T.E. Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia, dies as a retired Royal Air Force mechanic living under an assumed name.

New York City’s Chinatown is almost entirely shut down on May 19, 1975, with shuttered stores displaying signs reading “Closed to Protest Police Brutality.” The demonstration is a reaction to the New York Police Department’s treatment of Peter Yew, a Chinese-American architectural engineer who was arrested, viciously beaten and charged with felonious assault after he […]

On May 19, 1897, writer Oscar Wilde is released from jail after two years of hard labor. His experiences in prison were the basis for his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898). Wilde was born and educated in Ireland. He studied at Oxford, graduated with honors in 1878, and remained in London. He […]

One of the first major treaties designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons goes into effect as the Soviet Union ratifies an agreement banning nuclear weapons from outer space. The United States, Great Britain and several dozen other nations had already signed and/or ratified the treaty. With the advent of the so-called “space race” […]

President Abraham Lincoln writes to anti-slavery Congressional leader Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on May 19, 1864, proposing that widows and children of soldiers should be given equal treatment regardless of race. Lincoln shared many of his friend Sumner’s views on civil rights. In an unprecedented move, Lincoln allowed a Black woman, the widow of […]

On May 19, 2018, Prince Harry of Britain marries Meghan Markle, an American actress, in St. George’s Chapel within the grounds of Windsor Castle. Some 600 guests attend the ceremony and nearly 2 billion people worldwide watch the televised event.  For the ceremony, Markle wore a white boat-neck dress by British designer Clare Waight Keller, […]

On May 19, 1536, Anne Boleyn, the infamous second wife of King Henry VIII, is executed on charges including adultery, incest and conspiracy against the king. Catherine of Aragon King Henry had become enamored of Anne Boleyn in the mid-1520s, when she returned from serving in the French court and became a lady-in-waiting to his […]

On May 19, 2016, 66 passengers and crew flying from Cairo to Paris on EgyptAir flight 804 disappeared over the Mediterranean Sea. It took a month to find the wreckage. At first the flight was thought to be a casualty of terrorism, but the true cause was revealed the next year. After debate and investigation, French […]

During a raid, Comanche, Kiowa and Caddo Native Americans in Texas kidnap Cynthia Ann Parker (who was around 9 or 10 years old) and kill her family. Adopted into the Comanche tribe, she eventually married a respected Comanche chief and had three children, including Quanah, who grew up to become the last Comanche leader. Parker lived with the […]

On May 19, 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt plot the cross-Channel landing that would become D-Day—May 1, 1944. That date will prove a bit premature, as bad weather becomes a factor. Addressing a joint session of Congress, Churchill warned that the real danger at present was the “dragging-out of […]