Today in history—May 19

1536: Illustrating the proverb, “Put not your faith in princes,” Anne Boleyn is beheaded at the order of her husband, Henry VIII, ostensibly for adultery but in reality for not bearing a live male child.

1649: Parliament declares that England, whose king was executed five months earlier, is now a Commonwealth:

Be it declared and enacted by this present Parliament and by the Authoritie of the same
That the People of England and of all the Dominions and Territoryes thereunto belonging are and shall be and are hereby constituted, made, established, and confirmed to be a Commonwealth and free State
And shall from henceforth be Governed as a Commonwealth and Free State by the supreame Authoritie of this Nation, the Representatives of the People in Parliam[ent] and by such as they shall appoint and constitute as Officers and Ministers under them for the good of the People and that without any King or House of Lords.

1749: King George II issues a charter to a number of Virginians for the Ohio Company. The Company is granted 200,000 acres of land on the western side of the Appalachians on condition that it survey and settle the region.  It will later fail.

1762: Idealist philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte is born at Rammenau, in Saxony.

1780: A queer, deep morning darkness descends over New England and part of the Middle Atlantic states, causing chickens to return to their roosts and schoolteachers unable to see their book.  It is darkest in the area between Boston and Portland.  It has never been satisfactorily explained.

1795: Future merchant, distiller, and railroad speculator Johns Hopkins is born at Anne Arundel County, Maryland.  He will die without heirs and leave his money to found a university because he will be unable to marry the woman he loves—his first cousin, Mary.

1828: President Adams signs the Tariff Act of 1828, which Southerners will call the “Tariff of Abominations.” It protects Northern woolen mills but leads to lower exports of Southern cotton and higher prices for everyone.

1885: Jan Ernst Matzeliger, the Suriname-born son of a Dutch engineer and an African slave, begins the first mass-production of shoes in the U.S. at Lynn, Massachusetts, using a new machine he invented.

1910: Entrepreneurs hawk “Comet Pills” to protect against predicted cyanogen poisoning as the Earth passes through the tail of Halley’s Comet.  They apparently work, as no one dies.