May 19

1535 – French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail on his second voyage to North America with 3 ships & 110 men along with the 2 sons of Iroquois Chief Donnacona, whom Cartier had kidnapped during his first voyage.

1743 – French physicist Jean-Pierre Christin develops the centigrade temperature scale.

1749 – King George II of Great Britain grants the Ohio Company of Virginia a charter of 500,000 acres in the Ohio Valley between the Kanawha and the Monongahela Rivers.

1828 – U.S. President John Quincy Adams signs the Tariff of 1828 into law, to protect industrial manufacturers in the northern states, but an unintended consequence is to increase the prices of imported goods that the southern agrarian states depend on.

1848 – Mexico ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with the U.S., officially ending the Mexican-American war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern states to the United States for $15 million.

1883 –  Steam is observed to be venting from Perboewatan, the northernmost of the three volcanic cones on Krakatoa Island.
William F Cody’s 1st Buffalo Bill’s Wild West opens in Omaha, Nebraska.

1921 – Congress passes the Emergency Quota Act establishing national quotas on immigration.

1950 – A barge containing 600 tons of munitions destined for Pakistan explodes in the harbor at South Amboy, New Jersey, killing 27 people.

1962 – At a birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden, Marilyn Monroe sings “Happy Birthday”.

1986 – The Firearm Owners Protection Act, including the ‘Hughes amendment’ – 18 US Code § 922 (o) – that bans the further production of automatic firearms that can be legally possessed by the public, is signed into law by President Reagan.

1993 – SAM Colombia Flight 501, a Boeing 727-46, crashes on approach to José María Córdova International Airport in Medellín, Colombia, killing all 132 people aboard.

1996 – Shuttle Endeavour launches from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-77, to operate the Astrotech SPACEHAB module with various experiments.

2000 – Shuttle Atlantis launches from Kennedy Space Center on mission STS-101 to resupply the International Space Station.

2015 – An oil pipeline break north of Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County, California spills 142,000 gallons of crude oil onto the coastline.