THE ULTIMATE
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.
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May 23rd, is the date for this year's Eid al Fitr celebrations for Muslims, celebrating the breaking of the fast of Ramadan.
It is a celebration declared by the Prophet Muhammad in Medina, ending the holy month of Ramadan's dawn to dusk fasting. Mulsims are not allowed to fast on this day, they will make acts of charity and the Eid rayer is performed. After prayers Muslims vist friends and relatives, and hold large communal celebrations. Although, with the Coronavirus Lockdown in 2020, the gatherings will not be possible, and news ways of meeting and celebrating will be developed. 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. On this day, May 17th 1749, Edward Jenner, was born in Berkely, Gloucestershire, as a doctor and scientist he pioneered the development of vaccines and vaccination.
Edward Jenner demonstrated that contact with cowpox could prevent people getting smallpox. Napoleon having had his troops vaccinated called Jenner one of the greatest 'benefactors of mankind'. The legend of the discovery is that Jenner recalled a rhyme telling of how milkmaids had the fairest faces, that they were immune to smallpox. Jenner tested the hypothesis and showed how and why it worked enabling an effective vaccine to be given to populations. With the milder version of cowpox building an immunity to disfigurng and potentially fatal smallpox. This may have built on similar observations of others, and the practice brought over from the Turkish court by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu of a form of innoculation that included the disease itself - which Jenner had been treated with himself at a young age. By 1979 the World Health Organisation declared smallpox eradicated around the world, apart from some secure vials in the USA and Russia. Not only was Jenner praised in his lifetime for his discovery by Napoleon, but also by the third President of the United States of America, Thomas Jefferson. On this day, May 15th 1859, Pierre Curie was born in Paris, France.
Pierre Curie is a scientist known for his studies into magnetism, and with his wife Marie Curie into radioactivity, being the first the use the term. They discovered the elements radium and polonium. With his student Pierre also discovered nuclear energy. In 1903 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics along with his wife Marie, and Henri Becquerel. 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. |
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