Holidays and commemorative dates:
Memorial Day of Ukrainians who saved Jews during World War II – celebrated since 2021. 2,673 Ukrainians have been recognized by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations for their heroic deeds.
World Topiary Day – the art of cutting plants, giving them different shapes (geometric shapes, animals, etc.)
International Chihuahua Day – one of the smallest dog breeds. It is believed that she was bred in Mexico.
Events on this day:
1627 — Petro Doroshenko, hetman of the Zaporizhzhya Army, was born.
1796 — British surgeon Edward Jenner successfully vaccinated an 8-year-old boy against smallpox for the first time in the world. This is the first vaccination in history.
The doctor described the procedure as follows: “took the contents of a pustule from a milkmaid named Sarah Nelms, who milked cows with obvious signs of smallpox and yet remained healthy. Then he injected the fluid under the skin of James Phipps, an 8-year-old patient. In a few days, Phipps a small abscess appeared, which then dried up and fell off.”
Summarizing all his experiments on vaccination for 25 years, Jenner released a methodical work on how to develop immunity to smallpox by inoculating cowpox. Over the next two years, 100,000 people were vaccinated using his method in Europe alone.
When a monument to Jenner was unveiled in London in 1853, it was said: “No doctor has saved the lives of so many people as this man.”
However, everything was not so simple. In 1898, in Great Britain, people began to refuse vaccinations en masse for ideological reasons. Because of this, the vaccination rate in most regions fell by more than 50%. As a result, England became the epicenter of morbidity and mortality from smallpox.
A hundred years ago, there was only one vaccination: against smallpox. Only smallpox became the first and only disease that was completely eradicated. Its pathogens are now kept only in high-security laboratories in Russia and the United States.
1853 — condensed milk was patented in the USA.
1871 — born Vasyl Stefanyk, Ukrainian writer, poet, master of the expressionist novel, public figure, politician
1948 — in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion publicly announced the Declaration of Independence of Israel. Israel’s Independence Day is celebrated on May 14.
1955 — in Warsaw, they signed an agreement on friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance of socialist countries (Warsaw Agreement) and created a joint command of the armed forces.
1975 — FC “Dynamo” (Kyiv) won the Cup Winners’ Cup for the first time.
