Today in history—May 22
337: A few weeks after he is baptized by Bishop Eusebius, Flavius Valerius Constantinus, who will be known to history as Constantine I, dies at Nicomedia (now Izmit, Turkey).
1807: Former U.S. Vice President Aaron Burr is arraigned before a grand jury in Richmond, Virginia, on a charge of treason. It’s the fourth time the government has tried, and this time the jurors issue a true bill.
1819: The Savannah Steamship Co.’s first vessel, the S.S. Savannah, leaves the harbor to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic. Even after a successful round-trip voyage her owners can’t convince passengers or shippers to trust the “Steam Coffin,” so her engines are removed and she’s turned into a sailing ship.
1826: Christopher Columbus Langdell is born in New Boston, New Hampshire.
1856: South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks savagely beats the seated, unarmed Senator Charles Sumner with a cane on the floor of the U.S. Capitol. Admiring students at the University of Virginia vote to present Brooks with a fine new cane.
1859: Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle is born at Edinburgh, Scotland. He will become a physician, but won’t get patients. He will become a politician, but won’t get elected. He’ll write serious stuff, but will only be remembered for detective stories.
1872: President Grant signs the Amnesty Act, restoring civil rights to all but about 500 persons who took part in the recent unpleasantness.
1893: Karl Nickerson Llewellyn is born in Seattle, Washington, on C.C. Langdell’s 77th birthday.
1908: Orville and Wilbur Wright receive a patent for the airplane.
1922: Television Producer Quinn Martin (The Untouchables, The Fugitive, 12 O’Clock High, The FBI, Cannon, Streets of San Francisco, Barnaby Jones) is born Martin Cohn, in New York City.
1967: The first episode of a new children’s TV series airs on WQED in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It stars an ordained Presbyterian minister and is called Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.
1992: Johnny Carson ends a 30-year run as host of the Tonight Show on NBC. A lot of your students think that the host has always been Jay Leno.