On This Day: Monday, May 23, 2005 (from reference.com) This is the 143rd day of the year, with 222 days remaining in 2005. Holidays Feast day of Saints Montanus and Lucius, St William of Rochester, St Aldhelm, St Euphrosyne of Polotsk, St Ivo of Chartres, St Leontius of Rostov, St Desiderius of Vienne, and St John Baptist dei Rossi. Morocco: National Day. Sweden: Linnaeus Day. Events 1430 - Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English. 1533 - Henry VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon is declared null and void. 1785 - Benjamin Franklin announces his invention of bifocals. 1788 - South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the US Constitution. 1865 - The Army of the Potomac celebrated the end of the Civil War by parading down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. 1911 - President William Howard Taft dedicated the New York Public Library, the largest marble structure ever constructed in the United States. 1915 - Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary in World War I. 1934 - Nylon was first produced by Dr. Wallace Carothers, a chemist at Du Pont. 1935 - The first night baseball game played under lights occurred, in Cincinnati OH between the Cincinnati Reds and Philadelphia Phillies. 1949 - The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) came into being, with its capital at Bonn. 1960 - Israel announced the arrest (after abduction in Argentina) of Adolf Eichmann, who had been responsible for organizing the Germans' mass extermination of Jews in World War II. Births 1335 - Tamerlane the Great, Mongol leader. 1707 - Carolus Linnaeus (Carl von Linné), Swedish botanist. 1734 - Friedrich Anton Mesmer, physician and hypnotist. 1848 - Otto Lilienthal, German aviator. 1875 - Alfred Sloan, American philanthropist who headed General Motors for more than 25 years. 1883 - Douglas Fairbanks (Julius Ullman), actor. 1910 - Scatman (Benjamin) Crothers, entertainer. 1910 - Artie Shaw, bandleader and clarinetist. 1928 - Rosemary Clooney, singer, actress. 1934 - Robert A. Moog, electrical engineer, creator of synthesizer. Deaths 1701 - Captain William Kidd, Scottish pirate, hanged on the banks of the Thames. 1934 - Bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, shot to death in a police ambush in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.