1607: Some 100 English colonists arrived along the east bank of the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. Dispatched from England by the London Company, the colonists had sailed across the Atlantic aboard the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery.
1796: The first smallpox vaccination is administered
The British physician, Edward Jenner, successfully inoculated an 8-year-old smallpox patient using material from a cowpox lesion. The word “vaccine” is derived from the Latin word for cow (vacca).
1801: The first country to declare war on the United States of America is an African nation. An angry Pasha of Tripoli declares war after U.S. President Thomas Jefferson stops paying an annual “tribute” of US$225,000 (worth US$5.4 million in 2023) as protection money so Barbary Coast pirates will not attack American ships.
1948: Israel becomes an independent state
The announcement by Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, triggered a 10-month armed conflict known as the Arab-Israeli War of 1948. It started the day after the proclamation as troops of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, and Iraq invaded the young nation.
1955: The Warsaw Pact is established. Eight communist bloc countries signed the mutual defence treaty, which played an important role during the Cold War as an antagonist of NATO
1970: The Red Army Faction (RAF) begins operations. The German left-wing activist group grew out of the peace and anti-imperialist movement of the 1960s. In reaction to the violent oppression by the German state, they later began operating as a terrorist cell and were responsible for several murders.
1973: Skylab blasts off into orbit
The United States’ first space station crashed back to Earth on July 11, 1979, four years ahead of schedule. In its six years of service, the laboratory was used for many biomedical and technological experiments.
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1991: Considered by many in the liberation struggle “The Mother of South Africa,” Winnie Mandela, ex-wife of Nelson Mandela, is convicted of participation in the kidnapping and murder of four boys thought to be state informers during the country’s bloody transition from apartheid to democracy. She is sentenced to serve six years in prison but is released pending appeal.
2013: The London offices of BP and Shell were raided by European regulators investigating allegations they had ‘colluded’ to rig oil prices for more than a decade.
2015: B.B. King, the American guitarist and singer, who was a principal figure in the development of blues and whose style inspired leading popular musicians, died at age 89.
2020: Namibia President Namibia Hage Geingob orders that no new cars be purchased for government officials for the 2020-2025 period. The savings of US$11 million will be spent on “urgent priorities” dealing with “the health and economic implications of Covid-19.”
2021: Nigeria’s Burna Boy becomes the first African musician to have three successive albums (African Giant, Outside, and Twice As Tall) achieve 100 million streams each on Spotify, the Internet music streaming service.
BIRTHS ON THIS DAY: May 14
Emeka Ogboh, 47 years
Emeka Ogboh is a Nigerian sound artist, in Enugu, Nigeria. Trained as an artist, he began working with sounds that characterize cities following an Egyptian multimedia art program. At art museums throughout the world since 2008, people listen to his installations through headphones that create soundscape symphonies of actual recordings made of Lagos’s urban life. His soundscape installation of Igbo village life is a stylised tree.
Mark Zuckerberg, 40 Years
Mark Zuckerberg, American computer programmer Mark Zuckerberg was born on 14 May 1984. He co-founded the social media service Facebook, along with his Harvard roommates in 2004, and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling shareholder.
Roy Halladay (14 May 1977 – 7 November 2017)
Harry Leroy “Roy” Halladay III was an American professional baseball pitcher, who played in Major League Baseball for the Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies between 1998 and 2013. He died at the age of 40.
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