May 14 Birthday
On May 14, 1948, at 4:00 PM, David Ben-Gurion read the Declaration of Independence of the State of Israel at the Tel Aviv Museum. The British Mandate was ending at midnight. Eleven minutes later, President Truman recognized the new state — the first country to do so. The declaration had been debated until the last moment. Some wanted to name the country "Judea." The borders were deliberately left undefined. Within hours, the armies of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded. The war lasted eight months. Israel survived, but 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled — an event Palestinians call the Nakba, the catastrophe. The conflict that began that day has not ended. Edward Jenner administered the first smallpox vaccination on May 14, 1796. He had noticed that milkmaids who had contracted cowpox — a mild disease — did not get smallpox. He took pus from a cowpox sore on the hand of a milkmaid named Sarah Nelmes and scratched it into the arm of an eight-year-old boy, James Phipps. Six weeks later, he exposed Phipps to smallpox. The boy did not get sick. Jenner called his method "vaccination," from vacca, Latin for cow. Smallpox killed 300 million people in the 20th century alone. The World Health Organization declared it eradicated in 1980 — the only human disease to be eliminated. Jenner's experiment would not pass an ethics board today. Jamestown was settled on May 14, 1607. (Some sources give May 13, the day the colonists first arrived at the site; May 14 was when they began building.) The colonists built a triangular fort and named it after King James I. The first representative assembly in the Americas met there in 1619. In the same year, the first enslaved Africans arrived. Jamestown was the capital of Virginia until 1699, when it was moved to Williamsburg. The site is now a national historical park. George Lucas, born this day in 1944, was a racing car enthusiast who nearly died in a crash at eighteen. He went to film school at USC and made THX 1138 and American Graffiti before Star Wars. He did not direct a film between 1977 and 1999. He sold Lucasfilm to Disney for $4 billion in 2012 and pledged most of the proceeds to education. People born on May 14 fall under the zodiac sign of Taurus. The birthstone is Emerald and the birth flower is Lily of the Valley. Historical events on May 14 include 1607: Jamestown settlement established in Virginia, 1796: Edward Jenner administers first smallpox vaccination, 1948: State of Israel declared, recognized by US within eleven minutes. Famous people born on May 14 include George Lucas (1944), Cate Blanchett (1969), Sofia Coppola (1971).