TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: MAY 19
1535 French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail for North America.
1536 Anne Boleyn, second wife of English King Henry VIII, is beheaded at the Tower of London on charges of adultery, incest and treason
1568 Defeated by the Protestants, Mary, Queen of Scots, flees to England where Queen Elizabeth imprisons her.
1588 The 130-ship-strong Spanish Armada set sail for England; it was defeated in August.
1635 Cardinal Richelieu of France intervenes in the great conflict in Europe by declaring war on the Hapsburgs in Spain.
1649 England is declared a Commonwealth by an act of the Rump Parliament making England a republic for the next 11 years
1743 Jean-Pierre Christin invents the Celsius thermometer
1780 Near total darkness descends on New England at noon. No explanation is found.
1796 The first U.S. game law was approved. The measure called for penalties for hunting or destroying game within Indian territory.
1857 William Francis Channing & Moses G Farmer patents electric fire alarm
1858 A pro-slavery band led by Charles Hamilton executes unarmed Free State men near Marais des Cygnes on the Kansas-Missouri border.
1862 Homestead Act becomes law provides cheap land for settlement of West
1892 Charles Brady King invents pneumatic hammer
1898 US Congress passes the Private Mailing Card Act, allowing private publishers and printers to produce postcards, had to be labelled “Private Mailing Cards” until 1901, known as “souvenir cards”
1911 The first American criminal conviction that was based on fingerprint evidence occurred in New York City.
1921 Congress sharply curbs immigration, setting a national quota system.
1941 New Nazi battleship Bismarck leaves Gdynia, Poland
1944 240 gypsies transported to Auschwitz from Westerbork Netherlands
1958 US & Canada form North American Air Defense Command (NORAD)
1962 Marilyn Monroe performed a sultry rendition of “Happy Birthday” for U.S. President John F. Kennedy. The event was a fund-raiser at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
1963 Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail is published
1964 U.S. diplomats find at least 40 microphones planted in the American embassy in Moscow.
1967 The Soviet Union ratified a treaty with the United States and Britain that banned nuclear weapons from outer space.
1974 Erno Rubik invented the puzzle what would later become known as the Rubik’s Cube.
1977 “Smokey & the Bandit” premieres
1992 The 27th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited Congress from giving itself midterm pay raises, went into effect.
1992 Amy Fisher shoots Mary Jo Buttafuoco in Massapequa Long Island New York
1992 U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle criticized the CBS sitcom “Murphy Brown” for having its title character decide to bear a child out of wedlock.
REFERENCE: HISTORY.NET, ONTHISDAY.COM, TIMEANDDATE.COM, INFOPLEASE.COM, FACTMONSTER.COM, SCOPESYS.COM, ON-THIS-DAY.COM, THEPEOPLEHISTORY.COM
