May 19: On this day in world history … briefly

1312:     After a fortnight’s siege at Scarborough Castle in Yorkshire, Piers Gaveston, favourite of King Edward II, is taken prisoner.

1536:     English King Henry VIII’s second wife Anne Boleyn was beheaded at age 29. She had been charged with incest with her brother and four counts of adultery, but her real crimes were to let the king tire of her and to fail to bear him a male heir. She gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, soon after they were married. Earlier in the year Henry had her arrested after the stillbirth of a boy and had meanwhile become infatuated with Anne’s lady-in-waiting, Jane Seymour, and with Anne out of way, an immediate marriage was planned. Henry’s first wife Catherine of Aragon, died in January. When Catherine failed to bear him a son, he tried to have the marriage annulled, and when Pope Clement VII refused. Henry then broke with the Roman church so that he could marry Anne. In fact, by then they had already married in secret.

1795:     James Boswell, biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson, died at the age of 54.

1802:     Napoleon institutes the title Légion d’honneur, which will be the highest honour awarded for civil and military distinction.

1864:     Nathaniel Hawthorne, American novelist and shorty story writer dies.

1898:     British statesman William Gladstone, elected Liberal prime minister four times, dies aged 88.

1900:     The 169 islands collectively known as the Kingdom of Tonga, or the Friendly Islands, become a British protectorate.

1906:     The 12-mile (19km) Simplon Tunnel linking Italy and Switzerland through the Alps is officially opened.

1935:     Retired hero TE Lawrence dies five days after sustaining a fractured skull in a road accident. He was racing his motorcycle down a Dorset lane when he swerved to avoid two boys on bicycles and crashed. He never regained consciousness. During WWI, Lawrence of Arabia won popular fame as the dashing young intelligence officer who led the Arabs in a guerrilla war against the Turks and finally captured Damascus. In 1922 he dropped from sight, changing his name to Shaw and joined the Tank Corps and then the RAF. Lawrence unsuccessfully championed the Arab cause at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Though his friend Sharif Hussein of Mecca had fought for Arab independence and was backed by Britain, the Arab lands emerged as British and French colonies. Maybe this is what Lawrence meant when he told Irish writer WB Yeats ‘I was an Irish nobody, I did something. It was a failure. And I became an Irish nobody again.’ Lawrence refused to publish his book on Arabia, ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom’ in his lifetime, but it was published posthumously.

1971:     Death of American humourist Ogden Nash.

1980:     At least 15 people were killed when a long-dormant volcano in the US exploded. About 400 people were evacuated when Mount St Helens in south-western Washington State started smoking a few weeks earlier, but geologists did not expect the sudden violence of the eruption, which started fires, mudslides and floods in areas thought to be safe. About 120 square miles (310 sq km) was devastated and the volcano sent up a hug column of smoke and ash which darkened the sky 100 miles (160km) away. The volcano had last erupted in 1857.

1994:     Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis dies. She was subsequently buried next to former husband President John F Kennedy in Arlington National Cemetery. During her time as First Lady, Jackie became known for her fashion sense and her decoration of the White House. She was honoured for her dignity after the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. She went on to marry wealthy Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis in 1968, then became a publishing editor after his death seven years later.

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