15th of May

Today is the 135th day of the year, with only 230 days remaining until the new year.

1252 - Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad exstirpanda, which authorizes, but also limits, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition.

1618 - Johannes Kepler confirms his previously rejected discovery of the third law of planetary motion.

1718 - James Puckle, a London lawyer, patents the world's first machine gun.

1755 - Laredo, Texas is established by Spanish settlers.

1811 - Paraguay declares its independence from Spain.

1817 - Opening of the first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1862 - President Abraham Lincoln signs a bill into law creating the United States Bureau of Agriculture.

1864 - At the Battle of New Market, Virginia, students from the Virginia Military Institute flight alongside the Confederate Army to force Union General Franz Sigel ot of the Shenandoah Valley.

1869 - Susan B. Anthonty and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.

1905 - Las Vegas, Nevada, is founded when 110 acres, in what later would become downtown, are auctioned off.

1928 - Mickey Mouse premieres in his first cartoon, Plane Crazy.

1940 - McDonald's opens it first restaurant in San Bernardino, California.

1942 - In The United States, a bill creates the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps is signed into law.

1945 - The final skirmish in Europe is fought near Prevalje, Slovenia.

1969 - California Governor Ronald Reagan has an impromptu student park owned by University of California, Berkeley fenced off from student anti-war protestors, sparking a riot called Bloody Thursday.

1990 - Portrait of Doctor Gachet by Vincent van Gogh is sold for a record $82.5 million, the most expensive painting at the time.

1997 - The United States government acknowledges this existence of the "Secret War" in Laos and dedicates the Laos Memorial in honor of Hmong fighters and other veterans.

2010 - Jessica Watson becomes the youngest person to sail, non-stop and unassisted around the world solo.