On May 19, 1588, the 130 ships of the Spanish Armada set sail for England. (Three months later, it was soundly defeated by the English fleet.)
In 1643 delegates from four New England colonies met in Boston to form a confederation.
In 1934 a fire at the Chicago Stock Yards claimed one life and caused damage estimated at $8 million.
In 1935 T.E. Lawrence, the British archeologist, soldier and writer who gained fame as Lawrence of Arabia, died in a motorcycle accident in England at age 46.
In 1945 more than 400 U.S. warplanes bombed Tokyo in World War II.
In 1958 the United States and Canada formally established the North American Air Defense Command.
In 1967 Moscow ratified a treaty with the U.S. and Britain to ban nuclear weapons in outer space.
In 1969 the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the marijuana conviction of drug advocate Dr. Timothy Leary.
In 1974 Finance Minister Vallery Giscard d'Estaing was elected president of France.
In 1980 3,500 additional National Guard troops were ordered to Miami as the death toll rose to 15 in violence stemming from the acquittal of four white policemen in the death of a black man.
In 1981 five British soldiers were killed in an Irish Republican Army ambush in Newry, Northern Ireland.
In 1988 Carlos Lehder Rivas, co-founder of Colombia's Medellin drug cartel, was convicted in Jacksonville, Fla., of smuggling 3 tons of cocaine into the U.S.
In 1992 the 27th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits Congress from giving itself midterm pay raises, went into effect, two centuries after it was proposed by James Madison.
In 1993 the White House set off a political storm by abruptly firing the entire staff of its travel office. (Five of the seven staffers were later reinstated and assigned to other duties.)