United States.

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was a German Nazi politician and military leader. He was the 4th Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel from 1929 to 1945. He was a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful figures in Nazi Germany. He was also one of the main architects of the Holocaust, the genocide of Europe's Jewish population.

On May 23–24, 1946, a tornado outbreak occurred across the Central and Midwestern United States. Over two days at least 15 significant tornadoes struck parts of Kansas, Nebraska and Oklahoma, killing four people and injuring 42 others. The storm system also caused numerous other impacts including hail, heavy rains, and damaging lightning strikes.

The entirety of Germany was occupied and administered by the Allies of World War II, from the Berlin Declaration on 5 June 1945 to the establishment of West Germany on 23 May 1949. Nazi Germany was stripped of its sovereignty and its government was entirely dissolved. After Germany formally surrendered on Tuesday, 8 May 1945, the four countries representing the Allies asserted joint authority and sovereignty through the Allied Control Council (ACC).

A tsunami is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and underwater explosions above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami. Unlike normal ocean waves, which are generated by wind, or tides, which are in turn generated by the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun, a tsunami is generated by the displacement of water from a large event.

The Grand Hotel Bucharest is a 24-story 87 m (285 ft) high-rise five-star hotel situated near University Square, Bucharest, in Sector 1. Opened in 1971 as the Inter-Continental Bucharest, it is a city landmark.

Aeroflot Flight 8556 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Sukhumi to Leningrad. It crashed 13 meters short of the runway on approach killing 13 passengers.

Java is a high-level, general-purpose, memory-safe, object-oriented programming language. It is intended to let programmers write once, run anywhere (WORA), meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Java without the need to recompile. Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode that can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of the underlying computer architecture. The syntax of Java is similar to C and C++, but has fewer low-level facilities than either of them. The Java runtime provides dynamic capabilities that are typically not available in traditional compiled languages.

The Kyoto Protocol (Japanese: 京都議定書, Hepburn: Kyōto Giteisho) was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring and that human-made CO2 emissions are driving it. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. There were 192 parties (Canada withdrew from the protocol, effective December 2012) to the Protocol in 2020.

The International Court of Justice, or colloquially the World Court, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN). It settles legal disputes submitted to it by states and provides advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by other UN organs and specialized agencies. The ICJ is the only international court that adjudicates general disputes between countries, with its rulings and opinions serving as primary sources of international law. It is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations.

On the evening of May 23, 2014, multiple misogynistic terrorist attacks occurred in Isla Vista, California, United States. Elliot Rodger murdered six people and injured fourteen others by gunshot, stabbing, and vehicle ramming near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), before fatally shooting himself.

The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and by its Arabic acronym Daesh, is a transnational Salafi jihadist militant organisation and internationally unrecognized quasi-state. IS occupied significant territory in Iraq and Syria in 2013, but lost most of it between 2017 and 2019. In 2014, the group proclaimed itself to be a worldwide caliphate, and claimed religious and political authority over all Muslims worldwide, a claim not accepted by the vast majority of Muslims. It is designated as a terrorist organisation by the United Nations and many countries around the world, including Muslim countries.

Rodrigo Roa Duterte is a Filipino lawyer and politician who served as the 16th president of the Philippines from 2016 to 2022. He had served as the mayor of Davao City in the past. Duterte is the first Philippine president from Mindanao, and is the oldest person to assume office, beginning his term at age 71. Duterte is the chairman of Partido Demokratiko Pilipino, the ruling party during his presidency.

Anthony Norman Albanese is an Australian politician who has served as the 31st prime minister of Australia since 2022. He has been the leader of the Labor Party since 2019 and the member of parliament (MP) for the New South Wales division of Grayndler since 1996.