May 14 in History

Fifty-five delegates from twelve states convened at the Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia on May 25, 1787, ostensibly to revise the Articles of Confederation. George Washington presided. Within days, the delegates abandoned revision in favor of creating an entirely new framework of government. The Constitutional Convention lasted four months, during which delegates debated fundamental questions: how to balance power between large and small states (resolved by the Great Compromise creating a bicameral legislature), how to count enslaved people for representation (the Three-Fifths Compromise), and how much power to give the executive branch. The resulting Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787, by 39 of the 55 delegates. Three delegates, including George Mason, refused to sign because it lacked a bill of rights.

Edward Jenner inoculated eight-year-old James Phipps with matter from a cowpox blister on the hand of milkmaid Sarah Nelmes on May 14, 1796. Six weeks later, Jenner variolated Phipps with smallpox and the boy showed no symptoms. The experiment confirmed the folk observation that milkmaids who caught cowpox seemed immune to smallpox. Jenner coined the term "vaccine" from "vacca," Latin for cow. His publication met skepticism: satirical cartoons depicted vaccinated people sprouting cow parts. The Royal College of Physicians initially rejected his paper. But the evidence was overwhelming, and by 1801, 100,000 people in Britain had been vaccinated. Smallpox killed an estimated 300 million people in the 20th century alone before the WHO declared it eradicated in 1980, the only human disease ever eliminated.

Meriwether Lewis and William Clark departed Camp Dubois near present-day Hartford, Illinois, on May 14, 1804, with a crew of approximately 45 men in a keelboat and two pirogues. President Jefferson had commissioned the expedition to explore the Louisiana Purchase territory, find a practical water route to the Pacific Ocean, and document the geography, flora, fauna, and native peoples of the West. The expedition traveled 8,000 miles over 28 months, reaching the Pacific coast in November 1805 and returning to St. Louis on September 23, 1806. They identified 178 plant species and 122 animal species previously unknown to Western science. Sacagawea, a Lemhi Shoshone woman, served as interpreter and her presence with her infant son signaled peaceful intentions to the tribes they encountered.

David Ben-Gurion declared the establishment of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, reading the Declaration of Independence under a portrait of Theodor Herzl at the Tel Aviv Museum. Within hours, armies from Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq invaded. The United States recognized Israel eleven minutes after the declaration; the Soviet Union followed three days later. The 1948 Arab-Israeli War lasted until March 1949 and resulted in Israeli control of 78% of mandatory Palestine, far more than the 56% allocated by the UN Partition Plan. Approximately 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled during the conflict, an event Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe). No peace treaty was signed; only armistice agreements that established the borders known as the Green Line.

NASA launched Skylab, America's first space station, on May 14, 1973, atop the last Saturn V rocket ever built. During launch, a micrometeoroid shield tore away, taking one of two solar panel wings with it and jamming the other. The station reached orbit overheating and critically short of electrical power. The first crew, launched 11 days later, performed a dramatic spacewalk to deploy a parasol sunshade and free the jammed solar panel, saving the station. Three crews occupied Skylab over the next nine months, conducting 270 scientific experiments including solar observations, Earth resource surveys, and the first studies of how the human body adapts to prolonged weightlessness. Skylab reentered the atmosphere in 1979, scattering debris across Western Australia.

The 6th United States Congress adjourned in Philadelphia on May 14, 1800, and federal employees began the monumental task of packing and transporting government records, furniture, and archives to the new capital in Washington, D.C. The move fulfilled the Residence Act of 1790, a compromise between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson: Hamilton got federal assumption of state war debts, and Jefferson got the capital relocated from the commercial North to a site on the Potomac River accessible to Southern states. The new city was carved from land donated by Maryland and Virginia and designed by Pierre Charles L'Enfant. President John Adams moved into the unfinished Executive Mansion (later the White House) in November 1800. Abigail Adams famously hung laundry in the East Room.

Simon de Montfort's forces captured King Henry III and his son Prince Edward at the Battle of Lewes on May 14, 1264, after a six-hour engagement on the Sussex Downs. Henry was forced to sign the Mise of Lewes, surrendering executive power to a council of barons led by de Montfort. For the next fifteen months, de Montfort effectively ruled England. In January 1265, he summoned a parliament that included not only barons and clergy but, for the first time, elected representatives from the towns and shires, establishing the precedent of commoner representation in Parliament. Prince Edward escaped captivity, rallied royalist forces, and killed de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham in August 1265. But the precedent of representative parliament survived de Montfort's death.