What happened on 14 May?

14 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 1948 Founding of the State of Israel David Ben-Gurion declares independence; Arab-Israeli war follows immediately.
2. 1796 Jenner's smallpox vaccine Edward Jenner's cowpox inoculation gives the world the first vaccine.
3. 33 The Ascension Acts 1: forty days after the Resurrection, he is taken up from the Mount of Olives and a cloud receives him out of their sight.
4. 1607 Jamestown founded First permanent English settlement in North America, in Virginia.
5. 1955 Warsaw Pact founded Soviet-led military alliance counterweight to NATO.
6. 1986 Gorbachev breaks the silence Eighteen days after the explosion, Gorbachev finally addresses the nation on television — candid by Soviet standards, defensive by any other. Privately the disaster radicalises him
7. 1925 Mrs Dalloway Woolf's stream-of-consciousness novel of a single day in post-war London.
8. 1610 Assassination of Henry IV King Henry IV is stabbed to death in Paris by François Ravaillac.
9. 2017 Presidency of Emmanuel Macron Labour-market reform, the gilets jaunes, the pandemic and pension protests.
10. 1940 Britain raises the Home Guard A radio appeal for Local Defence Volunteers brings 250,000 men in a week — veterans, boys and reserved-occupation workers drilling with shotguns, pikes and eventually rifles. By Ju
11. 1973 Skylab America's first space station, saved by spacewalking repairs after losing its shield at launch; its fiery 1979 return over Australia is a global media event.
12. 1913 Rockefeller Foundation founded Rockefeller endows a foundation 'to promote the well-being of mankind', which funds the eradication of hookworm, yellow-fever vaccine and the Green Revolution.
13. 1264 Battle of Lewes Simon de Montfort's outnumbered barons rout the royal army on the Sussex Downs and capture Henry III and Prince Edward, leaving Montfort the effective ruler of England.
14. 1832 Mendelssohn's Hebrides Overture Born of a seasick 1829 trip to Fingal's Cave on Staffa, Mendelssohn's concert overture paints the swell of the Atlantic; it premieres in London in 1832.