May 22
1840. Britain abolishes the transporting of convicts to New South Wales, the most populous province in Australia.
1856. Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beats Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner with a cane for insulting both the State of South Carolina and another Senator, who was a relative of Brooks. Sumner takes three years to recover sufficiently to return to the Senate. Several of Sumner's fellow Senators sought to intervene, but Brooks brought a friend who, waving a gun, tells them not to interfere. Brooks beat Sumner into unconsciousness, breaking his cane in the process.
South Carolinians praised Brooks, and many sent him new canes and instructed him to "hit him again!" Surviving an expulsion vote in the House (of which Brooks was a member), he voluntarily resigned. Fellow Congressman Anson Burlingame of Connecticut denounced Brooks' attack as cowardly on teh floor of the House. Brooks offered him a duel, which Burlingame promptly accepting, selecting rifles as his weapon (as was his right as he had the choice of weapons, having been offered the duel). To get around laws prohibiting duels, Burlingame proposed that the duel be held in the Navy Yard on the Canadian side of the New York border. Brooks, reportedly dismayed by Burlingame's enthusiastic acceptance and reputation as a crack shot, refused to show up, citing unspecified danger to his person if he had to cross Northern states to reach the site of the duel.
Brooks died of the croup in 1957. Brooksville, Florida and Brooks County, Georgia, are named in his honor.
Sumner returned to the Senate and offered a harsh anti-slavery speech on the floor in 1859. During the War, he was chairman of the foreign relations committee, and was an expert on the pro/anti Union sentiment in Great Britain. As soon as the war began he was an ardent supporter of Reconstruction and following the Civil War, Sumner is an ardent Radical Republican.
Sumner High School, the first black high school west of the Mississippi, was named in his honor when it was opened in St. Louis in 1875.
Ironically, but fittingly, Sumner High School in Topeka, Kansas, was central to the drama surrounding the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.
Numerous other schools, counties and towns across America are named for Sumner, as well as the Sumner Tunnel in Boston and this statue, in Harvard Yard:
1906. Wright Brothers are granted a patent for their "flying machine"
1939. Germany and Italy sign the Pact of Steel.
1947. President Truman signs into law an act granting aid to Greece and Turkey, beginning what will become known as the Truman Doctrine.
1980. The arcade game Pac Man is released.
1992. Johnny Carson hosts the Tonight Show for the last time.