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Today in History, May 23rd

On May 23, 1934, lawmen ambushed and killed outlaws Bonnie and Clyde in Louisiana. Plus Captain Kidd's hanging and the founding of West Germany.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published May 23, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

May 23 is best known for 1934, when lawmen ambushed and killed the outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow on a Louisiana country road. The date also saw the hanging of Captain Kidd in London in 1701 and the founding of West Germany in 1949.

The big story: Bonnie and Clyde are gunned down (1934)

Bonnie Parker was 19 and already married to a man in jail for murder when she met Clyde Barrow in Texas. Barrow soon went to prison for robbery, and Parker smuggled him a gun for an escape that ended with his recapture in Ohio. After his parole in 1932, the pair teamed up for good. For about two years they and a shifting gang, including Clyde’s brother Buck, robbed banks and stores across five states. The gang was blamed for 13 deaths, nine of them police officers. Texas prison officials finally hired Frank Hamer, a retired Texas Ranger, to hunt them. After three months he tracked them to Louisiana, where the family of gang member Henry Methvin lived. Before dawn on May 23, 1934, Hamer and a posse of Texas and Louisiana officers hid in the brush along a road outside Sailes and opened fire when the couple drove up. Playful photos released to the press had already made the pair folk antiheroes, and the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde sealed the legend.

More events on May 23

Year	What happened
1430	Joan of Arc was captured by Burgundian forces near Compiègne, France.
1618	The Defenestration of Prague, a protest against religious persecution, helped set off the Thirty Years’ War.
1701	William Kidd, the privateer known as Captain Kidd, was hanged in London for piracy and murder.
1785	In a letter, Benjamin Franklin described his design for what came to be called bifocal glasses.
1900	Sgt. William Carney, born into slavery in Virginia, received the Medal of Honor for protecting the U.S. flag during the Civil War, the first Black American so honored.
1903	Two men left San Francisco on the first transcontinental automobile trip, bound for New York.
1911	President William Howard Taft dedicated the New York Public Library’s main building, then the largest marble structure in the U.S.
1915	Italy declared war on Austria-Hungary and entered World War I on the Allied side.
1949	The Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany, was established, years after the country was divided into occupation zones following World War II.
1980	Stanley Kubrick’s horror film The Shining was released in theaters.
2000	Eminem released The Marshall Mathers LP, which became the fastest-selling rap album up to that time.
2015	Ireland announced the results of its same-sex marriage referendum: about 62% voted yes, making it the first country to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote.

Born on May 23

1707: Carl Linnaeus, Swedish botanist who created the modern system for naming species, born in Råshult.
1848: Otto Lilienthal, German glider pioneer, born in Anklam, Prussia.
1908: John Bardeen, American physicist who won two Nobel Prizes, one for co-inventing the transistor, born in Madison, Wisconsin.