It is not unusual to come across a post, newspaper article, history channel or some other venue which promotes “This Week in History,” and then will list several historic events that happened on dates that fall within “this week.”  I thought this week’s was interesting. It included:May 16: In 1943, the nearly month-long Warsaw Ghetto Uprising came to an end as German forces crushed the Jewish resistance and blew up the Great Synagogue.  And on the other end of the spectrum, in 1929, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences handed out its first awards, at a dinner party for around 250 people held in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood

May 17: In 1954, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision, which held that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal, and thus unconstitutional.

May 18: In 1980, the Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state exploded, leaving 57 people dead or missing. But in 1920 on this day, St. John Paul II was born Karol Jozef Wojtyla in the Polish town of Wadowice, 35 miles southwest of Krakow.

May 19: In 1536, Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England’s King Henry VIII, was beheaded after being convicted of adultery. Also in England, on this day in 1935 T.E. Lawrence, more widely known as Lawrence of Arabia died. Interestingly, he had taken up life under a a new name, legally changed (T.E. Shaw) was working as an aircraft mechanic.

May 20: In 1927, Charles Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, N.Y., aboard the Spirit of St. Louis on his historic solo flight to France. But more importantly, On May 20, 1873, San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis were given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of one of the world’s most famous garments: blue jeans.

May 21: In 1881 Washington, D.C., humanitarians Clara Barton and Adolphus Solomons found the American National Red Cross, an organization established to provide humanitarian aid to victims of wars and natural disasters in congruence with the International Red Cross.