May 26 is National Blueberry Cheesecake Day
National Cherry Dessert Day
Sally Ride Day honors Sally Ride, the first American woman to go into space. She was born May 26, 1951 in Los Angeles, California. On June 18, 1983, she became the first American woman in space as a crew member on Space Shuttle Challenger. She died July 23, 2012 of pancreatic cancer.
May 26, 1647- Alse Young became the first person executed as a witch in the American colonies, when she was hanged in Hartford, Connecticut. Her daughter was accused of witchcraft in Massachusetts 30 years later.
The Indian Removal Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 26, 1830; it was signed into law by President Andrew Jackson two days later. It authorized Jackson to negotiate with five Indian tribes in the South to be removed to federal territory west of the Mississippi in exchange for their homelands. Eventually led to the Trail of Tears in 1831.
1857 –Dred Scott was emancipated by the Blow family, his original owners in 1857, three months after the Supreme Court ruled that any person descended from Africans was not a citizen of the U.S.
1864 – Montana is organized as a United States territory.
1896 – Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. By tracking the closing stock prices of twelve companies, adding up their stock prices and dividing by twelve, Dow came up with his average. The index became a popular indicator of stock market activity. The initial twelve companies, none of which are still components of the DJIA, were:
- American Cotton Oil Company, now part of Unilever;
- American Sugar Company, now Domino Foods, Inc.;
- American Tobacco Company, broken up in a 1911 antitrust action;
- Chicago Gas Company, now an operating subsidiary of Integrys Energy Group;
- Distilling and Cattle Feeding Company, now Millennium Chemicals;
- General Electric, removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 2018;
- Laclede Gas Company, now Spire Inc,;
- National Lead Company, now NL Industries;
- North American Company, broken up by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 1946;
- Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company, now U.S. Steel, removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1991;
- U.S. Leather Company, dissolved in 1952;
- United States Rubber Company, now Michelin .
The very first average price of industrial stocks, on May 26, 1896, was $40.94.
May 26, 1897 – Dracula, a novel by the Irish author Bram Stoker, was published.
House on Un-American Activities formed on May 26, 1938; it was abolished in 1975.
May 26, 1998, The United States Supreme Court ruled that Ellis Island, the historic gateway for millions of immigrants, is mainly in the state of New Jersey, not New York.
May 26, 2004, The United States Army veteran Terry Nichols was found guilty of 161 state murder charges for helping carry out the Oklahoma City bombing. He was incarcerated at a super-maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado.