Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential visit showing parade viewed from a nearby building, Seattle, May 23, 1903
Source via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
On May 23, 1776, Congress appointed a committee made up of Mr. Harrison, Mr. R. H. Lee and Mr. J. Adams, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Rutledge to confer with General Washington, Major General Gates, and Brigadier General Mifflin, upon the most speedy and effectual means of supporting the American Cause in Canada.
Source: https://archive.org/details/journalsofcongre00unit_12/page/186/mode/1up
“Six weeks exactly after his return, on Friday afternoon the 23d day of May 1783, a heavy cloud suddenly arose, and the greater part of the family were collected in one of the rooms to wait till the shower should have past. Otis, with his cane in one hand, stood against the post of the door which opened from this apartment into the front entry. He was in the act of telling the assembled group a story, when an explosion took place which seemed to shake the solid earth, and he fell without a struggle, or a word, instantaneously dead, into the arms of Mr. Osgood, who seeing him falling, sprang forward to receive him. This flash of lightning was the first that came from the cloud, and was not followed by any others that were remarkable. There were seven or eight persons in the room, but no other was injured. No mark of any kind could be found on Otis, nor was there the slightest change or convulsion in his features.”
According to some accounts, James Otis-the patriot recognized for his bold declaration, “Taxation without representation is tyranny”
—once voiced an uncanny wish: to be taken from this world by a flash of lightning. On May 23, 1783, his words became reality as a bolt struck him down, fulfilling his own prophecy.
Source of the first excerpt above: The Life of James Otis by William Tudor, published in 1823
On May 23, 1788, South Carolina became the 8th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
Image: Ichnography of Charleston, South-Carolina from a survey done in 1788 via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
American General Ambrose E. Burnside was born on May 23, 1824 in Liberty, Indiana.
About a year after the American Civil War he became the Governor of Rhode Island.
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Snapshot of the spot in Louisiana where Bonnie and Clyde were ambushed and killed on May 23, 1934
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
“Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, & Mary Pickford”
– 1919
Douglas Fairbanks was born on May 23, 1883
in Denver, Colorado.
via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
N.L. Batting Champion of 1918, Zack Wheat, was born on May 23, 1888 in Hamilton, Missouri.
After retiring from baseball he owned a farm, but lost it during the Great Depression. He later co-owned a bowling alley and then became a police officer. After recovering from near fatal accident during a high speed chase he decided to open a hunting and fishing resort in Missouri.
He passed away in 1972.
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Red Skelton with Rosemary Clooney in late 1962 on the Red Skelton Hour
On May 23, 1928, American singer and actress Rosemary Clooney was born in Maysville, Kentucky.
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Mule Deer at Mammoth, Yellowstone National Park
May 23, 1916
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
On May 23, 1900, American Civil War Veteran William Harvey Carney received the Medal of Honor.
During the attack on Fort Wagner in 1863, despite being wounded, he continued to carry the regimental colors of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry.
He said “Boys, I only did my duty; the old flag never touched the ground.”
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
Grand review at Washington–Sheridan’s Calvary passing through Pennsylvania Avenue, May 23, 1865
via LOC, no known restrictions
The Squalus Rescue: A Miracle in the Deep
On May 23, 1939, the brand‑new submarine USS Squalus slipped beneath the Atlantic for a routine test dive — and never resurfaced. A single valve failure sent a wall of seawater roaring through the aft compartments, killing 26 men instantly. The submarine plunged to the bottom and settled 243 feet down, where no human being had ever been rescued alive.
But in the forward compartments, 33 men survived — trapped in freezing darkness, rationing air, listening to the hull groan under the pressure of the deep.
At that depth, rescue was considered impossible.
No navy on earth had ever pulled men alive from such a grave.
Then came the miracle.
The Navy deployed a brand‑new invention: the McCann Rescue Chamber, a 10‑ton steel diving bell designed to clamp onto a sunken submarine’s escape hatch. It had never been used in a real emergency.
Trip after trip, the chamber descended into the black water, locked onto the Squalus, and hauled survivors back to the surface. It was the first successful deep‑submarine rescue in world history.
But the final lift nearly ended in disaster.
On the fourth trip up — carrying the last survivors — the rescue chamber’s cables jammed. The bell hung suspended in open ocean, swaying in the swell, with the trapped men running out of air. Navy divers had to descend in the dark, manually cut the fouled cables, and guide the chamber up by hand.
The men inside the chamber survived.
Among the divers was Chief Boatswain’s Mate William Badders (shown), a veteran of the Navy’s Experimental Diving Unit. Working in crushing cold and darkness, breathing the new helium‑oxygen mixture that kept him conscious at depth, Badders helped free the jammed chamber and bring the last survivors home. His actions earned him the Medal of Honor — one of the few ever awarded for non‑combat heroism.
It was a triumph of engineering, courage, and a breakthrough in deep‑sea diving science. Without helium‑oxygen mixtures, the divers would have suffered nitrogen narcosis — a drunken, dreamlike state — long before reaching the wreck.
The story didn’t end there.
The Navy refused to let the Squalus remain a tomb. They raised the submarine from the seafloor, repaired her, and recommissioned her as USS Sailfish. In a twist almost too strange for fiction, Sailfish went on to fight in the Pacific — and in 1943, she sank a Japanese aircraft carrier that happened to be transporting survivors from another lost American submarine.
A ship that died and rose again… sinking a ship carrying men who had survived a different sinking.
The Squalus rescue remains one of the most astonishing survival stories in American naval history — the day 33 men were pulled back from a depth that should have killed them, and lived to tell the tale.
Image: William Badders, photographed on January 19, 1940, after receiving the Medal of Honor for his heroism during the rescue and salvage of USS Squalus. He served as the senior member of the rescue chamber crew and later as a diver during the salvage. His other decorations include the Navy Cross, WWI Victory Medal, and Yangtze Service Medal.
