Passengers on board the “Queen Elizabeth” – a contingent of 14000 American soldiers beginning their journey home following the defeat of Adolf Hitler.
Monthly Archives: May 2014
Australian Icon
Norman Hetherington (29 May 1921 – 6 December 2010) and Mr. Squiggle (1 July 1959 – 9 July 1999)
I feel sorry for Australian children who never got to watch this growing up!
1905 Peanut Stand New York City
On this day: Isadora Duncan was born in 1877
Isadora Duncan in 1899
American dancer Isadora Duncan was born on the 27th of May, 1877.
As a former dancer, I grew up being taught to admire her. However, I strongly disagree with quite a lot about her, including her pro-Communist, pro-Soviet views. These views led to her exile from the United States.
Duncan revolutionised dance, creating contemporary styles before her time, dancing barefoot and showing a preference for performing in flowing fabrics. She had a preference for scarves.
In the early 20th century.
This love of scarves was to be her downfall; in September, 1927 – at age fifty – her scarf became entangled in the automobile she was travelling in, breaking her neck and causing her death.
On this day: Mary of Teck was born in 1867
In Ottawa in 1901.
Mary of Teck was born on the 26th of May, 1867 at Kensington Palace in London. Though technically a German princess, her life was in England, where she would go on to marry the future King George the Fifth.
With her parents.
Today she is probably best-known as the grandmother of Queen Elizabeth the Second.
Soon before her wedding in 1893.
Her life very nearly took a different path, as she was originally engaged to the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, who died six weeks after the engagement was announced.
Her full name was Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes, and she held many titles, including Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Empress of India.
She died in March, 1953.
On this day: 1940
On the 24th May, 1940 Ukrainian-born Igor Sikorsky performed the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.
Sikorsky in 1914
Sikorsky was born in Kyiv (or Kiev), Ukraine on the 25th of May, 1889.
On this day: Heinrich Himmler committed suicide in 1945
Heinrich Himmler, leading member of the Nazi Party, committed suicide on the 23rd of May, 1945.
By this time he was already in captivity, and bit into a cyanide capsule when, after searching his body, a doctor attempted to inspect his mouth. He took less than fifteen minutes to die.
Germany 1862
Ukraine – 1930s
People drop dead in Ukraine’s streets as Russia starves millions of Ukrainians to death in the genocide – Holodomor – of 1932-33.
Eton in 1914
Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester in Eton dress in 1914.
In Times Gone By... 