May 23 birthdays & history

Famous people born on May 23

• 1707Carl Linnaeus, Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist
• 1891Pär Lagerkvist, Swedish novelist, playwright, and poet, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1908John Bardeen, American physicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1951Anatoly Karpov, Russian chess player
• 1991Lena Meyer-Landrut, German singer-songwriter
• 1949Alan García, Peruvian lawyer and politician, twice President of Peru
• 1972Rubens Barrichello, Brazilian race car driver
• 1848Otto Lilienthal, German pilot and engineer
• 1883Douglas Fairbanks, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter
• 1933Joan Collins, English actress

What happened on May 23

• 1533Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, annulled Henry VIII's marriage to his first wife Catherine of Aragon, beginning events that would culminate in the English Reformation.
• 1829Accordion patent granted to Cyrill Demian in Vienna, Austrian Empire.
• 1844Báb: A merchant of Shiraz announces that he is a Prophet and founds a religious movement. He is considered to be a forerunner of the Baháʼí Faith.
• 1863The General German Workers' Association, a precursor of the modern Social Democratic Party of Germany, is founded in Leipzig, Kingdom of Saxony.
• 1873The North-West Mounted Police, the forerunner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was established to bring law and order to and assert Canadian sovereignty over the Northwest Territories.
• 1895Backed by Samuel J. Tilden, the Astor Library and the Lenox Library agreed to merge and form the New York Public Library.
• 1905Abdul Hamid II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, publicly announces the creation of the Ullah millet for the Aromanians of the empire, which had been established one day earlier. For this reason, the Aromanian National Day is usually celebrated on May 23, although some do so on May 22 instead.
• 1907The unicameral Parliament of Finland gathers for its first plenary session.
• 1911The New York Public Library is dedicated.
• 1980The Shining, the psychological horror film directed by Stanley Kubrick, premiered on 10 screens in New York City and Los Angeles.
• 2008The International Court of Justice awarded the Middle Rocks to Malaysia and Pedra Branca to Singapore, resolving a 29-year-old territorial dispute in the Singapore Strait.
• 2021Ryanair Flight 4978 was forced to land by Belarusian authorities, who detained dissident journalist Roman Protasevich.

Also observed on May 23

• Aromanian National Day
• Constitution Day (Germany)
• Labour Day (Jamaica)
• Students' Day (Mexico)
• World Turtle Day