Browse Historical Events by Day: What Happened on May 19th?

Anne Boleyn, the infamous second wife of King Henry VIII, is executed after a sham trial filled with Anne’s enemies found her guilty, on charges of adultery, incest, conspiracy and high treason against the king. She was beheaded in the Tower of London and buried in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula in the Tower. Henry married Jane Seymour just 11 days after Anne's execution. The circumstances of her marriage and execution, made her a key figure in the political and religious upheaval that marked the start of the English Reformation. More

The first Ringling Brothers Circus opens in Baraboo, Wisconsin. By the early 20th century it became the leading circus in the U.S. as the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Today , after a hiatus from 2017 to 2023, it has returned with a reimagined show that features no animals. The circus is now billed as "The Greatest Show on Earth" and includes acts like trapeze, high wire, and teeterboard. More

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk lands at Samsun on the Black Sea coast, starting the Turkish War of Independence. More

The Soviet Union ratifies the Outer Space Treaty. The treaty bans the placement of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit around the Earth, on the Moon, or in outer space, and limits the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes. The treaty entered into force on October 10, 1967. As of March 2024, 115 countries are parties to the treaty, while another 22 have signed the treaty but have not completed ratification. More

Somaliland Independence day. Officially the Republic of Somaliland, is an unrecognized de facto sovereign state in the Horn of Africa. Its claimed territory has an area of 68,000 square miles with approximately 5.7 million residents.

Egypt Air, Flight MS804, an Airbus A320 - flying from Paris to Cairo crashes into the eastern Mediterranean Sea. All 66 passengers and crew on board died. It took almost a month to find the wreckage. The crash, was originally thought to be a result of a terrorist attack but a year later it was determined that a fire had caused the plane to crash. A 2022 report from the French authorities attributed the cause of the fire to a pilot smoking a cigarette, a practice which wasn't banned at the time, in the proximity of an oxygen line which had its airflow switch improperly left in the “emergency” position when  the oxygen mask was replaced three days before. According to the Airbus manual; under those conditions, “an oxygen leakage could occur.“ More