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Almanac

By The Associated Press

Today in History

Today is Tuesday, May 19, the 140th day of 2020. There are 226 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On May 19, 1943, in his second wartime address to the U.S. Congress, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pledged his country’s full support in the fight against Japan; that evening, Churchill met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House, where the two leaders agreed on May 1, 1944 as the date for the D-Day invasion of France (the operation ended up being launched more than a month later).

On this date:

In 1536, Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England’s King Henry VIII, was beheaded after being convicted of adultery.

In 1649, England was declared a republic by Parliament following the execution of King Charles I. (The monarchy was restored in 1660.)

In 1913, California Gov. Hiram Johnson signed the Webb-Hartley Law prohibiting “aliens ineligible to citizenship” from owning farm land, a measure targeting Asian immigrants, particularly Japanese.

In 1921, Congress passed, and President Warren G. Harding signed, the Emergency Quota Act, which established national quotas for immigrants.

In 1924, the Marx Brothers made their Broadway debut in the revue “I’ll Say She Is.”

In 1935, T.E. Lawrence, also known as “Lawrence of Arabia,” died in Dorset, England, six days after being injured in a motorcycle crash.

In 1967, the Soviet Union ratified a treaty with the United States and Britain, banning nuclear and other weapons from outer space as well as celestial bodies such as the moon. (The treaty entered into force in October 1967.)

In 1981, five British soldiers were killed by an Irish Republican Army land mine in County Armagh (ARí-mah), Northern Ireland.

In 1992, in a case that drew much notoriety, Mary Jo Buttafuoco of Massapequa, New York, was shot and seriously wounded by her husband Joey’s teenage lover, Amy Fisher.

In 1993, the Clinton White House set off a political storm by abruptly firing the entire staff of its travel office; five of the seven staffers were later reinstated and assigned to other duties.

In 1994, former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died in New York at age 64.

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