CGYHU for May 2021

Below is the Carmine Guica Young Historians Update for May 2021. 

 

For more information, assistance, or to arrange a program, please e-mail margocaulfield@icloud.com or call 802-226-7807. As much lead time you can give us for hands on history kits and programs is best as it helps coordinate volunteers.

 

Please note that all of CHS’s volunteers are vaccinated but we continue to practice Covid protocols as far as masking and distancing.

 

Archeology: We’re excited to announce that we now have dig screens thanks to Dave Gallagher. If you have students that would like to engage in hands on archeology and/or have a place where you’d like to see some test pits dug, please let us know.

 

Preserve & Serve: This is a CHS project where students work in the community. Below are activities for May:

-       Green Up Day: We can provide bags to clean up various routes in town. Note that bags are now available at the town office, where you can pick them up and note the route you will be taking. Bags can be dropped off for free at the transfer station during normal business hours.

-       CHS holds their annual plant sale Memorial Day weekend. We could use help in cleaning buckets. This needs to be done the beginning of the month.

-       Various members of our community could use help in preparing for the summer season. If you have students that would be available let us know.

-       May is when we work with the town sexton to clean up debris from the winter in our town cemeteries and lay flags in preparation for Memorial Day.

 

Arbor Day (April 26^th): Vermont celebrates this date the first Friday in May. Learn more about how VT celebrates and how you can participate. 

 

Memorial Day (May 31): There will be no formal observances this year in Cavendish due to Covid. This is a federal holiday to honor those who died in their performance of military duty. Approximately 25 places lay claim to be the originators of this holiday. Though an ancient tradition to celebrate those who died in battle by decorating their graves, the tradition took hold in the United States when Southern women decorated the graves of soldiers during the Civil War. Originally called “Decoration Day,” it was celebrated on May 31. This date was most likely selected as flowers were readily available and there were no major Civil War battles that day. The date was changed to the last Monday in May to give a three day weekend, and is considered the unofficial start of summer. The making and wearing of poppies is customary on this day and dates back to 1915 (WWI) and the poem “In Flanders Fields.” These are the directions we’ve used for making poppies with the sixth graders. If there is interest, happy to do a workshop with kids and/or can make kits for students to assemble.

 

 

HISTORICAL DATES FOR MAY

May 1: Known as May Day, in some countries, and for many years in the Okemo Valley, baskets of small flowers are left outside peoples doors. An ancient spring festival, in socialists countries it’s also known as a worker’s holiday or Labor Day. While we’re happy to run a workshop-can be done outside-you can print directions for May Day Baskets, have the students cut out and assembly, fill with daffodils or candies and leave on the doors of neighbors and friends.

 

May 5: Cinco de Mayo, which means 5th of May, has now become a time to celebrate Mexican heritage. It is a national holiday in remembrance of the Battle of Puebla in 1862, in which Mexican troops under General Ignacio Zaragoza, outnumbered three to one, defeated the invading French forces of Napoleon III.

-       Alan Shepard became the first American in space. First American in Space Video James

 

 

May 7 1945, In a small red brick schoolhouse in Reims, Germany, General Alfred Jodl signed the unconditional surrender of all German fighting forces thus ending WWII in Europe

 

May 10: 1869 - The newly constructed tracks of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railways were first linked at Promontory Point, Utah. A golden spike was driven by Leland Stanford, president of the Central Pacific

 

May 14 1607 - The first permanent English settlement in America was established at Jamestown, Virginia, by a group of royally chartered Virginia Company settlers from Plymouth, England. Historic Jamestown

• 1804 - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark departed St. Louis on their expedition to explore the Northwest.

• 1796 - Smallpox vaccine was developed by Dr. Edward Jenner, a physician in rural England. He coined the term vaccination for the new procedure of injecting a milder form of the disease into healthy persons resulting in immunity. Within 18 months, 12,000 persons in England had been vaccinated and the number of smallpox deaths dropped by two-thirds. The origin of Vaccines

 

May 20 1927 - Charles Lindbergh, a 25-year-old aviator, took off at 7:52 a.m. from Roosevelt Field, Long Island, in the Spirit of St. Louis attempting to win a $25,000 prize for the first solo nonstop flight between New York City and Paris. Thirty-three hours later, after a 3,600 mile journey, he landed at Le Bourget, Paris, earning the nickname "Lucky Lindy" and becoming an instant worldwide hero. From New York to Paris 1927 

• 1932 - Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic. She departed Newfoundland, Canada, at 7 p.m. and landed near Londonderry, Ireland, completing a 2,026-mile flight in about 13 hours. Five years later, along with her navigator Fred Noonan, she disappeared while trying to fly her twin-engine plane around the equator. National Air and Space Museum website for Earhart.

 

May 21, 1881 - The American Red Cross was founded by Clara Barton.

 

May 24, 1844 - Telegraph inventor Samuel Morse sent the first official telegraph message, "What hath God wrought?" from the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., to Baltimore.

 

May 25, 1787 - The Constitutional Convention began in Philadelphia with delegates from seven states forming a quorum.

 

May 25, 1994 - After 20 years in exile, Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to his homeland from Cavendish, VT. He had been expelled from Soviet Russia in 1974 after his three-volume work exposing the Soviet prison camp system, The Gulag Archipelago, was published in the West. Solzhenitsyn Bids Farewell to Cavendish 

 Solzhenitsyn’s Return to Russia.

 

 

May 28 1961 - Amnesty International was founded by London lawyer Peter Berenson. He read about the arrest of a group of students in Portugal then launched a one-year campaign to free them called Appeal for Amnesty. Today Amnesty International has over a million members in 150 countries working to free prisoners of conscience, stop torture and the death penalty, and guarantee human rights for women.

 

 

FAMOUS BIRTHDAYS Golda Meir (May 3); Karl Marx (May 5); Sigmund Freud (May 6); Johannes Brahms (May 7); Harry Truman (May 8); Abolitionist John Brown (May 9); Songwriter Irving Berlin (May 11); Modern dance Pioneer Martha Graham (May 11); Nurse Florence Nightingale (May 12); Director Frank Capra (May 18); Pope John Paul II (May 18); Malcolm X (May 19); Playwright Lorraine Hansberry (May 18); Creator of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle (May 22) ; Composer Richard Wagner (May 22); Ralph Waldo Emerson ( May 25); Athlete Jim Thorp (May 28); American Revolutionary War leader Patrick Henry (May 29); President John F Kennedy (May 29); Founder of the Russian Empire Peter the Great (May 30); Walt Whitman (May 31).