At Sag Harbor, New York, Patriot troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Return Jonathan Meigs capture several British vessels and burn Redcoat supplies.

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.

Deeply in debt and relegated to a shabby theater, the musical Shuffle Along debuts at the Sixty-Third Street Music Hall on May 23, 1921. The odds are stacked against the revue-style show, written and performed by African Americans, but it will run for over a year, making it the first major Black American musical on the Great White Way.

On May 23, 1941, Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten, second cousin of King George VI of Britain and the only man other than the king to hold rank in all three military services simultaneously, is among those thrown into the Mediterranean Sea when his destroyer, the HMS Kelly, is sunk.

The music industry is notorious for its creative accounting practices and for onerous contracts that can keep even some top-selling artists perpetually in debt to their record labels. In a typical recording contract, a record label advances an artist a certain sum of money against future earnings from royalties. But because the cost of things like studio time, marketing support and tour expenses must be “recouped” by the label before an artist earns any royalties, many artists who sign recording contracts never sell enough records to “earn out” their advance. Where this system truly breaks down is when a top-selling artist or group like TLC or Run-DMC finds itself deeply in debt to its record label despite having sold millions of records. Those are but two groups that have pursued a strategy made famous by Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Tom Petty when he declared bankruptcy on May 23, 1979 in an effort to free himself from his contract with Shelter Records.