May

National Barbeque Month ▪ National Bike Month ▪ National Moving Month
Get Caught Reading Month ▪ National Mental Heath Month
National Physical Fitness and Sports Month

1 -- May Day
Lei Day (Hawaii)
Orthodox Easter Sunday
Mother Goose Day
National Family Week
National Pet Week
Great Britain Formed, 1707

2 -- National Historic Preservation Week
Leonardo Da Vinci dies, 1519
King James Bible Published, 1611

3 -- National Teacher Day

4 -- Christopher Columbus discovers Jamaica, 1494

5 -- National Day of Prayer
Ascension Day
Cinco de Mayo
Space Day

6 -- Hindenburg disaster, Lakehurst, NJ, 1937
No Homework Day
Robert E. Peary born, 1856

7 -- Kentucky Derby
National Babysitters Day
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony premiere, Vienna, Austria, 1824
Johannes Brahms born, 1833
Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky born, 1840
Robert Browning born, 1812

8 -- Mother’s Day
Harry S. Truman born, 1884
V-E Day, 1945

9 -- John Brown born, 1800
J.M. Barrie born, 1860
Benny Goodman born, 1909
William Pene du Bois born, 1916

10 –- Jefferson Davis captured, 1865
Golden Spike driven, 1869

11 -- Martha Graham born, 1894

12 -- Limerick Day, celebrates birth of Edward Lear, 1812
Florence Nightingale born, 1820

13 -– Friday the Thirteenth

14 -- Jamestown, Virginia founded, 1607
Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit born, 1686
Smallpox vaccine discovered, 1796
Lewis and Clark expedition set out, 1804
“The Stars and Strips Forever” first performed, 1897
Skylab launched, 1973

15 -- National Etiquette Week
National Police Week
Pentecost
Frank L. Baum born, 1856

16 -- Biographers Day
Margaret Rey born, 1906

17 -- Brown v Board of Education decided, 1954
New York Stock Exchange established, 1792
Sue, most complete Tyrannosaurus rex, exhibited, 2000

18 -- International Museum Day
Pope John Paul II born, 1920
Mount Saint Helens eruption, 1980

19 -- Malcolm X born, 1925

20 – Dolly Madison born, 1768
International weights and measures treaty signed, 1875
First solo trans-Atlantic flight by Lindbergh, 1927

21 - Armed Forces Day
American Red Cross founded, 1881

22 - Arnold Lobel born, 1933
“Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” premiere, 1967

23 - Carolus Linnaeus born, 1707
Scott O’Dell born, 1898
Margaret Wise Brown born, 1910

24 - First US telegraph line opened, 1844
National Geographic Bee final

25 - Poetry Day
Constitutional Convention opened, 1787
Star Wars released, 1977

26 - Montana Territory created, 1864
Czar Nicholas II crowned, 1896

27 - Isadora Duncan born, 1878
Golden Gate Bridge opened, 1937

28 - International Jazz Day
Sierra Club founded, 1892
Jim Thorpe born, 1888
Ian Fleming born, 1908

29 - Constantinople fell to the Turks, 1453
Patrick Henry born, 1736
John Fitzgerald Kennedy born, 1917
Mount Everest summit reached by Sir Edmund Hillary, 1953

30 - Memorial Day
Lincoln Memorial dedicated, 1922

31 - Copyright law passed, 1790
Walt Whitman born, 1819


You must wake and call me early, call me early,
mother dear;
Tomorrow ‘ill be the happiest time of all the glad
New Year;
Of all the glad New Year, mother, the maddest,
merriest day;
For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to
be Queen o’ the May.
-- Lord Alfred Tennyson (The May Queen)

May the Force be with you!
-- George W. Lucas, Jr. (Star Wars screenplay)

He [President Abraham Lincoln] has a face like a hoosier Michael Angelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful, with its strange mouth, its deep-cut, criss-cross lines, and its doughnut complexion.
-- Walt Whitman

Do you believe in fairies? …If you believe, clap your hands!
-- Sir James Matthew Barrie (Peter Pan)

How pleasant to know Mr. Lear!
Who has written such volumes of stuff!
Some think him ill-tempered and queer,
But a few think him pleasant enough.
--Edward Lear (Nonsense Songs)

May, with alle thy floures and thy grene,
Welcome be thou, faire, fresshe May.
-- Geoffrey Chaucer (Canterbury Tales. The Knight’s Tale)