Thursday Morning GMT 05/18/17

526 St. John I ends his reign as Catholic Pope.

1643 Queen Anne, the widow of Louis XIII, is granted sole and absolute power as regent by the Paris parliament, overriding the late king's will.

1652 A law is passed in Rhode Island banning slavery in the colonies but it causes little stir and seems unlikely to be enforced.

1792 Russian troops invade Poland.

1802 Britain declares war on France.

1804 Napoleon Bonaparte becomes the Emperor of France.

1828 The Battle of Las Piedras, between Uruguay and Brazil, ends.

1860 Abraham Lincoln is nominated for president.

1864 The fighting at Spotsylvania in Virginia, reaches its peak at the Bloody Angle.

1896 The Supreme Court's decision on Plessy v. Ferguson upholds the "separate but equal" policy in the United States.

1904 Brigand Raisuli kidnaps American Ion H. Perdicaris in Morocco.

1917 The U.S. Congress passes the Selective Service act, calling up soldiers to fight World War I.

1931 Japanese pilot Seiji Yoshihara crashes his plane in the Pacific Ocean while trying to be the first to cross the ocean nonstop. He is picked up seven hours later by a passing ship.

1933 President Franklin Roosevelt signs the Tennessee Valley Authority Act.

1942 New York ends night baseball games for the rest of World War II.

1944 The Allies finally capture Monte Cassino in Italy.

1951 The United Nations moves its headquarters to New York city.

1969 Two battalions of the 101st Airborne Division assault Hill 937 but cannot reach the top because of muddy conditions.

1974 India becomes the sixth nation to explode an atomic bomb.

1980 After rumbling for two months, Mount Saint Helens, in Washington, erupts 3 times in 24 hours.