Troops of the British Expeditionary Force landed from a destroyer at a British Port on June 1, 1940 after being evacuated following heroic fighting from Flanders. (AP file photo)

Today in History: May 26, the World War II Dunkirk evacuation begins

By The Associated Press

Today is Tuesday, May 26, the 146th day of 2026. There are 219 days left in the year. This is Memorial Day.

Today in history:

On May 26, 1940, Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of more than 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk, France, began during World War II.

Also on this date:

In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure creating the Montana Territory.

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924, which barred immigration from Asia and restricted the total number of immigrants from other parts of the world to 165,000 annually.

In 1927, the Ford Model T officially ended production as Henry Ford and his son Edsel drove the 15 millionth Model T off the Ford assembly line in Highland Park, Michigan.

In 1938, the House Un-American Activities Committee was established by Congress.

In 1954, an explosion occurred aboard the aircraft carrier USS Bennington off Rhode Island, killing 103 sailors.

In 1967, the Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” was released.

In 1972, President Richard M. Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty in Moscow. (The U.S. withdrew from the treaty under President George W. Bush in 2002.)

In 1981, 14 people were killed when a Marine jet crashed onto the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz off Florida.

In 2009, California’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban but said the 18,000 same-sex weddings that had taken place before the prohibition passed were still valid. (Same-sex marriage became legal nationwide in June 2015.)

In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2011, Ratko Mladić, the Bosnian Serb general suspected of leading the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, was arrested after a 16-year manhunt. (Extradited to face trial in The Hague, Netherlands, Mladić was convicted in 2017 on genocide and war crimes charges and is serving a life sentence.)

Today’s Birthdays: Singer-songwriter Stevie Nicks is 78. Actor Pam Grier is 77. Country singer Hank Williams Jr. is 77. Celebrity chef Masaharu Morimoto is 71. Actor Genie Francis is 64. Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait is 64. Musician Lenny Kravitz is 62. Actor Helena Bonham Carter is 60. Actor Joseph Fiennes is 56. Actor-producer-writer Matt Stone is 55. Singer-songwriter Lauryn Hill is 51. Singer Jaheim is 48. NHL player Mathew Barzal is 29. Actor Lola Flanery is 21.