THE ULTIMATE
On this day, May31st 1911, the Titanic was launched at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast.
It would still take time for the Titanic to be fitted out and completed, but the vessel, without its funnels, was afloat in seawater. The Titanic was operated by the White Star Line shipping company, and it was the largest ship afloat. It was also believed to be unsinkable. Carrying wealthy passengers and people emigrating from Britain, Ireland and Scandinavia to the United States, it sailed on its maiden voyage in April 1912 - where it struck an iceberg that ruptured its watertight compartments and sank in the North Atlantic.
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On this day, May 30th 1381, Peasant's in the village of Brentwood, Essex, refused to pay taxes and chased the King's tax collector out of the village back to London, starting the Peasants' Revolt.
Inspired by a radical preacher John Ball, and led by Wat Tyler, the peasants from Essex and Kent marched upon London, to take their demands to the 14 year-old King Richard II. Find out more on our Year 7 page. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, JFK, was born on May 29th 1917 at Brookline, Massachusetts.
JFK became the 35th President of the USA, narrowly beating Richard Nixon in the 1960 election. He had served in the US Navy during World War II in the Pacific. As president he served from 1916 to his assassination in November 1963. Seen as a youthful President, bringing a new generation to the command of the US political system, his tenure at the White House, has often been known as 'Camelot' - after the castle of the legendary King Arthur. Whilst First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy sought to make the White House reflect modern fashion trends. In power at the hight of the Cold War, Kennedy is noted for his stances against the Soviet Union and its allies - in particular the failed Bay of Pigs invasion by the CIA, his support for Berlin, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 that led to the brink of nuclear war between the US and USSR Superpowers and their allies. He established the Peace Corps in the USA, and was supportive of the Civil Rights Movement in the USA having a role in the organistion of the March on Washington where Martin Luther kIng Jr. gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech. He also committed the USA to putting a man on the moon before the decade was out, leading to the success of NASA's Apollo space programme, where the US overtook the USSR in the Space Race. On this day, May 25th 240 BCE, Halley's Comet was first recorded in China, in the Records of the Grand Historian, or Shiji.
It may have been commented upon in Greece and China prior to this. A later recording in 87 BCE appears on Babylonian tablets that can be seen at the British Museum. Halley's comet is famously depicted in the Bayeux Tapeestry, having been seen by the Anglo-Saxons in 1066, and they saw it as a bringer of doom. It is called Halley's Comet, after Edmund Halley who in 1705, used Isaac Newton's laws of gravity and motion to calculate that three comet appearances, were actually the same comet returning around every 76 years. He went on to predict it would return in 1758. Unfortunatley, Halley died in 1742. Late in 1758 the comet returned first being seen by a German farmer and amateur astronomer. A French astronomer named it Halley's Comet after Edmund Halley. The return of Halley's Comet proved Isaac Newton's principles, and was the first object kown to orbit the Sun other than the planets. Though, the Babylonian and Jewish authorities in ancient times may have recognised that it returned, was 'periodic', as a passage notes a star returning once every 70 years. The last sighting of Halley's Comet was in 1986, where a European space probe named Giotto closed in on it flying through the comet's tail. It was called Giotto, after the artist who painted a Christian Nativity scene, using Halley's Comet, as the Star of Bethlehem. Next sighting 2061! On this day, May 24th 1930. Amy Johnson gained fame as an aviator for becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia.
She flew from Croydon. England to Darwin in Australia, a trip of 11,000 miles, in her plane Jason. She gained numerous honours for her feat in both Britain and Australia. During the Second World War she served in the Air Transport Auxillary (ATA) where she transported RAF planes across the country the airfields where they would be used to engage the enemy and defend Britain and its allies. On this day, Mat 23rd 1707, Carl Linnaeus was born in Rashult, Sweden.
Linnaeus became a botanist and explorer, who develoed the principles for defining species and types of organisms in the plant and animal kingdoms, leading to a uniform system for the naming of plants and animals. He was born in a poor area of Sweden, and was unable to afford attending all the lectures at university, though he was eventually able to by teaching botany. As a young man he devloped his ideas and principles, that he was to set out in a number of works, whilst carrying out studies in Lapland amongst the Sami people, of Northern Scandinavia. He also gained his medical qualifications whilst in the Netherlands, where he began to gain the sponsors he needed in order to publish his ideas. Back in Sweden he practised medicine, but sought to return to the study of botany, and was able to build up a network of exploring botanists, who travelled the world at the time of European exploration, bringing to him more specimens to be placed in the growing tree of life his naming system was steadily mapping. On this day, May 21st 1799, Mary Anning the pioneering fossil hunter was born.
Lyme Regis is famous for its Fossils, and Mary Anning was the pioneering female fossil hunter - the 'Princess of Paleontology', 1799 - 1847. She discovered the first ichthyosaur (aged 12), first plesiosaur and first British pterosaur. Her range of scientific discoveries did not gain her the credit they deserved, in the male dominated scientific community at the time. She took on the family fossil business, selling samples to the King of Saxony, and for display at the forerunner to the New York Academy of Sciences, the Lyceum of Natural History. She is buried in St. Michael's church, where there is a window dedicated to her. In 2010 the Royal Society placed her in a list of the ten British women who had most influenced science. Find out more: Video from the Smithsonian, the US museum in Washington DC, featuring David Attenborough as he visits the Natural History Museum in London, where you can see some of Mary Anning's finds in London: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/videos/category/history/prolific-princess-of-paleontology-mary-anning/ Two Videos from the BBC on Mary Anning's life: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNOh-85_Dmc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEbgTpdwRgI On this Day, aviator Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean...5/20/2020 On this day, May 20th 1932, American aviator Amelia Earhart set off on her successful bid to become the first woman to fly solo non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean.
She took off from Newfoundland, Canada, with the aim of arriving in Paris, as her male equivalent Charles Lindbergh had done just five years before. Just under 15 hours later she landed in a field in Derry / Londonderry in Northern Ireland, having successfully crossed the Atlantic Ocean. She was asked by a farm worker 'Have you flown far?', to which she replied, 'From America'. Before flying on to London, her lane was surrounded by wellwishers in the field. You can find out more at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-32934928 On this day, May 19th 1909, Nicholas Winton was born.
Nicholas Winton was a British humanitarian known for rescuing 669 Jewish children from Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia just before the outbreak of World War Two. He created an organisation to find homes for the children and the safe passage of the children by train across Europe to Britain. He wrote to other countries, but only Sweden also took in the freed Jewish children. This way the children escaped the Nazis and the Holocaust, in which many of their parents perished. He refused to talk about his actions in Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic and Slovakia, for decades until his wife found his scrapbook with details of the children he had helped in the loft. Then in 1988 a BBC programme reunited him with many children, now adults, who he had saved. Nicholas was always modest about his role, saying that others had done the more dangerous work of collecting the children and putting them on the trains to safety. He also regretted the children he couldn't save, only a few on the last train out of Prague station survived the war. He also believed had other countries responded to his letters calling for homes for the children he could hae saved more. In 2003 he was knighted by the Queen for his services to humanity in saving Jewish children from Nazi occupied Czechoslovakia. In 2014 he was awarded the highest honour of the Czech Republic. On this day, May 18th 1969, Apollo 10 was launched by NASA.
Apollo 10 was the second Apollo mission to orbit the moon, and acted as a 'dress rehearsal' for the July 1969 moon landing by Apollo 11. Astronauts, Thomas Stafford, John Young and Gene Cernan, flew Apollo 10 31 times around the moon, and released the Apollo Lunar Module to descend towards the moon's surface, before returning to the Command Module at the stage where Apollo 11 would begin the descent stage to land on the moon's surface. The call signs for the mission were from the 'Peanuts' characters 'Charlie Brown' and 'Snoopy'; with 'Charlie Brown' being the nickname for the Command Module, that John Young remained in, and 'Snoopy' being the Lunar Module, which Thomas Stafford and Gene Cernan headed towards the moon surface in and back. You can see 'Charlie Brown' in London's Science Museum, as America's Smithsonian museum, based in Washington D.C. loaned it to London's Science Museum in 1978. |
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