May 19 1864: Lincoln proposed equal treatment of soldiers dependents
President Abraham Lincoln wrote to anti-slavery Congressional leader Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on this day in 1864, proposing that widows and children of soldiers should be given equal treatment regardless of race.
Lincoln shared many of his friend Sumner’s views on civil rights. In an unprecedented move, Lincoln allowed a black woman, the widow of a black Civil War soldier, Major Lionel F. Booth, to meet with him at the White House. Mary Booth’s husband had been killed at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, in April 1864 by a Confederate sniper. The massacre of African-American Union forces that followed the subsequent fall of the fort was considered one of the most brutal of the Civil War. After speaking with Mrs. Booth privately, Lincoln sat down and wrote a letter of introduction for Mrs. Booth to carry to Sumner and asked him to hear what she had to say about the hardships imposed on families of black soldiers killed or maimed in battle. The letter introduced Booth’s widow and said she makes a pointwidows and children of colored soldiers who fall in our service [should receive the same] benefit of the provisions [given] to widows and orphans of white soldiers.
As a result of his meeting with Mrs. Booth, Senator Sumner influenced Congressional members in 1866 to introduce a resolution (H.R. 406, Section 13) to provide for the equal treatment of the dependents of black soldiers. According to the Library of Congress, though, there are no records that Mrs. Booth ever applied for or received a widow’s pension after the bill’s passage.
May 19 1916: Britain and France concluded Sykes-Picot agreement
On May 19, 1916, representatives of Great Britain and France secretly reached an accord, known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, by which most of the Arab lands under the rule of the Ottoman Empire were to be divided into British and French spheres of influence with the conclusion of World War I.
After the war broke out in the summer of 1914, the Allies—Britain, France and Russia—held many discussions regarding the future of the Ottoman Empire, now fighting on the side of Germany and the Central Powers, and its vast expanse of territory in the Middle East, Arabia and southern-central Europe. In March 1915, Britain signed a secret agreement with Russia, whose designs on the empire’s territory had led the Turks to join forces with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914. By its terms, Russia would annex the Ottoman capital of Constantinople and retain control of the Dardanelles (the crucially important strait connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean) and the Gallipoli peninsula, the target of a major Allied military invasion begun in April 1915. In return, Russia would agree to British claims on other areas of the former Ottoman Empire and central Persia, including the oil-rich region of Mesopotamia.
More than a year after the agreement with Russia, British and French representatives, Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges Picot, authored another secret agreement regarding the future spoils of the Great War. Picot represented a small group determined to secure control of Syria for France; for his part, Sykes raised British demands to balance out influence in the region. The agreement largely neglected to allow for the future growth of Arab nationalism, which at that same moment the British government and military were working to use to their advantage against the Turks.
In the Sykes-Picot agreement, concluded on May 19, 1916, France and Britain divided up the Arab territories of the former Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence. In its designated sphere, it was agreed, each country shall be allowed to establish such direct or indirect administration or control as they desire and as they may think fit to arrange with the Arab State or Confederation of Arab States. Under Sykes-Picot, the Syrian coast and much of modern-day Lebanon went to France; Britain would take direct control over central and southern Mesopotamia, around the Baghdad and Basra provinces. Palestine would have an international administration, as other Christian powers, namely Russia, held an interest in this region. The rest of the territory in question—a huge area including modern-day Syria, Mosul in northern Iraq, and Jordan—would have local Arab chiefs under French supervision in the north and British in the south. Also, Britain and France would retain free passage and trade in the other’s zone of influence.
President Abraham Lincoln wrote to anti-slavery Congressional leader Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts on this day in 1864, proposing that widows and children of soldiers should be given equal treatment regardless of race.
Lincoln shared many of his friend Sumner’s views on civil rights. In an unprecedented move, Lincoln allowed a black woman, the widow of a black Civil War soldier, Major Lionel F. Booth, to meet with him at the White House. Mary Booth’s husband had been killed at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, in April 1864 by a Confederate sniper. The massacre of African-American Union forces that followed the subsequent fall of the fort was considered one of the most brutal of the Civil War. After speaking with Mrs. Booth privately, Lincoln sat down and wrote a letter of introduction for Mrs. Booth to carry to Sumner and asked him to hear what she had to say about the hardships imposed on families of black soldiers killed or maimed in battle. The letter introduced Booth’s widow and said she makes a pointwidows and children of colored soldiers who fall in our service [should receive the same] benefit of the provisions [given] to widows and orphans of white soldiers.
As a result of his meeting with Mrs. Booth, Senator Sumner influenced Congressional members in 1866 to introduce a resolution (H.R. 406, Section 13) to provide for the equal treatment of the dependents of black soldiers. According to the Library of Congress, though, there are no records that Mrs. Booth ever applied for or received a widow’s pension after the bill’s passage.
May 19 1916: Britain and France concluded Sykes-Picot agreement
On May 19, 1916, representatives of Great Britain and France secretly reached an accord, known as the Sykes-Picot agreement, by which most of the Arab lands under the rule of the Ottoman Empire were to be divided into British and French spheres of influence with the conclusion of World War I.
After the war broke out in the summer of 1914, the Allies—Britain, France and Russia—held many discussions regarding the future of the Ottoman Empire, now fighting on the side of Germany and the Central Powers, and its vast expanse of territory in the Middle East, Arabia and southern-central Europe. In March 1915, Britain signed a secret agreement with Russia, whose designs on the empire’s territory had led the Turks to join forces with Germany and Austria-Hungary in 1914. By its terms, Russia would annex the Ottoman capital of Constantinople and retain control of the Dardanelles (the crucially important strait connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean) and the Gallipoli peninsula, the target of a major Allied military invasion begun in April 1915. In return, Russia would agree to British claims on other areas of the former Ottoman Empire and central Persia, including the oil-rich region of Mesopotamia.
More than a year after the agreement with Russia, British and French representatives, Sir Mark Sykes and Francois Georges Picot, authored another secret agreement regarding the future spoils of the Great War. Picot represented a small group determined to secure control of Syria for France; for his part, Sykes raised British demands to balance out influence in the region. The agreement largely neglected to allow for the future growth of Arab nationalism, which at that same moment the British government and military were working to use to their advantage against the Turks.
In the Sykes-Picot agreement, concluded on May 19, 1916, France and Britain divided up the Arab territories of the former Ottoman Empire into spheres of influence. In its designated sphere, it was agreed, each country shall be allowed to establish such direct or indirect administration or control as they desire and as they may think fit to arrange with the Arab State or Confederation of Arab States. Under Sykes-Picot, the Syrian coast and much of modern-day Lebanon went to France; Britain would take direct control over central and southern Mesopotamia, around the Baghdad and Basra provinces. Palestine would have an international administration, as other Christian powers, namely Russia, held an interest in this region. The rest of the territory in question—a huge area including modern-day Syria, Mosul in northern Iraq, and Jordan—would have local Arab chiefs under French supervision in the north and British in the south. Also, Britain and France would retain free passage and trade in the other’s zone of influence.
May 19 1930
White women achieved suffrage in South Africa.
May 19 1949
Egypt agreed to a British plan to dam the White Nile in Uganda.
May 19 1963
As part of the process towards independence (12 December 1963) Kenya held a general election.
May 19 1968
Following
the announced secession by Biafra from Nigeria and the subsequent
government backed invasion, the Biafran city Port Harcourt was taken by
Federal troops.
May 19 1977
President Jomo Kenyatta banned big-game hunting in Kenya in an attempt to conserve wildlife.
May 19 1986
South African troops carry out raids in Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
May 19 2006: The Da Vinci Code opened
Amid
a firestorm of publicity and controversy, the director Ron Howard’s
big-screen adaptation of Dan Brown’s mega-bestselling thriller The Da
Vinci Code debuts in theaters on this day in 2006.
Howard
directed the $125 million film from a script by Akiva Goldsman; the pair
had previously won Oscars for their collaboration on 2001’s A Beautiful
Mind, starring Russell Crowe as the brilliant mathematician–and
paranoid schizophrenic–John Nash. Clocking in at two hours and 20
minutes, The Da Vinci Code starred Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, a
professor of religious symbology at Harvard University. Audrey Tautou
played Sophie, the alluring French cryptographer who teams with Langdon
to investigate symbolic clues left by her grandfather, a curator at the
Louvre Museum in Paris, after he is murdered at the hands of a
mysterious hooded figure named Silas (Paul Bettany). The acclaimed actor
Ian McKellen also appeared in the film, playing the campy and eccentric
British academic Sir Leah Teabing, who teaches Langdon and Sophie of a
secret society formed long ago to protect the descendants of Jesus and
Mary Magdalene.
Though critics had savaged Brown’s novel,
published in 2003, it was devoured by legions of avid fans, and by the
time the film was released, the book had sold some 60 million copies
worldwide. A mini-tourist industry even grew up around the book, as
readers rushed to visit key sights mentioned by Brown. Its popularity
was due in no small part to the controversy surrounding the book’s
portrayal of the history of Christianity, the world’s largest religion.
Some Christian leaders were particularly incensed by the book’s claim
that Jesus was in fact a mortal man who was married to Mary Magdalene,
and that the couple had children who live in France today. The most
vehement critics of the book’s content–many of whom also protested at
screenings of the film when it was released–maintained that The Da Vinci
Code was not just a harmless piece of suspense fiction but a dangerous
piece of propaganda aimed at building the public’s distrust of the Roman
Catholic Church–already bruised from widespread revelations of people
who claimed to have been sexually abused as children by members of the
clergy. A string of authors had already rushed to publish books
rebutting the claims of the novel, many claiming to have “broken” or
“cracked” the Da Vinci Code.
The film premiered at the Cannes
Film Festival on May 17, 2006, two days before it was released in the
United States. Earlier that month, a representative of the Vatican had
condemned the film at a conference in Rome as “full of calumnies,
offenses, and historical and theological errors,” according to a story
in Catholic World News. Just as book critics had maligned Brown’s clunky
prose, many film reviewers reacted with disdain to the movie, and just
as with the book, neither the protests, nor the generally poor reviews,
failed to keep audiences away: The Da Vinci Code had the third-highest
opening weekend of the year, at some $77 million, and went on to gross a
total of $217 domestically.
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