The question, taken from the Bible (Numbers 23:23), had been
suggested to Morse by Annie Ellworth, the daughter of the 
commissioner of patents.

Annie G. Ellsworth

Recognized for heroically protecting the American flag during
the Civil War, Army Sgt. William Harvey Carney receives the
Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, on
May 23, 1900.

The first Black American service member to earn the award,
Carney was born into slavery in Virginia in 1840.

He was one of many Civil War-era honorees to be granted the
medal decades later.

On May 23, 1934, notorious criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde
Barrow were shot to death by Texas and Louisiana state police
near Sailes, Louisiana.

Bonnie Parker met the charismatic Clyde Barrow in Texas when
she was 19 years old and her husband (she married when she
was 16) was serving time in jail for murder.

After the ambush, the bullet-riddled Ford V8 was towed
away and eventually became a macabre tourist attraction.
It was displayed at various fairs and carnivals, drawing
crowds fascinated by the notorious couple’s bloody
demise.

The Bonnie and Clyde death car on display today.

The first major wagon train to the northwest departs from Elm
Grove, Missouri, on the Oregon Trail.

Although U.S. sovereignty over the Oregon Territory was not
clearly established until 1846, American fur trappers and
missionary groups had been living in the region for decades,
to say nothing of the Native Americans who had settled the
land centuries earlier.

They followed a route blazed by fur traders, which took them west
along the Platte River through the Rocky Mountains via the easy
South Pass in Wyoming and then northwest to the Columbia River.