• Today is Wednesday, May 23, the 144th day of 2012. There are 222 days left in the year.
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• Today's Highlight in History:
• On May 23, 1937, industrialist and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, founder of the Standard Oil Co. and the Rockefeller Foundation, died in Ormond Beach, Fla., at age 97.
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• On this date:
• In 1430, Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English.
• In 1533, the marriage of England's King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void.
• In 1701, William Kidd was hanged in London after he was convicted of piracy and murder.
• In 1788, South Carolina became the eighth state to ratify the United States Constitution.
• In 1873, Canada's Parliament voted to establish the North West Mounted Police force.
• In 1911, the newly completed New York Public Library was dedicated by President William Howard Taft, Gov. John Alden Dix and Mayor William Jay Gaynor.
• In 1934, bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were shot to death in a police ambush in Bienville Parish, La.
• In 1945, Nazi official Heinrich Himmler committed suicide while imprisoned in Luneburg, Germany.
• In 1949, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) was established.
• In 1962, the movie version of "The Miracle Worker," with Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft reprising their Broadway roles as Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, opened in New York.
• In 1967, Egypt closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships, an action which precipitated war between Israel and its Arab neighbors the following month.
• In 1984, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop issued a report saying there was "very solid" evidence linking cigarette smoke to lung disease in non-smokers.

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