On This Day: May 19
Today is Sunday, May 19, 2013. This is the 139th day of the year, with 226 days remaining in 2013.
Fact of the Day: Gone With the Wind
After an ankle injury in 1926, Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) left the Atlanta Journal newspaper and for the next 10 years worked slowly on a romantic novel about the Civil War and Reconstruction as seen from a southern point of view. For six years after it was finished, the novel was set aside by Mitchell. But in 1935, Mitchell was persuaded to submit her manuscript for publication and it came out the next year. Within six months 1 million copies had been sold; 50,000 copies were sold in one day. It has sold more copies than any other novel in U.S. publishing history, and was eventually translated into 25 languages. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1937 and made into a movie in 1939. Mitchell, who had trouble adjusting to her celebrity and never attempted another book, died after an automobile accident in 1949.
Holidays
Feast day of St. Dunstan, St. Pudentiana, St. Peter Celestine, Saints Calocerus and Parthenius, St. Ivo of Kermartin, St. Crispin of Viterbo, and St. Peter Morrone.
Turkey: Youth and Sports Day.
Events
1535 - French explorer Jacques Cartier set sail for North America.
1588 - The Spanish Armada set sail from Lisbon on a mission to secure control of the English Channel and transport a Spanish invasion army to Britain from the Netherlands.
1602 - Martha's Vineyard was first sighted by Captain Bartholomew Gosnold.
1643 - The Confederation of New England was formed by Connecticut, New Haven, Plymouth, and Massachusetts Bay.
1649 - England was declared a Commonwealth.
1749 - King George II of England granted the Ohio Company a charter of several hundred thousand acres of land on the Ohio River, thereby promoting westward settlement by colonists from Virginia; this directly challenged the French claim to Ohio and was a direct cause of the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754.
1780 - Midday near-total darkness struck New England. No scientific explanation was ever verified.
1846 - The first steamship arrived in Hawaii.
1884 - The Ringling Brothers Circus first performed.
1898 - Postcards were first authorized by the U.S. Post Office.
1900 - The world's longest railroad tunnel, the 12-mile-long Simplon Tunnel linking Switzerland to Italy through the Alps, opened.
1906 - The Federated Boys' Clubs organization, forerunner of the Boys' Clubs of America, was established.
1914 - The Greyhound Bus Company was founded.
1935 - The National Football League adopted an annual college draft to begin in 1936.
1958 - The United States and Canada formally established the North American Air Defense Command.
1967 - The Soviet Union ratified a treaty with the United States and Britain banning nuclear weapons from outer space.
1996 - A large asteroid came within 281,000 miles of the Earth.
2005 - "Revenge of the Sith," the final chapter of the "Star Wars" adventure series, opened in movie theaters.
Births
1890 - Ho Chi Minh (Nguyen That Thanh), North Vietnamese leader, founder of Indochina Community Party.
1895 - Johns Hopkins, American merchant and philanthropist.
1925 - Malcolm X (Malcolm Little), American black nationalist and civil rights activist.
1945 - Pete Townshend, English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, and composer.
1952 - Joey Ramone (born Jeffry Ross Hyman), American musician.
Deaths
1935 - "Lawrence of Arabia" (T.E. Lawrence) died in England from injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash.
1971 - Ogden Nash, American poet best known for writing pithy light verse.
1994 - Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, American former First Lady.
1998 - Uno Sosuke, Japanese politician and the 75th Prime Minister of Japan.
