In May’s Gone By …
Believe it or not May is here. Which means that June is almost here. Which means the middle of the year. Already! But we won’t dwell on that.
Apart from a couple of birthday’s, and Mother’s Day of course, May is a pretty quiet month for me. So I thought I’d take a look back through the history books and see happened in May … and as you’ll see there’s a heap a fascinating events that occurred during May.
1770 (17 May) – Lieutenant James Cook discovers and names Queenland’s Glass House Mountains
1813 (11 May) – Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth set out to cross the Blue Mountains in Australia’s first major exploration venture
1829 (2 May) – The city of Fremantle, Western Australia, is founded as Captain Fremantle hoists the Union Jack
1837 (23 May) – Streets and squares in Adelaide, capital of South Australia, are first named
1838 (24 May) – The first in what was to become a chain of David Jones Department stores opens
1840 (22 May) – New South Wales ceases to be a convict colony as the Order-in-Council ending transportation of convicts is issued
1852 (4 May) – The Second Gold Escort arrives in Adelaide, returning wealth from the Victorian goldfields to the colony of South Australia
1854 (18 May) – Australia’s first horse-drawn railway line commences operations in South Australia
1861 (30 May) – Wills returns to the Dig tree to see whether a rescue party has arrived
1870 (25 Mar) – Notorious Australian bushranger ‘Captain Thunderbolt’ is shot dead
1884 (31 May) – Kellogg patents the cornflake
1894 (5 May) – The Australian slang term ‘fair dinkum’ appears in print for the first time
1900 (15 May) – Women win the vote in Western Australia
1908 (10 May) – The first Mothers’ Day is celebrated
1915 (7 May) – British ship, the Lusitania, is sunk by a German submarine, resulting in the loss of 1,198 lives
1927 (20 May) – Charles Lindbergh becomes the first person to fly solo and non-stop across the Atlantic Ocean
1928 (15 May) – The Aerial Medical Service, later the Flying Doctor Service, is established at Cloncurry, Queensland
1933 (2 May) – The Loch Ness Monster is formally introduced to the world via a newspaper article
1937 (6 May) – The airship Hindenburg catches fire as it attempts to dock in New Jersey, USA, killing 36
1942 (31 May) – Japanese midget submarines enter Sydney Harbour in WWII
1945 (8 May) – Today marks VE Day (Victory in Europe), when Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies is announced
1949 (23 May) – West Germany is formed after Germany is split, following World War II
1960 (23 May) – Television finally comes to Tasmania with the launch of TVT-6
1967 (27 May) – An Australian referendum recognises more Aboriginal rights as equal citizens
1978 (3 May) – The first ever spam email is sent
1980 (18 May) – Mount St Helens, Washington state, USA, erupts in spectacular fashion
1984 (13 May) – The Australian $1 banknote is replaced with a $1 coin
2008 (21 May) – It is reported that the Tasmanian government has declared the Tasmanian Devil an endangered species
More details on every one of these events (as well as thousands more) can be found on the This Day in History website. If you haven’t been there before, do so, because it really is fascinating to read what happened in history.
And maybe it’s just me, but seeing this makes me realise that interesting stuff happens all the time throughout history!!
Be it worldwide or local in your own family, what interesting events in history have you come across that occurred during May?
2 Responses to “In May’s Gone By …”
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Lots of “who knew” among that list. Perhaps e should schedule a drive to the Glasshouse Mtns on 17 May.
🙂 Sounds like a great plan Pauleen.