May 19: What Happened on This Day in History (Elementary Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1743 - Jean-Pierre Christin developed the centigrade temperature scale.
2. 1848 - Mexican-American War: Mexico ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo thus ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States for US$15 million.
3. 1921 - The U.S. Congress passes the Emergency Quota Act establishing national quotas on immigration.
4. 1961 - Venera program: Venera 1 becomes the first man-made object to fly-by another planet by passing Venus (the probe had lost contact with Earth a month earlier and did not send back any data).
5. 1963 - The New York Post Sunday Magazine publishes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, drafted shortly after his arrest on April 12th during the Birmingham Campaign advocating for civil rights and an end to segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. The letter was in response to "A Call for Unity": a statement made by eight white Alabama clergymen against King and his methods, following his arrest, and became one of the most-anthologized statements of the civil rights movement.
6. Famous Birthdays: Johns Hopkins (American businessman and philanthropist), Walter Russell (American painter, sculptor, and author), Max Perutz (Austrian-English biologist, Nobel Prize laureate), Malcolm X (American minister and activist), James Gosling (Canadian-American computer scientist, created Java

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: May 18

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: May 20

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.