May 22 1859
Birth of Arthur Conan Doyle, Medic during the Second Boer War and subsequent author of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
May 22 1900
US President McKinley said he will not intervene in the war in South Africa despite direct requests by Boer representatives visiting the White House.
May 22 1904Birth of Arthur Conan Doyle, Medic during the Second Boer War and subsequent author of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
May 22 1900
US President McKinley said he will not intervene in the war in South Africa despite direct requests by Boer representatives visiting the White House.
American Secretary of State Hay warned Moroccan authorities that Perdicaris must be brought back alive, or his abductor, Raizuli, dead.
May 22 1916
Defeat at Beringia for the forces of the Sultan of Dafur.
May 22 1917: Crisis in Austria-Hungary
With hunger and discontent spreading among the civilian and military populations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a crisis mounted within its government, as Hungarian Prime Minister Istvan Tisza resigns at the request of the Austrian emperor, Karl I, on May 22, 1917.
A great power in decline when World War I broke out in 1914, Austria-Hungary was a predominately agricultural society but was not agriculturally self-sufficient. The war had cut off the empire’s two main sources of food, Russia and Romania, and the military effort cut domestic production significantly: by 1917, Austria’s output of wheat had fallen to less than half of its 1913 total, and that of rye and oats had fallen even more. To make matters worse, Hungary—Austria’s less powerful partner in the so-called Dual Monarchy—had closed its frontier with Austria in 1914 and ceased to consider its agricultural produce as a common resource, choosing instead to sell whatever surplus it had to the army and to Germany. Defeat on the battlefield against Russia in the first years of war forced Austria-Hungary to rely heavily on its ally, Germany, to keep them in the war effort, and the Italian entrance into the war in 1915 forced the Austrians to fight on yet another front, to the south.
On November 21, 1916, Emperor Franz Josef died; he was succeeded by his great-nephew, Karl I, who assumed supreme command of the army, dismissing longtime chief of the general staff, Conrad von Hotzendorff. Though the new emperor promised to institute reforms and build consensus within the Dual Monarchy, his efforts led initially to disorder and dissent. Karl’s liberalism posed a direct challenge to the Hungarian government and its prime minister, Ivan Tisza. His reformist opposition within Hungary, Party of Independence, led by Mihaly Karolyi, favored a total break with Austria when the compromise between the two nations came up for renewal in 1917.
May 22 1925
Death of H Rider Haggard (born 22 June 1856).
May 22 1802: Martha Washington died
President George Washington’s devoted widow and the nation’s first first lady, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, died at her Mt. Vernon home on this day in 1802. She was 70 years old.
Like her husband, Martha Washington was born in the American colonies as a British subject (1731). The petite, dark-haired 19 year old married her first husband, a prosperous 39-year-old Virginia planter named Daniel Parke Custis in 1750. The couple resided in a mansion called the White House and, after Custis died in 1757, Martha ran the plantation, aided by her innate business sense. Two years later, Martha, then 26 and a wealthy and socially prominent widow with two children, met George Washington. At the time, George was a colonel in the British army, a veteran of the French and Indian War and a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. The two were married in 1759.
George and Martha moved to Mt. Vernon when he inherited the estate in 1761. Although the couple had no children of their own–many scholars suggest Washington may have been sterile–George adopted Martha’s children as his own. Before the American Revolution began in 1776, Martha helped to run two households–Mt. Vernon and the estate she inherited from Custis–with an enormous staff of slaves and servants. During the war, while George led the Continental Army, she frequently followed him to military encampments to take care of him and urge the local women to help feed, clothe and tend to the soldiers.
In 1789, George was elected the first president of the United States and the 57-year-old Martha struggled to fill a role for which she had no model. She shunned the spotlight and resented having her every move being restricted by advisors and documented by the press. Forbidden from dining in private homes with friends, the Washingtons held regular formal dinner parties and receptions at the presidential mansions, first in New York and then in Philadelphia. She disliked both cities and looked forward to returning to Mt. Vernon upon George’s retirement. At that time, the term first lady was not in popular use and Martha was referred to affectionately as Lady Washington.
Death of H Rider Haggard (born 22 June 1856).
May 22 1802: Martha Washington died
President George Washington’s devoted widow and the nation’s first first lady, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, died at her Mt. Vernon home on this day in 1802. She was 70 years old.
Like her husband, Martha Washington was born in the American colonies as a British subject (1731). The petite, dark-haired 19 year old married her first husband, a prosperous 39-year-old Virginia planter named Daniel Parke Custis in 1750. The couple resided in a mansion called the White House and, after Custis died in 1757, Martha ran the plantation, aided by her innate business sense. Two years later, Martha, then 26 and a wealthy and socially prominent widow with two children, met George Washington. At the time, George was a colonel in the British army, a veteran of the French and Indian War and a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. The two were married in 1759.
George and Martha moved to Mt. Vernon when he inherited the estate in 1761. Although the couple had no children of their own–many scholars suggest Washington may have been sterile–George adopted Martha’s children as his own. Before the American Revolution began in 1776, Martha helped to run two households–Mt. Vernon and the estate she inherited from Custis–with an enormous staff of slaves and servants. During the war, while George led the Continental Army, she frequently followed him to military encampments to take care of him and urge the local women to help feed, clothe and tend to the soldiers.
In 1789, George was elected the first president of the United States and the 57-year-old Martha struggled to fill a role for which she had no model. She shunned the spotlight and resented having her every move being restricted by advisors and documented by the press. Forbidden from dining in private homes with friends, the Washingtons held regular formal dinner parties and receptions at the presidential mansions, first in New York and then in Philadelphia. She disliked both cities and looked forward to returning to Mt. Vernon upon George’s retirement. At that time, the term first lady was not in popular use and Martha was referred to affectionately as Lady Washington.
May 22 1941- World War II: East Africa
Caught between a pincer movement of the 11th and 12th African Divisions, the Abyssinian town of Soddu was captured. It was the penultimate point of resistance to the Allied campaign in East Africa; only Gondar, to the north, still remains under Italian control.
May 22 1957
USS McGowan, a destroyer, was the first US ship to use the Suez Canal since the Suez Crisis.
May 22 1958: Jerry Lee Lewis dropped a bombshell in London
The arrival in the United Kingdom of one of the biggest figures in rock and roll was looked forward to with great anticipation in May of 1958. Nowhere in the world were the teenage fans of the raucous music coming out of America more enthusiastic than they were in England, and the coming tour of the great Jerry Lee Lewis promised to be a rousing success. “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls Of Fire” had both been massive hits in the UK, and early demand for tickets was great enough that 27 appearances were booked in what promised to be the biggest tour yet by an American rock-and-roll star. There was just one problem: Unbeknownst to the British public and the organizers of the coming tour, Jerry Lee Lewis would be traveling to England as a newly married man, with his pretty young wife in tow. Just how young that wife really was would be revealed on this day in 1958, when Jerry Lee “The Killer” Lewis arrived at Heathrow Airport with his new “child bride.”
It was an inquisitive reporter for the Daily Mail named Paul Tanfield who unwittingly broke the scandal when he inquired as to the identity of an especially young woman he’d spotted in the Killer’s entourage. “I’m Myra, Jerry’s wife,” said Myra Gail Lewis. Tanfield followed up with a question for the Killer himself: “And how old is Myra?” It was at this point that Jerry Lee must have cottoned to the fact that the rest of the world might take a somewhat skeptical view of his third marriage, because the answer he gave was a lie: “Fifteen.”
Myra Gail Lewis was actually only 13 years old, a fact that would soon come out along with certain other details, such as the fact that she was Jerry Lee’s first cousin (once removed) and that the pair had married five months before his divorce from his second wife was made official. Jerry Lee tried to set minds at ease on this last point—the second marriage was null and void, he explained, because it had taken place before his divorce from his first wife—but even the most skilled public-relations expert would have had a hard time spinning the unfolding story in Jerry Lee’s favor.
As the press hounded Jerry Lee and Myra Gail Lewis over the coming week, the Killer tried to go on with business as usual, but his first three shows drew meager audiences, and those that did buy tickets showered him with boos and catcalls. When the Rank chain of theaters cancelled the rest of his dates and his fashionable Mayfair hotel encouraged him to seek lodgings elsewhere, Jerry Lee Lewis left the UK, less than a week after his dramatic arrival on this day in 1958. Back home, he would face a blacklisting from which his career would never fully recover.
May 22 1967
Egyptian premier Gamal Abdel Nasser threatened to close the Tiran Strait, on the Gulf of Aqaba, to Israeli shipping.
Caught between a pincer movement of the 11th and 12th African Divisions, the Abyssinian town of Soddu was captured. It was the penultimate point of resistance to the Allied campaign in East Africa; only Gondar, to the north, still remains under Italian control.
May 22 1957
USS McGowan, a destroyer, was the first US ship to use the Suez Canal since the Suez Crisis.
May 22 1958: Jerry Lee Lewis dropped a bombshell in London
The arrival in the United Kingdom of one of the biggest figures in rock and roll was looked forward to with great anticipation in May of 1958. Nowhere in the world were the teenage fans of the raucous music coming out of America more enthusiastic than they were in England, and the coming tour of the great Jerry Lee Lewis promised to be a rousing success. “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” and “Great Balls Of Fire” had both been massive hits in the UK, and early demand for tickets was great enough that 27 appearances were booked in what promised to be the biggest tour yet by an American rock-and-roll star. There was just one problem: Unbeknownst to the British public and the organizers of the coming tour, Jerry Lee Lewis would be traveling to England as a newly married man, with his pretty young wife in tow. Just how young that wife really was would be revealed on this day in 1958, when Jerry Lee “The Killer” Lewis arrived at Heathrow Airport with his new “child bride.”
It was an inquisitive reporter for the Daily Mail named Paul Tanfield who unwittingly broke the scandal when he inquired as to the identity of an especially young woman he’d spotted in the Killer’s entourage. “I’m Myra, Jerry’s wife,” said Myra Gail Lewis. Tanfield followed up with a question for the Killer himself: “And how old is Myra?” It was at this point that Jerry Lee must have cottoned to the fact that the rest of the world might take a somewhat skeptical view of his third marriage, because the answer he gave was a lie: “Fifteen.”
Myra Gail Lewis was actually only 13 years old, a fact that would soon come out along with certain other details, such as the fact that she was Jerry Lee’s first cousin (once removed) and that the pair had married five months before his divorce from his second wife was made official. Jerry Lee tried to set minds at ease on this last point—the second marriage was null and void, he explained, because it had taken place before his divorce from his first wife—but even the most skilled public-relations expert would have had a hard time spinning the unfolding story in Jerry Lee’s favor.
As the press hounded Jerry Lee and Myra Gail Lewis over the coming week, the Killer tried to go on with business as usual, but his first three shows drew meager audiences, and those that did buy tickets showered him with boos and catcalls. When the Rank chain of theaters cancelled the rest of his dates and his fashionable Mayfair hotel encouraged him to seek lodgings elsewhere, Jerry Lee Lewis left the UK, less than a week after his dramatic arrival on this day in 1958. Back home, he would face a blacklisting from which his career would never fully recover.
May 22 1967
Egyptian premier Gamal Abdel Nasser threatened to close the Tiran Strait, on the Gulf of Aqaba, to Israeli shipping.
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