Today is Friday, May 23, the 144th day of 2008. There are 222 days left in the year. On this date in

Today is Friday, May 23, the 144th day of 2008. There are 222 days left in the year. On this date in 1934, bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker are shot to death in a police ambush in Bienville Parish, La.

In 1430, Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians, who sell her to the English. In 1533, the marriage of England’s King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon is declared null and void. In 1701, Capt. William Kidd is hanged in London after he is convicted of piracy and murder. In 1788, South Carolina becomes the eighth state to ratify the United States Constitution. In 1940, Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, the Pied Pipers and featured soloist Frank Sinatra record “I’ll Never Smile Again” in New York for RCA. In 1944, during World War II, Allied forces bogged down in Anzio, Italy, begin a major breakout offensive. In 1945, Nazi official Heinrich Himmler commits suicide while imprisoned in Luneburg, Germany. In 1960, Israel announces it has captured former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. (Eichmann is tried in Israel, found guilty of crimes against humanity, and hanged in 1962.) In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court refuses 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. In 1993, a jury in Baton Rouge, La., acquits Rodney Peairs of manslaughter in the shooting death of Yoshi Hattori, a Japanese exchange student he’d mistaken for an intruder. (Peairs is later found liable in a civil suit brought by Hattori’s parents.)

May 23, 1983: Warren General Hospital begins work on a $9.6 million expansion–renovation project while appealing a state ruling the prohibits the hospital from adding any new beds.

Postmaster William F. Bolger predicts an increase in first class stamps, now at 20 cents, but doesn’t say how much the increase will be.

More than 200 people, most of them renters in their 20s who hope to buy their first house, line up in Youngstown to apply for state subsidized mortgages of 9.98 percent.

Jim Davies of StanJim homes says his company is offering first-time homebuyers a 30-year mortgage with a 6.98 percent rate that will climb by 1 percent each year until it reaches a fixed rate of 9.98 percent.

May 23, 1968: Youngstown City Council creates two deputy chiefs of police who will be paid $10,588.

About 200 of Youngstown State University’s 13,000 students stage a peaceful protest calling for some reforms at the university and for retention of social science teacher, Ron Daniels.

Three robbers invade the Knauf Road home of Dr. Bernard J. Drelling and bind and gag the ailing 71-year-old doctor and his 60-year-old housekeeper before ransacking the home and escaping with $200 and other valuables.

May 23, 1958: Two Youngstown district couples returning home from visiting relatives in New York are killed when their car goes out of control on Route 19 near Meadville and collides with a tractor-trailer. Dead are Floyd and Marguerite McLean and William and Catherine Wills.

Martha Whitcher of Damascus, a Goshen Union High School student, is the state winner in the Pillsbury’s school bake-off with a recipe for holiday cookies.

The Most Rev. Emmet M. Walsh, bishop of the Diocese of Youngstown, and the Rev. John H. Burt, record of All Saints Episcopal Church of Padaden, Calif,, will receive honorary degrees at the golden anniversary commencement of Youngstown University.

May 23, 1933: There are five new baby swans at Crandall Park, hatched on Mothers Day. Park Commissioner Lionel Evans gave the two huts the swans use for refuge a spring cleaning.

The Youngstown Community Fund drive ends with the collection of $202,206, about $48,000 below the goal.

Two Alliance brothers, Louis Whitacre, 26, and Paul, 19, are injured when the airplane in which they were riding struck a tree top and crashed at the Stocker airport three miles east of Alliance.

Raymond D. Fusselman of Warren and William L. Aiken and Robert P. Madden of Sharon, Pa., are among 435 midshipmen graduating from the United States Naval Academy. This is the first class at Annapolis to receive academic degrees upon graduation.