May 19
1499
Catherine of Aragon is
married by proxy to
Arthur, Prince of Wales. Catherine is 13 and Arthur is 12.
1536
Anne Boleyn, the second wife of
Henry VIII of England, is beheaded for adultery, treason, and incest.
1780
New England's Dark Day: A combination of thick smoke and heavy cloud cover causes complete darkness to fall on Eastern Canada and the New England area of the United States at 10:30 A.M.
1845 Captain
Sir John Franklin and his
ill-fated Arctic expedition depart from Greenhithe, England. The entire expedition, 129 men, is lost.
1848 MexicanAmerican War: Mexico ratifies the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo thus ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States for US$15 million.
1897 Oscar Wilde is released from
Reading Gaol.
1943 World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set Monday, May 1, 1944 as the date for the
Normandy landings ("D-Day"). It would later be delayed over a month due to bad weather.
1962 A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy takes place at Madison Square Garden, New York City.
The highlight is Marilyn Monroe's rendition of "Happy Birthday".
1984 Michael Larson, a contestant on the television game show Press Your Luck
exploits a bug in the prize board, and wins over US$110,000.
Births
1795 Johns Hopkins; 1861 Nellie Melba (
Melba Toast,
Peach Melba); 1870 Albert Fish (serial killer); 1890 Ho Chi Minh; 1925 Pol Pot; 1925 Malcolm X; 1928 Colin Chapman (founded
Lotus); 1934 Jim Lehrer; 1935 David Hartman; 1939 Dick Scobee; 1941 Nora Ephron; 1945 Pete Townshend; 1946 Andrι the Giant; 1947 Steve Currie; 1948 Grace Jones; 1949 Dusty Hill (ZZTop); 1949 Archie Manning; 1951 Joey Ramone; 1953 Jimmy Thackery; 1953 Victoria Wood; 1954 Phil Rudd (AC/DC); 1956 Steven Ford; 1959 Nicole Brown Simpson; 1968 Kyle Eastwood (one of Clint's boys)
Deaths
1536 Anne Boleyn; 1795 Josiah Bartlett (signatory of the Declaration of Independence); 1864 Nathaniel Hawthorne; 1935 T. E. Lawrence; 1946 Booth Tarkington; 1971 Ogden Nash; 1994 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; 2014 Jack Brabham