May 19, 1536 - Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England, was executed for adultery, treason, and incest. Anne was a commoner who had served as a maid of honour to Henry VIII's first wife Catherine of Aragon. While she was in the Queen's service Henry became enamored with Anne and began pursuing her. Despite his advances Anne refused to become the King's mistress. The King took another approach and sought to annul his marriage to Catherine. When the Catholic Church refused his request, Henry nevertheless married Anne in January of 1533 and obtained an annulment from Thomas Cramer, the Archbishop of Canterbury. As a result the Pope excommunicated both King Henry and Archbishop Cramer. This led to a break with the Catholic Church and the formation of the Church of England with the King at its head. During their marriage Anne gave birth to a daughter but also suffered three miscarriages. After only three years the King grew frustrated with Anne for failing to produce a male heir and began a relationship with Jane Seymour. Shortly after Anne suffered her third miscarriage the King had her arrested on fabricated charges and she was sent to the Tower of London. Two weeks after her arrest Anne was found guilty and sentenced to death. Normally the punishment for her alleged crimes was to be burned alive; however, the King commuted her sentence to the less-painful beheading.

May 20, 1862 - President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law. Designed to encourage settlement of the western territories, the Homestead Act gave an applicant up to 160 acres of undeveloped federal land west of the Mississippi River. The law required three steps: file an application; live on the land for five years and show evidence of having made improvements; and file for deed of title. Anyone who was 21 or older and had never taken up arms against the U.S. government could file an application to claim a federal land grant. From 1862 until it was discontinued in 1976 over 270,000,000 acres (420,000 sq miles) were settled under the Homestead Act, including my own family's ranch in Southeastern Idaho.

May 22, 2010 - Jordan Romero, a 13-year-old American, became the youngest person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Romero's accomplishment broke the previous record, which had been set nine years earlier by Temba Tsheri, a 16-year-old Sherpa from Nepal, on May 24, 2001. Incidentally, one day after Tsheri's ascent, Erik Weihenmayer of Boulder, Colorado, became the first blind person to scale to the top of the world's highest peak.

May 24, 1830 - The nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb was first published as an original poem by Sarah Josepha Hale. The poem was inspired by an actual event when a young girl named Mary Sawyer caused a commotion one day by taking her pet lamb to her school in Sterling, Massachusetts. A man named John Roulstone was visiting the school that day and is sometimes credited with writing the first four lines of the poem. However it has been impossible to determine whether Roulstone in fact contributed anything or whether the entire poem was written by Hale.

"Good Christian people, I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it."

 

- Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, before her execution. 

Heath is Reading

 

 

The Hunger Games 

by Suzanne Collins