Joe Sestak

In the United States Senate Democratic primary election in Pennsylvania on May 18, 2010, Congressman Joe Sestak (pictured) defeated incumbent Arlen Specter, who had been in the Senate for five terms as a Republican. Just before the primary campaign, Specter switched to the Democratic Party in anticipation of a difficult primary challenge by Pat Toomey. Sestak was ultimately defeated by Toomey in the general election. Political observers and journalists described the race between Specter and Sestak as one of the bitterest and most watched of all the 2010 primary elections. Specter led Sestak by more than 20 percentage points for most of the race, but this lead narrowed in the final month of the campaign, when Sestak concentrated his funds and efforts on television commercials questioning Specter's Democratic credentials. Political observers said that Sestak's commercials and a national swing in momentum against incumbents harmed Specter's chances. (Full article...)

Grünbaum–Rigby configuration

• ... that although the Grünbaum–Rigby configuration (pictured) has been studied since 1879, it was not depicted in its realization as three overlaid heptagrams until 1990?
• ... that Soviet admiral Yuri Panteleyev was appointed a Companion of the Bath by the British for his role in supporting attacks against the German battleship Tirpitz?
• ... that more than twenty species of cetaceans have been stranded on the mudflats of Bahía Lomas?
• ... that Mary Stuart Fisher, a Temple University professor of radiology who was named Physician of the Year in 1996, was discouraged from following her chosen career path by her father, a physician himself?
• ... that Luciano Burti's 111G crash at the 2001 Belgian Grand Prix led to a ban on creating holes in racing helmets for drinking tubes and radio communication wires?
• ... that the motto of Midleton College, Spartam nactus es, hanc exorna, is a mistranslation of a line from a Greek play by Euripides?
• ... that George Backhouse Witts read the Riot Act on a hill in Gloucestershire?
• ... that the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island banned automobiles for more than a decade starting in 1908?

Scott Morrison

• The Ibiza affair, an Austrian political scandal, causes the collapse of the current government and triggers a snap election.
• The Liberal–National Coalition, led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison (pictured), wins the most seats in the Australian federal election.
• Taiwan becomes the first state in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.
• Chinese-American architect I. M. Pei dies at the age of 102.
• Former Prime Minister of Australia Bob Hawke dies at the age of 89.

May 19: Pesach Sheni (Judaism, 2019); Pontian Greek Genocide Remembrance Day in Greece; Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day in Turkey; Ho Chi Minh's birthday in Vietnam

John Franklin

• 1051 – Anne of Kiev married King Henry I to become Queen of France.
• 1655 – Anglo-Spanish War: England invaded Spanish Jamaica, capturing it a week later.
• 1845 – Captain John Franklin (pictured) and his ill-fated expedition departed from Greenhithe, England; all 129 men were lost when their ships became icebound in the Canadian Arctic.
• 1911 – Parks Canada, the world's first national park service, was established as the Dominion Parks Branch under the Department of the Interior.
• 1991 – With the local Serb population boycotting the polls, voters in Croatia passed a referendum supporting independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Dunstan (d. 988) · George Washington Whistler (b. 1800) · John Gorton (d. 2002)