1743: Jean-Pierre Christin invents the Celsius thermometer. The centigrade temperature scale, which is based on the freezing and boiling point of water, is used by most countries around the world. Exceptions include the United State, Belize, and Palau.
1885: German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck takes possession of Cameroon and Togoland
1919: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk sets off the Turkish War of Independence. The fight against the allies of the Triple Entente ended some four years later. The Republic of Turkey was founded, and Atatürk became its first President.
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1935: Lawrence of Arabia dies. T.E. Lawrence, known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia, dies as a retired Royal Air Force mechanic living under an assumed name. The legendary war hero, author and archaeological scholar succumbed to injuries suffered in a motorcycle accident six days before.
1940: Churchill made his first broadcast as Prime Minister and called Nazism “the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny that has ever darkened and stained the pages of history.”
1959: The North Vietnamese Army begins organizing the Ho Chi Minh trail
According to the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the system of supply routes used by the “Vietcong” was “one of the greatest achievements of military engineering of the 20th century.”
1962: Marilyn Monroe performs her famous rendition of Happy Birthday
Monroe gave her sultry performance, which was to be her last, at a party for U.S. President John F. Kennedy. The two are believed to have been engaged in an affair.
1963: Dr. Martin Luther King jnr ‘s Letter from Birmingham Jail is published. King used the open letter to defend his nonviolent resistance against racism and segregation. It became one of the central texts for the civil rights movement in the United States.
1975: 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 witnessed the police beating a Chinese teenager and attempted to intervene.
1994: Jacqueline “Jackie” Lee Kennedy Onassis was an American writer, book editor, and socialite who served as the first lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963, as the wife of President John F. Kennedy. She died on 19 May 1994 at the age of 64 year.
1997: Health Secretary Frank Dobson announced that the sponsorship of sports events by tobacco firms was to be outlawed. It gave a temporary exemption for Formula One motor-racing, whose owner, Bernie Ecclestone, had earlier donated £1m to the Labour Party.
2014: Britain’s longest-serving postmistress retired, after 61 years in the job. Esther Brauer, 83, ran the business, first from her home in Kylesku in Sutherland, and for the last 31 years from a wooden shed in her garden. She said she had finally made up her mind to stand down because of her computer ‘going doolally’. The 87 year old said that she planned to make the most of her retirement and added ‘I think my husband and I will go away more often.’
2018: Prince Harry weds Meghan Markle
Prince Harry married American actress Meghan Markle at St. George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle; the ceremony, unlike any previous British royal wedding, mixed pomp and circumstance with African American culture, the latter a celebration of the bride’s biracial background. Some 600 guests attend the ceremony and nearly 2 billion people worldwide watch the televised event.
BIRTHS ON THIS DAY: May 19
Malcolm X (19 May 1925 – 21 February 1965)
Malcolm X was an African American leader and prominent figure in the Nation of Islam who articulated concepts of race pride and Black nationalism in the early 1960s. After his assassination, the widespread distribution of his life story—The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)—made him an ideological hero, especially among Black youth. He died at the age of 64.
1964: Samuel Sochukwuma Okwaraji, (19 May 1964 – 12 August 1989)
Samuel Okwaraji was a professional footballer who played internationally for Nigeria. He was also a qualified lawyer who had a masters in international law from the Pontifical Lateran University of Rome. He will be remembered as a player who died in the cause of service to his country, at the age of 25.
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