Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/May 31

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 * 1215 — A Mongol army under Genghis Khan captures Zhongdu (modern Beijing), the capital of the Jin dynasty.
 * 1293 – Majapahit forces under Raden Wijaya won a major victory in the Mongol invasion of Java, now considered to be the founding date of the Indonesian city of Surabaya.
 * 1775 – American Revolution: The Committee of Safety of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, adopted the Mecklenburg Resolves, which annulled and vacated all laws originating from the authority of the King or Parliament.
 * 1862 – American Civil War: Confederate troops under Joseph E. Johnston and G. W. Smith engaged Union forces under George B. McClellan at the Battle of Seven Pines outside Richmond, Virginia.
 * 1879 – Gilmore's Garden in New York City was renamed Madison Square Garden, the city's first venue to use that name.
 * 1902 – The Second Boer War came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging in Pretoria, South Africa.
 * 1941 - German forces dropped four bombs on neutral Ireland, killing 28 people and damaging the residence of the President of Ireland.
 * 1941 – The United Kingdom completed its re-occupation of Iraq, returning Abd al-Ilah to power as regent for Faisal II.
 * 1981 – An organized mob of police and government-sponsored Sinhalese paramilitary forces began three days of attacks that led to the burning of the Jaffna Library in Sri Lanka.
 * 2005 – A Vanity Fair article revealed that the secret informant known as "Deep Throat", who had provided information about the Watergate scandal, was former FBI associate director Mark Felt (pictured).
 * 2009 – American physician George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the country who performed late-term abortions, was shot and killed by Scott Roeder, an anti-abortion activist.
 * Born/died: | Géza II of Hungary |d|1162| Nur Jahan |b|1577| Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud |b|1753| Walt Whitman |b|1819|| Kusumoto Ine |b|1827| Walter Sickert |b|1860| Rosa May Billinghurst |b|1875| Chien-Shiung Wu |b|1912| Bernard Lewis |b|1916|  Jørgen Jensen |d|1922 Clint Eastwood |b|1930| Timothy Leary |d|1996| Derek Hodge |d|2011| Jan Crouch |d|2016| Carla Lane |d|2016

May 31: World No Tobacco Day


 * 455 – Petronius Maximus, ruler of the Western Roman Empire, was stoned to death by a mob as he fled Rome ahead of the arrival of a Vandal force that sacked the city.
 * 1223 – Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus': Mongol forces defeated a Kievan Rus' army at the Kalka River in present-day Ukraine.
 * 1468 – Cardinal Bessarion (pictured) announced his donation of 746 Greek and Latin codices to the Republic of Venice, forming the Biblioteca Marciana.
 * 1935 – An earthquake registering 7.7 Mw struck Balochistan in British India, now part of Pakistan, killing between 30,000 and 60,000 people.
 * 2013 – A tornado struck Central Oklahoma, killing 8 people and injuring more than 150.