Category Archives: Today

May 22 is Buy a Musical Instrument Day
National Vanilla Pudding Day

On May 22, 1807, a Grand Jury indicted former Vice President of the United States, Aaron Burr on a charge of treason. He was acquitted.

Birthday of Richard Wagner (May 22, 1813), German composer famous for his operas, “Tännhauser”, and “Lohengrin”. Part of the third Act of Lohengrin is better known as “Here Comes the Bride” or “The Wedding March”.

Birthday of Mary Cassatt (May 22, 1844), American artist noted for her pictures of mothers and children. Examples of her work can be viewed at Wikiart: Mary Cassatt

In 1849, Abraham Lincoln was issued a patent for an invention to lift boats over obstacles in a river, the only patent ever issued to a U.S. President.

On this day in 1856, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the United States Senate for a speech Sumner had made attacking Southerners who sympathized with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas (“Bleeding Kansas”).

Birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (May 22, 1859), British novelist known as the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Amnesty Act into law in 1872, restoring full civil and political rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers.

In 1906, the Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their “Flying-Machine”.

May 22, 1964, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced the goals of his Great Society social reforms to bring an “end to poverty and racial injustice” in America.

May 22, 1972 – Ceylon changes its name to Sri Lanka and became a Republic.

May 22, 1980 – The Pac-man game is released.

Be a Millionaire Day
Pick Strawberries Day
National Quiche Lorraine Day

1819-Birthday of Queen Victoria cekebrated.
Victoria Day is a federal Canadian public holiday celebrated on the last Monday preceding May 25, in honour of Queen Victoria’s birthday. As such, it is the Monday between the 18th to the 24th inclusive, and thus is always the penultimate Monday of May (May 20 in 2024).
The date is simultaneously that on which the current Canadian sovereign’s official birthday is recognized. It is sometimes informally considered the beginning of the summer season in Canada and the first day that it is safe to plant a garden without danger of frost.

Birthday of Dolley Madison in 1768. Dolley Todd Madison was the wife of James Madison, 4th President of the United States from 1809 to 1817. She was noted for holding Washington social functions in which she invited members of both political parties. She was the only First Lady given an honorary seat on the floor of Congress.

Lafayette Day, commemorating the 1834 death of the Marquis de Lafayette, French general who aided the armies of the American Revolution. At birth he was named “Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette”. In 1779 the marquis named his newly born son Georges Washington de Lafayette in honor of the American revolutionary. Three years later, at the suggestion of Thomas Jefferson, Lafayette named his youngest daughter Marie Antoinette Virginie to honor both the French queen and the state of Virginia. In 2002 Lafayette became the sixth foreign national to be given honorary American citizenship by Congress.

1775 – Citizens of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina declare independence from Britain

Eliza Doolittle Day, established in honor of the heroine of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion to encourage the proper use of language. Pygmalion became more popularly known as the film “My Fair Lady”.

First railroad timetable published in newspaper (Baltimore American) on May 20, 1830.

Cuba becomes independent from the United States on May 20, 1902. Cuba was claimed for Spain in 1492 by Columbus. Following the Spanish-American War of 1898, Cuba was administered by the U.S. until 1902.

The first Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post cover was published May 20, 1916. Entitled Boy with Baby Carriage, it shows 2 boys in baseball uniforms scoffing at another boy dressed in his Sunday suit pushing a baby carriage. One of Norman Rockwell’s favorite models, Billy Paine, posed for all three boys. For this painting, Rockwell received $75.00.

May 20, 1926 – Congress passed Air Commerce Act, licensing of pilots & planes.

Railway Labor Act became law. It is a United States federal law that governs labor relations in the railroad and airline industries. The Act, passed in 1926 and amended in 1934 and 1936, seeks to substitute bargaining, arbitration and mediation for strikes as a means of resolving labor disputes.

1927 – At 7:40 AM, pilot Charles Lindbergh took off from New York’s Roosevelt Field to cross Atlantic.

1932 – Amelia Earhart left Harbor Grace, Newfoundland to become the first woman to fly solo across Atlantic.

Boy’s Club Day
Malcolm X Day (United States)

May 19, 1536 – Anne Boleyn, second wife of Henry VIII of England, was executed. The day after Anne’s execution, the 45-year-old Henry became engaged to Jane Seymour, who had been one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. They were married ten days later.

Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven formed United Colonies of New England, also called the New England Confederation on May 19, 1643. It was revoked in the early 1680’s. Its primary purpose was to unite the Puritan colonies in support of the church, and for defense against the American Indians and the Dutch colony of New Netherland.

1802 – French Order of Legion d’Honneur formed.

1828 – U.S. President John Quincy Adams signed the Tariff of 1828, also called the Tariff of Abominations, into law to protect industry in the North. It set a 38% tax on some imported goods and a 45% tax on certain imported raw materials.

1862 – Homestead Act became law to provide cheap land for settlement of West.

President Jefferson Davis was captured by Union Cavalry in Georgia May 19, 1865.

1884 – Ringling Brothers’ Circus premiered. It was founded by five of the seven Ringling brothers.

First mass production of shoes developed by African-American, Jan Matzeliger, in Lynn, Massachusetts in 1885. Production of shoes went from 50 pairs to 700 pairs per day.

Post Office authorized use of postcards in 1898 but they had to be called “souvenir cards”.

Congress sharply curbed immigration, setting a national quota system in 1921.

German occupiers in Holland in 1941 forbade bicycle taxis.

1941 – New Nazi battleship Bismarck left Gdynia, Poland.

1943 – Berlin was declared “Judenrien” (free of Jews).

US and Canada formed North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) in 1958.

1967 – USSR ratified treaty with England and the U.S. banning nuclear weapons in space.

1971 – USSR launched Mars 2 on May 19, 1971. It is the first spacecraft to crash land on Mars.

Happy 38th anniversary, Benney and Linda!

May 16 is Love a Tree Day
National Sea Monkey Day
Wear Purple for Peace Day
National Barbecue Day

1568 – Mary Queen of Scotland fled to England.

1771 – The Battle of Alamance, a pre-American Revolutionary War battle between local militia and a group of rebels called “The Regulators”, occurs in present-day Alamance County, North Carolina.

Birthday of William Henry Seward (May 16, 1801), American statesman, secretary of state under Abraham Lincoln; negotiator of the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. The U.S. got 586,412 square miles. The Russians were paid $7.2 million, about 2 cents an acre.

1817 – Mississippi River steamboat service begins.

Jean Joseph Etienne Lenoir built first automobile in 1862. He was a Belgian engineer who developed the internal combustion engine in 1858.

Charles Elmer Hires invented root beer in 1866.

In 1866, Congress authorized the nickel 5 cent piece to replace the silver half-dime.

By one vote, Senate fails to impeach President Andrew Johnson in 1868.

The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government an imprisonable offense.

1927 – Supreme Court ruled bootleggers must pay income tax.

Food stamps are first issued on May 16, 1939.

The first regularly scheduled transatlantic flights begin between John F Kennedy International Airport in New York City and Heathrow Airport in London, operated by El Al Israel Airlines in 1951.

First class postage cost increased to 8 cents in 1971 (was 6 cents)

May 16, 1987 – Wedding of the two creators of this website! Happy anniversary, Benney and Linda!

May 16, 1988, Surgeon General C Everett Koop reports that nicotine as addictive as heroin.

1988 – US Supreme Court rules trash may be searched without a warrant.

Queen Elizabeth became first British monarch to address US Congress on May 16, 1991.

1992 – US space shuttle STS-49 lands (maiden voyage of Endeavour). It launched its final commission on this date in 2011.

2004 – The Day of Mourning at Bykivnia forest, just outside of Kiev, Ukraine. Here during 1930s and early 1940s communist bolsheviks executed over 100,000 Ukrainian civilians.

2013 – Human stem cells are successfully cloned.

National Chocolate Chip Day
Police Officer’s Memorial Day

1004 – Henry II (the Saint) crowned King of Italy on May 15, 1004. He was King of Germany in 1002 and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1014.

1252 – Pope Innocent IV issued the papal bull   Ad ex tirpanda, which authorized, but also limited, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition.

Robert Walpole became England first prime minister on May 15, 1730.

In 1791 Maximilien Robespierre proposed the “Self-denying Ordinance”. The National Constituent Assembly dissolved itself on 30 September 1791. Upon Robespierre’s motion it decreed that none of its members should be capable of sitting in the next legislature; this is known as the Self-Denying ordinance, early French version of Term Limits.

Birthday of Lyman Frank Baum (May 15, 1856), American writer, author of “Wizard of Oz”.

Birthday of Ellen Axson Wilson ( (May 15, 1860), wife of Woodrow Wilson, first lady in 1913 to her death in 1914.

1862 – Union Grounds, Brooklyn, first baseball enclosure, opens. Union Grounds was a baseball park located in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York. The grounds opened in 1862, its inaugural match being played on May 15. It was the first baseball park enclosed entirely by a fence, thereby allowing proprietor William Cammeyer or his tenant to charge admission. This permitted paying customers to watch the games from benches in a stand while non-paying spectators could only watch from embankments outside the grounds.

1905 – Las Vegas, Nevada founded. It was named “The Meadows” because the valley contained artesian wells that supported extensive green areas or meadows.

1912 – Ty Cobb rushes a heckler at a NY Highlander game and is suspended.
Per Wikipedia:

“On May 15, 1912, Cobb assaulted a heckler, Claude Lueker, in the stands in New York’s Polo Grounds where his Tigers were playing the Highlanders. Lueker and Cobb had traded insults with each other through the first three innings, and the situation climaxed when Lueker called Cobb a “half-nigger.” Cobb, in his discussion of the incident in the Holmes biography, avoided such explicit words but alluded to Lueker’s epithet by saying he was “reflecting on my mother’s color and morals.” He went on to state that he warned Highlander manager Harry Wolverton that if something wasn’t done about that man, there would be trouble. No action was taken. At the end of the sixth inning, after being challenged by teammates Sam Crawford and Jim Delahanty to do something about it, Cobb climbed into the stands and attacked Lueker, who it turns out was handicapped (he had lost all of one hand and three fingers on his other hand in an industrial accident). When onlookers shouted at him to stop because the man had no hands, he reportedly retorted, “I don’t care if he got no feet!””

When Cobb was suspended, the rest of the Detroit Tigers’ team went on strike to protest the lack of protection of players from abusive fans. This eventually led to the formation of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association.

1918 – First airmail postal service inaugurated with service from New York to Philadelphia and to Washington, D.C. The first U.S. airmail stamp cost 24 cents. Domestic airmail became obsolete in 1975 and international air-mail in 1995.

1940 – McDonald’s opens its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California.

The first Arab-Israeli War of 1948: Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq & Saudi-Arabia troops attack Israel.

1960 – Sputnik 4 launched into Earth orbit; later recovery failed.

1969 – Associate Justice Abe Fortas was forced to resign from Supreme Court due to ethics violations. He had been appointed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1965.

May 15, 1972, assassination attempt on US Governor George Wallace of Alabama by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Md. Wallace was shot five times, one of the bullets lodging in his spinal cord. Wallace was paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life. He died in 1998. Arthur Bremer’s motivation was fame, not politics. He was imprisoned until 2007 at which time he was released.

1972 – The island of Okinawa, under U.S. military governance since its conquest in 1945, reverts to Japanese control.

1973 –Nolan Ryan pitches his first no-hitter. He had seven in his active career.