On May 14, 1607, some 100 English colonists arrive along the east bank of the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. Dispatched from England by the London Company, the colonists had sailed across the Atlantic aboard the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery. Upon landing at Jamestown, the first […]

Edward Jenner, an English country doctor from Gloucestershire, administers what will become known as the world’s first vaccination as a preventive treatment for smallpox, a disease that had killed millions of people over the centuries. While still a medical student, Jenner learned about rural English farm workers’ and physicians’ observations that people who had contracted […]

On May 14, 1948, in Tel Aviv, Jewish Agency Chairman David Ben-Gurion proclaims the State of Israel, establishing the first Jewish state in 2,000 years. Ben-Gurion became Israel’s first premier. In the distance, the rumble of guns could be heard from fighting that broke out between Jews and Arabs immediately following the British army withdrawal […]

The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites sign a treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states. The Warsaw Pact, so named because the treaty was signed in Warsaw, included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East […]

On May 14, 1991, two diesel trains carrying commuters crash head-on, killing 42 people and injuring over 400 more near Shigaraki, Japan. This was the worst rail disaster in Japan since a November 1963 Yokohama crash killed 160 people. Shigaraki, a town near Kyoto, is famous for its ceramics. On May 14, the World Ceramics […]

On May 14, 1999, President Bill Clinton apologizes directly to Chinese President Jiang Zemin on the phone for the accidental NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, that had taken place six days earlier. Clinton promised an official investigation into the incident. Clinton called the bombing an isolated and tragic event and insisted […]