May 15 in History

Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association in New York on May 15, 1869, splitting the women's rights movement over a bitter disagreement about the Fifteenth Amendment. The amendment, which would guarantee voting rights regardless of race, did not include sex. Stanton and Anthony argued that women's suffrage should not be sacrificed to secure Black male suffrage. Their former allies, including Frederick Douglass, countered that this was "the Negro's hour" and that combining the causes would doom both. The split revealed deep fractures within the reform community that had been papered over during the abolition movement. Stanton and Anthony's NWSA pursued a federal constitutional amendment for women's suffrage and also championed broader reforms including divorce liberalization and labor rights. A rival organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association led by Lucy Stone and Henry Ward Beecher, focused on winning suffrage state by state and avoided controversial positions. The NWSA's approach was confrontational. Anthony registered to vote in Rochester, New York, in 1872 and was arrested, tried, and fined. The trial, in which the judge directed a guilty verdict without allowing the jury to deliberate, became a cause celebre. Anthony refused to pay the fine and the government declined to jail her, denying her the martyrdom that would have drawn greater attention to the cause. The two organizations reunited in 1890 as the National American Woman Suffrage Association, but the goal remained distant. State-by-state victories came slowly, with Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Idaho granting women the vote before 1900. Neither Anthony nor Stanton lived to see the Nineteenth Amendment ratified in 1920, fifty-one years after they founded the NWSA. Anthony died in 1906 at eighty-six, her final public words reportedly: "Failure is impossible."

John D. Rockefeller's monopoly over American oil ended with a single Supreme Court decision on May 15, 1911. The Court ruled unanimously that Standard Oil of New Jersey constituted an unreasonable restraint of trade under the Sherman Antitrust Act and ordered the company broken into thirty-four independent entities. Chief Justice Edward Douglass White, writing for the Court, established the "rule of reason" standard that would govern antitrust law for the next century. Standard Oil had controlled roughly 91 percent of American oil refining at its peak. Rockefeller built the monopoly through a combination of ruthless efficiency, secret railroad rebates, predatory pricing, and the systematic acquisition or destruction of competitors. Journalists, particularly Ida Tarbell, whose father's oil business had been crushed by Rockefeller, spent years documenting these practices. Tarbell's nineteen-part expose in McClure's Magazine, published between 1902 and 1904, created the public pressure that led to the government's lawsuit. The breakup produced companies that became some of the twentieth century's largest corporations. Standard Oil of New Jersey became Exxon. Standard Oil of New York became Mobil. Standard Oil of California became Chevron. Standard Oil of Indiana became Amoco. Together, these successor companies dominated global oil markets for decades and, through mergers, eventually reconsolidated into today's energy giants ExxonMobil and Chevron. The decision's greatest irony was its effect on Rockefeller's personal wealth. He held shares in all thirty-four successor companies, and as each grew independently, the combined value of his holdings skyrocketed. The breakup that was meant to punish monopoly power made Rockefeller richer than he had been before. The "rule of reason" standard the case established gave courts wide discretion in applying antitrust law, a flexibility that corporations learned to navigate and that reformers have criticized ever since.

A cartoon mouse inspired by Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight flickered onto a screen for the first time on May 15, 1928, when Walt Disney and animator Ub Iwerks test-screened Plane Crazy for a small Hollywood audience. Mickey Mouse, with his round ears, button eyes, and mischievous personality, was born from desperation. Disney had just lost the rights to his previous cartoon star, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, in a contractual dispute that taught him a brutal lesson about intellectual property. Disney and Iwerks created Mickey in secret, working nights and weekends in Disney's garage studio on Hyperion Avenue. Iwerks drew at a furious pace, producing 700 drawings per day to complete Plane Crazy in just two weeks. The cartoon showed Mickey building an airplane and taking Minnie Mouse on a wild ride that ended in a crash. The test audience's response was lukewarm, and no distributor picked it up. Mickey's breakthrough came six months later with Steamboat Willie, one of the first cartoons with synchronized sound throughout. The November 1928 premiere at the Colony Theatre in New York was a sensation. Audiences had never seen a cartoon where the action matched the soundtrack so precisely. The technical innovation of synchronized sound, combined with Mickey's expressive personality, created an entertainment phenomenon that made Disney's studio viable. From that modest beginning, Mickey Mouse became the most recognizable cartoon character in the world and the foundation of one of the largest entertainment companies in history. Disney learned from the Oswald disaster and retained ownership of all his characters, a decision that proved to be worth billions. Mickey's image has appeared on everything from watches to theme park castles, generating revenue streams that Disney himself could not have imagined when he sketched that first mouse on a train ride from New York.

James Puckle patented a weapon on May 15, 1718, that anticipated the machine gun by more than a century. His "Defence Gun" was a tripod-mounted, single-barreled firearm with a revolving cylinder that could fire nine rounds per minute, roughly three times the rate of a skilled musketeer. Puckle designed two versions of the cylinder: one firing round bullets for use against Christian enemies and another firing square bullets intended to cause more grievous wounds against Ottoman Turks. The distinction between round and square ammunition was not merely theoretical cruelty. Puckle genuinely believed that the additional suffering caused by square projectiles would serve as a deterrent against Muslim adversaries. This theological approach to weapons design struck many contemporaries as absurd. A satirical magazine of the period noted that the gun was designed "to convince the Turks of the benefits of Christian civilization." The gun worked in demonstrations. Puckle showed it to potential investors and military officials, firing it successfully in rain, a condition that made conventional flintlock muskets unreliable. But the British military showed no interest. The manufacturing precision required to produce reliable revolving cylinders in 1718 was beyond the capability of most gunsmiths, making mass production impractical. Puckle's company attracted few investors and dissolved without selling a single gun to any military. The Puckle Gun occupies a curious position in weapons history. Too advanced for its era's manufacturing technology, too complex for field maintenance, and too expensive for mass production, it was a genuine innovation that arrived a century too early. The revolving cylinder concept would not become practical until Samuel Colt's revolver in the 1830s, and crew-served rapid-fire weapons would not see widespread military use until the Gatling gun during the American Civil War.

Eight thousand German peasants died on a hillside near Frankenhausen on May 15, 1525, their makeshift weapons and desperate faith no match for the armored cavalry and professional landsknechts of the princely coalition. The Battle of Frankenhausen crushed the largest popular uprising in European history before the French Revolution and killed Thomas Muntzer, the radical preacher who had convinced the peasants that God would intervene on their behalf. The German Peasants' War had erupted in 1524 across a vast swath of central Europe, from Alsace to Thuringia. Peasant grievances were concrete: excessive labor obligations, restrictions on hunting and fishing rights, escalating tithes, and the erosion of customary village autonomy by territorial lords. Martin Luther's Reformation had given the peasants a language of spiritual equality that they extended to social and economic demands. Their Twelve Articles, published in March 1525, remains one of the earliest printed declarations of human rights. Muntzer went further than any Reformation leader in promising divine revolution. He told his followers at Frankenhausen that God would catch the cannonballs in His sleeves, that a rainbow appearing over the battlefield was a sign of divine protection. The peasants, armed with farm tools, clubs, and a few captured cannon, faced a professional army with artillery, heavy cavalry, and experienced commanders. The battle lasted barely an hour before the peasant lines collapsed. Luther's response was devastating. Already alarmed by the violence, he published "Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants," urging the princes to "smite, slay, and stab" the rebels. The peasant armies were systematically destroyed across Germany over the following months. An estimated 100,000 people died. The defeat ended the possibility of social revolution accompanying religious reformation and cemented the alliance between Protestant churches and princely authority that shaped German politics for centuries.