This Day in History for May 22

1693 - French again destroy Heidelberg, Germany, and ravage the Rhineland.

1761 - The first life insurance policy in the United States is issued, in Philadelphia.

1819 - The American steamboat Savannah makes its first trans-Atlantic crossing.

1833 - A new constitution in Chile gives greater power to the president and establishes Roman Catholicism as state religion.

1822 - United States and Korea sign treaty of peace and friendship.

1840 - Transportation of British convicts to New South Wales officially ends.

1867 - Canada becomes the first dominion of the British Empire, gaining a parliament, cabinet and large measure of independence.

1868 - The Great Train Robbery takes place near Marshfield, Indiana, as seven members of the Reno gang make off with $96,000 in cash, gold and bonds.

1914 - Britain acquires control of oil properties in Gulf from Anglo-Persian Oil Company.

1939 - Germany's Adolf Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini sign "Pact of Steel," a 10-year political and military alliance.

1967 - Communist-led riots take place in Hong Kong against British.

1969 - The lunar module of Apollo 10 separates from the command module and flies to within 14 kilometers (nine miles) of the moon's surface in a dress rehearsal for the first lunar landing.

1972 - Richard Nixon becomes the first U.S. president to visit Russia, where he signs a pact with Leonid Brezhnev to reduce the risk of military confrontation; the island nation of Ceylon becomes the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka with the adoption of a new constitution.

1975 - White-ruled African nation of Rhodesia, now known as Zimbabwe, is expelled from Olympics because of its racial policies.

1984 - Soviet forces continue to bomb the access route to the Panjshir Valley in northern Afghanistan while pursuing a diplomatic solution to the 4-year-old struggle against guerrillas.

1985 - A car bomb explodes in a Beirut suburb, killing 60 people and wounding 190 others.

1989 - India successfully test fires its first medium-range surface-to-surface missile.

1990 - After years of conflict, pro-Western North Yemen and pro-Soviet South Yemen merge to form the Republic of Yemen.

1991 - India's Congress Party offers party leadership to Sonia Gandhi, widow of assassinated leader Rajiv Gandhi, but she refuses, only to take it up in 1998.

1992 - The United States slaps political and diplomatic sanctions against Serbia for perpetuating a "humanitarian nightmare" in the Balkans.

1993 - Cambodians vote in first multiparty elections in 21 years.

1994 - Tutsi rebels capture international airport in Rwanda's capital and overrun military base nearby.

1995 - Half a million Poles turn out to catch a glimpse of their native son Pope John Paul II during his 10-hour visit in southern Poland.

1996 - American and French planes carry foreigners out of Bangui, Central African Republic, as President Ange-Felix Patasse rejects army mutineers' demands that he resign.

1997 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin fires his defense minister and several top generals for their resistance to budget cuts and military restructuring.