This Week in History
by Dianne Hermann
“The secret to happiness is freedom.
The secret to freedom is courage.” Carrie Jones
May 19-25, 2025
May 19
1848 – Mexico signs the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, giving Texas to the U.S. and ending the Mexican-American War.
1862 – The Homestead Act is signed into law by President Lincoln, providing up to 160 acres of free land for settlement of West. A total of 1.6 million people claimed 420,000 square miles of government land.
1884 – The Ringling Brothers circus premieres in Wisconsin. The circus was started by the five Ringling Brothers. Ringling Brothers Circus merged with Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1907, and the circuses closed in 2017.
1913 – The California Alien Land Law passes, forbidding “aliens ineligible for citizenship” from owning agricultural land. The bill was primarily directed at Japanese immigrants.
1921 – Congress sharply curbs immigration through the Emergency Quota Act by setting a national quota system. Based on the quota formula, the number of immigrants fell from about 800,000 in 1920 to about 300,000 in 1921-1922.
1999 – Rosie O’Donnell and Tom Selleck have an uncomfortable verbal conversation concerning gun control on Rosie O’Donnell’s talk show. Watch a video of Selleck being a total gentleman.
2005 – “Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith” brings in $50 million on its opening day. By comparison, “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” brought in a (then) record $28.5 million when it opened on this day in 1999. Star Wars: The Force Awakens brought in $529 million on its opening day in 2015.
2018 – American actress Meghan Markle marries Prince Harry, youngest son of England’s Princess Diana and Prince Charles. The banished couple and their children live somewhere in California.
May 20
1874 – Levi Strauss markets blue jeans with copper rivets at the price of $13.50 a dozen.
1916 – The Saturday Evening Post features its first Norman Rockwell painting on the cover, entitled “Boy with Baby Carriage,” for which Rockwell was paid $75. Rockwell painted 321 covers over the next 47 years.
1926 – Congress passes the Air Commerce Act, which licenses pilots and planes.
1927 – Charles Lindbergh takes off from New York to cross the Atlantic Ocean in the “Spirit of St. Louis.” He landed in Paris the following afternoon on the first solo transatlantic flight.
1932 – Amelia Earhart leaves Newfoundland to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean when she landed in Ireland the following day. She scheduled her flight to coincide with the 5th anniversary of Lindbergh’s flight.
1939 – The first regular airmail and passenger service across the Atlantic Ocean begins when the “Yankee Clipper” takes off from Port Washington, New York for Marseilles, France.
1959 – Ford wins the battle with Chrysler to call its new car “Falcon.” Ford produced the Falcon from 1960 to 1970. Watch the 1961 Ford Falcon commercial featuring the Peanuts gang.
1985 – The FBI arrests John A. Walker, Jr. His brother, son, and friend were all recruited in the spy ring. They were all convicted of spying for USSR. John would have been eligible for parole, but he died in prison in 2014 at age 77.
2013 – Yahoo purchases Tumblr, a social networking website created by David Karp in 2007, for $1.1 billion.
2015 – David Letterman hosts the “Late Show with David Letterman” for the last time after 33 years on TV.
May 21
1881 – The American Red Cross is founded by Clara Barton in Washington, DC. Barton, who served as a nurse in the Civil War, led the Red Cross for 23 years. She died in 1912 at age 90.
1918 – The House of Representatives passes the 19th Amendment allowing women to vote. It wasn’t signed into law until 1920. The bill was first introduced in Congress in 1878.
1922 – The cartoon, “On the Road to Moscow,” by American political cartoonist Rollin Kirby wins a Pulitzer Prize. It was the first cartoon awarded the Pulitzer.
1924 – Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb kidnap 13-year-old Bobby Franks for fun. Franks was murdered by teenagers Leopold and Loeb, and both were sentenced to life in prison. Loeb was killed in prison in 1936. Leopold was paroled in 1958 and died in 1971 at age 66.
1956 – The U.S. detonates the first airborne hydrogen bomb in the Pacific Ocean over Bikini Atoll. A B-2 bomber dropped the bomb from 55,000 feet and it detonated at 15,000 feet. The resulting explosion was estimated to be four miles in diameter. Watch a newsreel report of the historic test.
1998 – An expelled student, Kipland Kinkel, in Springfield, Oregon, kills 2 people and wounds 25 others with a semi-automatic rifle. Police also discovered that he killed his parents before the rampage.
2013 – Microsoft announces the release of Xbox One. Global sales are estimated at 49 million units.
May 22
1807 – Former Vice President Aaron Burr is tried for treason in Richmond, Virginia. It was alleged that Burr plotted to annex Spanish territories in Louisiana and part of Mexico to establish an independent territory. Burr was acquitted for lack of evidence that he acted on his plot. Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804.
1872 – The Amnesty Act removes voting and office-holding restrictions to secessionists who participated in the Civil War, except for 500 military officers. Congress passed the original restrictive act in May 1866.
1946 – The first U.S. rocket (WAC Corporal) to reach the edge of space is fired from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
1967 – “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” premieres on PBS and airs until 2001. Fred Rogers died in 2003 at age 74. Watch the show’s opening scene.
1977 – Janet Guthrie sets the fastest time on the second weekend of qualifying, becoming the first woman to earn a starting spot in the Indianapolis 500 since its inception in 1911.
1985 – U.S. sailor Michael L. Walker, the 22-year-old son of spy John Walker, Jr., is arrested for spying for USSR. He was convicted of spying and served 15 years of a 25-year sentence. He was released from prison in 2000 and is on probation. His father, spy John Walker, died in prison in 2014 at age 77.
1992 – Johnny Carson makes his final appearance after 30 years as host of the Tonight Show. Watch Johnny Carson in his own words.
2011 – An EF5 Tornado strikes Joplin, Missouri, killing 161 people, making it the single deadliest U.S. tornado since modern record keeping began in 1950. Then-Vice President Joe Biden visited Joplin, expressing sympathy for the 161,000 people who died.
May 23
1923 – A team of police officers, led by Texas Ranger Cordell Walker, ambush bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow near their hide-out in Black Lake, Louisiana, killing them both. Watch a narrated black and white video of the aftermath.
1939 – The USS Squalus submarine sinks in the Gulf of Maine, drowning 26 sailors. The 33 remaining crew members were rescued from a depth of 243 feet by divers using the newly developed Heliox air systems (helium and oxygen). The divers were later awarded the Medal of Honor.
1963 – NBC purchases the TV rights to the 1963 AFL championship football game for $926,000. (By contrast, ESPN acquired the rights to Monday Night Football in 2021 and paid $2.7 billion to air regular season games over 11 years.)
1992 – In Lisbon, Portugal, the U.S. and four former Soviet republics sign an agreement to implement the START missile reduction treaty that had been agreed to by the Soviet Union before it was dissolved.
2018 – NFL owners approve a new national anthem policy requiring football players to stand if they choose to be on the field for the pre-game ceremonies.
May 24
1883 – President Chester A. Arthur and Governor (and next president) Grover Cleveland open the Brooklyn Bridge, which spans the East River. The bridge took 14 years to build, used 600 workers, and cost $15 million. That’s about $600 million in today’s money.
1916 – U.S. pilot Lt. Col. William Thaw II shoots down a German Fokker during World War I, becoming the first American to engage in aerial combat in a war.
1935 – The Cincinnati Reds play the Philadelphia Phillies in the first major league baseball game at night. President Franklin Roosevelt threw the switch to turn on the floodlights.
1954 – IBM announces that the vacuum tube “electronic” brain could perform 10 million operations an hour. The Exascale Supercomputer can perform 1 quintillion calculations per second.
1976 – In the Paris Wine Tasting, dubbed the Judgment of Paris, wine testers rate wines from California higher than French wines, challenging the idea of France being the foremost producer of the world’s best wines.
1981 – Bobby Unser wins, loses, and wins the controversial Indianapolis 500 auto race. Race officials issued a penalty against Unser for illegally passing under a caution, but reversed their decision on appeal. Mario Andretti won second place. Watch the controversial move by Unser.
2000 – A Democrat Party event for Al Gore in Washington brings in $26.5 million. The amount set a new record, which had just been set the previous month by Republicans for Texas Governor George W. Bush. By contrast, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton raised $1.14 billion by September 2016 from Democrats and Clinton super-PACs.
2009 – Hélio Castroneves wins the Indy 500 auto race for the 3rd time (2001, 2002). He won “Dancing with the Stars” (Season 5) in 2007. (Castroneves won the Indy 500 again in 2021.) Watch him win Dancing with the Stars and decide which win he enjoyed most.
2016 – Bill Cosby is ordered to stand trial in a sexual assault case. In April 2018, he was convicted on three counts of indecent assault after a mistrial was declared in June of 2017. Cosby, now 87 years old, was serving a 3-10 year sentence in prison until his sentence was overturned in June of 2021.
May 25
1787 – The Constitutional Convention opens in Philadelphia with George Washington presiding.
1928 – Amelia Earhart (as a passenger) is the first woman to fly across Atlantic Ocean.
1935 – Babe Ruth hits his final homerun, his 714th, and sets a record that would stand for 39 years. Hank Aaron broke Ruth’s record in 1974 and Barry Bonds broke Aaron’s record in 2007. Albert Pujols hit the 703rd homeruns in 2022. These are the only players to hit more than 700 homeruns in their career.
1961 – President J. F. Kennedy sets the goal of putting a man on Moon before the end of decade. Apollo 11 landed on the moon July 21, 1969. Watch Kennedy’s speech at Rice University.
1964 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Griffin v County School Board of Prince Edward County (Virginia) that closing schools to avoid desegregation is unconstitutional. In what was known as “Massive Resistance” U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd (D-VA) declared a strategy of closing Virginia schools to circumvent the Brown v Board of Education ruling of 1954 and block integration.
1977 – The original “Star Wars” movie is released, taking in $1.5 million on the opening weekend.
1983 – The “Return of the Jedi” movie (Star Wars 3) is released. It set a new opening weekend box office record of over $23 million. By contrast, the latest Star Wars movie, “The Rise of Skywalker,” grossed $205 million on the opening weekend.
1986 – In “Hands Across America,” 7 million people hold hands across 4,152 miles from Long Beach, California, to Battery Park in New York to raise money for local charities. Watch the official video.
2006 – In Houston, former Enron Corp. chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling are convicted of conspiracy and fraud for the downfall of Enron.
2012 – The SpaceX Dragon becomes the first private commercial spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station (ISS). Dragon has made 20 flights to the ISS. On April 27, 2022, Elon Musk’s company set a new record for flights to the ISS in just 16 hours.
Image from: indycar.com
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