May 5th - 11th
On 5th May…
1821 - Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile on the island of Saint Helena in the southern Atlantic. Napoleon was a former French ruler, who was crowned Emperor of France in 1804 and controlled an empire that stretched across most of Europe. He fought Britain’s Admiral Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar and the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo; he lost both battles. In London you will find a station called Waterloo and a square called Trafalgar, so named after these battles.
Amy Johnson set off for Australia
1930 - Amy Johnson, a British aviator from Hull, took off in her plane ‘Gypsy Moth’ from Croydon Airport to fly to Australia. Twenty days later she arrived in Darwin and became the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia. Along the way she had to stop for rest, food, repairs and refuelling at: Vienna, Constantinople, Allepo, Baghdad, Bandar Abbas, Karachi, Jhansi, Calcutta, Rangoon, Bangkok, Singora, Singapore, Tjamal, Surabaya, Atambua, and Darwin. Today you can fly to Australia in less than a day, usually with just one stop along the way, can you imagine taking 20 days just to arrive somewhere that we now go to for holidays?
On 6th May…
The Battle of Edington
878 - Alfred the Great defeated the Vikings at the Battle of Edington. This was the decisive battle that forced the Vikings to accept a peace treaty and stop raiding, invading, and battling against the Anglo-Saxons. In return for peace, the Vikings would live in Danelaw, a large area of land to the north of England whilst King Alfred and the Saxons would live in Wessex to the south of England. The Viking’s King Guthrum also agreed to be baptised into the Christian faith.
King George V
1910 - King George V became the king of the United Kingdom when his father Edward VII died.
1954 - Roger Bannister broke the ‘four-minute mile’ by running the distance in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds. Until then it had been thought to be physically impossible to run a mile in under four minutes. The current world record for this distance is 3 minutes 43.13 seconds held by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco.
1994 - The Channel Tunnel was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II and the French president Francois Mitterrand. Work began on the tunnel that links England and France beneath the English Channel six years earlier in 1988. The tunnel is nearly 38km long and cost £9 billion to build. Did you know that there were attempts to build a tunnel to France in the 1880s, during the reign of Queen Victoria, a century before the Channel Tunnel was built?
Charles III was crowned King
2023 - King Charles III was crowned King of the United Kingdom in a ceremony held at Westminster Abbey.He was the 40th reigning monarch to be crowned at Westminster Abbey and is the oldest British monarch to be crowned.
On 7th May…
1915 - During World War I the British passenger ship Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat (submarine) off the west coast of Ireland. Nearly 1,200 people were drowned in the attack. The political after-effects of this event drew the U.S.A into the war on the side of the Allies.
1945 - World War II was brought to an end in Europe when Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allied Powers following Hitler’s suicide in Berlin.
1999 - The first Scottish Parliament for 300 years was elected and power was transferred from Westminster to Scotland a few weeks later.
On 8th May…
1945 - VE Day, Victory in Europe was declared after Germany formally surrendered to the UK, France, the Soviet Union, and the USA. This saw the end of fighting in Europe, but the war still continued against Japan across South-East Asia and the Pacific.
On 9th May…
1671 - Thomas Blood, an Irish adventurer better known as ‘Captain Blood’ was caught trying to steal the crown jewels from the Tower of London. Thomas was a Parliamentarian during the English Civil War and had his estates taken from him when the monarchy was restored in 1660. Instead of being executed for his treasonous act, Thomas Blood was made a member of the Royal Court and had his land and estates returned to him by King Charles II who was so impressed by his sheer audacity that he decided to reward him rather than punish him. Whoever said crime doesn’t pay never met Thomas Blood.
1949 - Britain’s first launderette opened in Bayswater, London. Nowadays most homes have a washing machine.
On 10th May…
King Edward I lost the Battle of Loudon Hill
1307 – King Robert the Bruce of Scotland defeated King Edward I’s English troops at the Battle of Loudon Hill. The Scottish army of about 600 men was far outnumbered by the English which had roughly five times as many men in its ranks (quick maths … 600 x 5 = 3,000) but that didn’t deter the brave Scots.
Instead of facing the English in a large-scale battle, the Scots waged guerrilla warfare and attacked the English army in small hit-and-run style ambushes. This forced the English troops to take a narrow route towards the Scots who were on higher ground; the English were hemmed in on one side by a river and on the other side by thick, wet, boggy marshland. Their cavalry charged towards the Scots but fell into the hidden ditches that had been dug out by the Scots to trap the English horses and their riders. The horses behind were galloping too fast to be able to stop and landed on top of those already fallen. It was a disaster for the English from the start.
1940 - Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as Prime Minister of Britain, leading the coalition government through World War II.
On 11th May…
1812 - The British Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval, was assassinated by a deranged businessman who was angry at his failure to get any government assistance whilst he was wrongly imprisoned in Russia for five years for an alleged debt. The assassin, John Bellingham was executed a week later despite being declared insane.
Spencer Perceval is the only Prime Minister to have been murdered.