1660: On his 30th birthday Charles II returns to London from exile in the Netherlands to claim the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth comes to an end.
1851: Sojourner Truth delivers powerful speech on African American women’s rights. At the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention, on May 29, 1851, the formerly enslaved woman, Sojourner Truth, rose to speak and assert her right to equality as a woman, as well as a Black American.
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1942: Jews in Paris are forced to sew a yellow star on their coats. Joseph Goebbels had made the persecution, and ultimately the extermination, of Jews a personal priority from the earliest days of the war, often recording in his diary such statements as: “They are no longer people but beasts,”
1948: As Egyptian ground forces approach Tel Aviv, the capital of the new state of Israel, the Israeli Air Force (established the day before), counters with air strikes, forcing back the Egyptian offensive.
1953: At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, become the first known explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, which at 29,035 feet above sea level is the highest point on earth. The two, part of a British expedition, made their final assault on the summit after spending a fitful night at 27,900 feet. News of their achievement broke around the world on June 2, the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, and Britons hailed it as a good omen for their country’s future.
1996: Benjamin Netanyahu becomes Israel’s prime minister. The conservative politician is criticized for hampering the peace process that former Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, had promoted.
1977: Nigel Short, an 11-year-old English schoolboy, qualified as the youngest-ever competitor in a national chess championship. He had already beaten Viktor Korchnoi during an exhibition game.
1999: Olusegun Obasanjo wins Nigeria’s first free elections in 16 years. The former Nigerian Army general and military ruler oversaw a democratization process that defines the country’s political system to the present day.
2000: President Olusegun Obasanjo granted amnesty to Biafra officers who were dismissed from the Nigeria Police after the civil war.
2007: Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua is inaugurated.
2017: Panamanian military leader Manuel Noriega—who ruled Panama (1983–89) until ousted by U.S. forces and who later served prison sentences in the United States and Panama—died at age 83 in Panama City.
2013: Nigeria’s first cable-stayed bridge, the 1.36 kilometre-long Lekki-Ikoyi Bridge in Lagos, is commisssioned. Nigerians are upset that a toll will be paid for use even though the bridge is built with public funds.
BIRTHS ON THIS DAY: May 29
Bella Disu, 38 years
Bella Nigerian businesswoman, arts enthusiast, published author, and philanthropist Nigeria was born in 1986. She entered her family’s business dynasty Globacom, a telecommunications company, in 2004, and showed the executive talents of her parents, Emelia Adefolake Marquis and Mike Adenuga. By 2019 she was executive vice president, while also presiding over other companies in the real estate industry.
Fela Sowande (29 May 1905 – 13 March 1987)
Nigerian musician and composer, in Abeokuta, Lagos State, British Nigeria. “The Father of Modern Nigerian Art Music” studied in London in the 1930s, where he played piano duet with American musician Fats Waller and was the BBC radio’s theatre organist. By the mid-1940s he was one of the foremost organists in the U.K. He began composing with the organ as his featured instrument. His large body of secular and sacred choir music was composed before his return to Nigeria in the 1950s when he focused on musical scholarship at the Nigerian Broadcasting Service and the University of Ibadan. He died at the age of 81.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1973
One of America’s best-loved presidents, often referred to as JFK, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was born into a politically and socially prominent family in Brookline on 29 May 1917. He was the first American president to be born and then serve in the 20th century. He served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination on 22 November 1963.
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An interesting read
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