THE ULTIMATE
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.
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The United States is set to see its first crewed launch of a spacecraft since the Space Shuttle programme was ended in 2011.
NASA is to utilise the Space X company's rockets to send two astronauts to the International Space Station, in what is also a first, as it will be the first time a company rather than a nation-state has launched people into space. Space X is the company founded by Elon Musk, having created Pay Pal and Tesla. The launch will be at 16:33 locat time, 20:33 GMT, 21:33BST. The Crew Dragon capsule, pictured below, will be launched by a Falcon 9 rocket, from the same launchpad that launched Apollo 11 to the moon. 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 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. On this day, May 14th 1973, the USA's NASA launched its first Space Station, Skylab.
The Soviet Union had already put a space station into orbit, Salyut. It was the only solely US funded Space Station, and was taken into orbit, by a Saturn V rocket - the last mission for the Saturn V, that had launched the Apollo lunar missions. Skylab contained both Solar and Earth observatories, as well as the laboratory space for over 80 experiments to bec onducted. It was serviced by three crews. One of the first jobs the service crews had to do, was carry out external repairs to the Space Station that occurred during the launch, by attaching sheets to act as shields, these are the golden blankets that appear in the images of the Skylab. It also lost one set of Solar Panels, which gives it its assymetrical shape, as only one set of side solar panels remained. The last crew of astronauts left in 1974, expecting more crews to be launched, however, this didn't happen and in 1979 Skylab orbit was pulled by the Earth's gravity back into the Earth's atmosphere where it broke up, with pieces scattering over Western Australia. On this day, May 14th 1607, the first permanent English settlement was established at Jamestown, Virginia, the beginnings of the United States of America.
The English settlers departed from the banks of the Thames in London in Deecember, and it took their three ships the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery, four months to cross the Atlantic Ocean and make landfall on the coast of North America. Once on the coast they explored the area, and decided to build a settlement on an island in what they called the James River, which was away from the Atlantic Ocean, navigable (where boats could be used) and was easy to defend. The site was uninhabited by the Powhatan Native Americans, as it was seen as a swamp of mosquitoes unsuitable for farming. On unsuitable ground for farming, and with little agricultural experience amongst the settlers, whose main aim was hunting for gold, the settlement struggled to survive. Supplies from the local group of Powhatan Indians, ensured their survival, though relations with the Powhatan went through phases of friendship and warfare. The settlement also saw its settlers replaced by more colonists coming from England, and within four years the local Native Americans had been wiped out through warfare. Pocahontas the daughter of the Native American Chief of the region, befriended the English settlers, is said to have saved John Smith one of the seettlers' leaders from being executed; been taken hostage and converted to Christianity, and married John Rolfe, before travelling with Rolfe to England. As she was to travel back, with Rolfe and their son, Pocahontas died at Gravesend on the Thames, and was buried there in the local churchyard - where a statue of her now stands. John Rolfe began the successful cultivation of tobacco at the settlement, which became its main crop. The settlement was almost abandoned in 1610, but the leaving colonists were ordered to return, when more ships of settlers arrived from across the Atlantic Ocean, In many ways the Jamestown settlement that established the British colony of Virginia, and served for many years as its capital, began numerous features of the United States of America, its Anglo-Saxon (English/British) culture, such as its language, and the political system of rights and democracy. Whilst, it also led to th losses experienced by the Native American nations, as well as the use of slavery to grow plantation crops. On this day, May 13th 1862, at the height of the US Civil War, Robert Smalls, a Southern slave led an audacious bid for freedom by a group of slaves.
Smalls was a slave in South Carolina and he was assigned to steer a ship, the Planter, on duties in Charleston harbor, for the military of the Southern States, the Confederacy. He told the other slaves aboard of his plan, apart from one he didn't trust, and on May 13th 1862, they carried it out. As the white commanders went ashore on leave, he took command of the Planter, sailing the steamship carrying newly picked up artillery guns, and picking up family members of the slaves as he went, who were ready on another ship. Smalls knew that out beyond the harbour, was a naval blockade of the Northern United States navy. He was stealing the ship from the Confederacy, and aiming to take it across the Northern forces, where he and his fellow slaves would be free. Smalls, knew the harbour well, he knew the depths of the sea floor, he knew the defences surrounding the harbour, and he knew where mines had been placed - as he had been made to set the mines to thwart the Northern US navy. He also knew that if suspicion wasaroused other ships could give chase and the harbour guns could be turned on the Planter. He went to the extent of wearing a straw hat as the white commander did, and copying his mannerisms, so as not to arouse the suspicions of onlookers from the shore or other ships. He managed to sail the ship out of the harbour towards the Northern naval blockade, which meant further danger for his ship would be seen as a possible attack by the South. As they neared the Northern ships, they began to take aim, Smalls had the Planter's confederate flag run down, and replaced with a white sheet, that the family members had brought along. As they readied to fire the the Northern ships spotted the white flag, and waited. Robert Smalls had delivered his ship to the US Navy, he and the other slaves were free. In effect he had become the first African-American to command a US navy ship, the USS Planter. Smalls received a share of the 'prize' money for the capture of the ship, though even later in his life the amount he received was questioned as to whether it was really in line with the value of the ship. He went on to serve in the US Navy and Army, in the remainder of the Civil War, providing his knowledge of Charleston harbour and its defences to the North - so that within days they could launch a successful attack on an island at the harbour mouth. He encouraged the acceptance of African-Americans into the Northern military. Though, he served in a civilian capacity for the Northen Navy, he believed he had been commissioned as an officer, and late in life was awarded a pension equivalent to that of a captain. After the Civil War, he became a businessman, and entered politics, and in the era after the Emancipation Proclamation, and the Civil War Constitutional Amendments, but before the racist Jim Crow Laws took effect, he was elected to South Carolina's State Legislature (South Caroina's Parliament) and thence to the House of Representatives in the US Congress (equivalent to the UK's Parliament). On this day, 8th May 1945, Victory in Europe was celebrated!
Nazi generals had been to offer the German surrender to the US leader of Allied forces in Europe, General Eisenhower, at Reims in France the day before. The Soviet Red Army had fought from the East to Berlin, and their Western Allies were progressing from the West towards Berlin following D-Day in 1944. On 8th May, official documents were signed in Berlin, by Hitler's successor, that all German forces would cease aggression at midnight on 8th May. Celebrations were held across the Western World, especially in the UK and the USA. Street parties occurred across the UK, with a mass gathering in London's Trafalgar Square down to Buckingham Palace. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth addressed the crowds, in the city they refused to leave, along with the wartime Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, begged to join the crowds, and did so secretly, Princess Elizabeth, later Queen Elizabeth II, had joined the war effort as an ambulance driver. In the USA the celbrations focused upon New York's Times Square, with President Truman, dedicating the victory on his 61st Birthday to the former wartime President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, FDR. Both Churchill and Truman recognised that the victory was only half won, as the Allies were still at war with Imperial Japan in the Pacific. The Russians celebrate VE Day on the 9th May, due to the time difference. On this day, April 30th 1789, George Washington the first President of the United States of America was sworn into office, to begin his Presidency.
He had previously led the American Continental Army against the British in the American War of Independence or American Revolution, and presided at the Philadelphia Convention that created the US Constitution and the US federal Governmet in 1787. He served as President until 1797. He is seen by Americans as the 'Father of His Country', and 'First in War, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen'. He, like many others among the 'Founding Fathers' ot the USA, owned slaves, but steadily moved towards an abolitionist viewpoint, and unlike many of his contemporaries asked that the slaves on his estate at Mount Vernon to be freed after his death - which Martha Washington carried out a year after his death. You may see a statue of George Washington in Trafalgar Square, standing by the National Gallery, only a couple of streets away from Benjamin Franklin's house, which served as the first unofficial embassy of America. Washington was born British, and is descended from Britain, in the American Colonies, and served in the British forces in Virginia. He decided to join the fight to preserve his rights, against what he saw as the tyrannical British King, George III. Saying that he wouldn't set foot on British soil again, and so the statue in Trafalgar square stands not on British soil, but soil brought over from the USA! See how 170 trees that survived the Hiroshima Atom Bomb blast, when pretty much everything else in 2km of the blast was destroye, offered hope in the past and today. A wonderful film, by the BBC's 'Witness History', talking to one of the founders of Green Legacy Hiroshima, Tomoko Watanabe, about the detruction of the bombing and how buds on the trees gave the people of Hiroshima hope in the aftermath; how she learned to appreciate the trees and how the seeds of these remarkable survivors being sent around the world offer hope and peace to humanity today. The Green Legacy Hiroshma is at: http://glh.unitar.org/ See the BBC film at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-52459140/the-trees-that-survived-the-bombing-of-hiroshima Picture; T Grand via Pixabay.
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