Today is Thursday, May 19, the 139th day of 2022. There are 226 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On May 19, 1536, Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England’s King Henry VIII, was beheaded after being convicted of adultery.
On this date:
In 1780, a mysterious darkness enveloped much of New England and part of Canada in the early afternoon.
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 1920, ten people were killed in a gun battle between coal miners, who were led by a local police chief, and a group of private security guards hired to evict them for joining a union in Matewan, a small “company town” in West Virginia.
In 1921, Congress passed, and President Warren G. Harding signed, the Emergency Quota Act, which established national quotas for immigrants.
In 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).
In 1994, former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died in New York at age 64.
In 2018, Britain’s Prince Harry wed American actress Meghan Markle in a service that reflected Harry’s royal heritage and his bride’s biracial roots, as well as their shared commitment to put a more diverse, modern face on the monarchy.
Today’s Birthdays: TV personality David Hartman is 87. Actor Nancy Kwan is 83. Rock singer-composer Pete Townshend (The Who) is 77. College Football Hall of Famer and former NFL player Archie Manning is 73. Singer-actor Grace Jones is 71. Actor Steven Ford is 66. Former race car driver Dario Franchitti is 49. Country/rock singer Shooter Jennings is 43. Pop singer Sam Smith is 30.
