A Brief History On May 28, 2017, Japanese race car driver, Takuma Sato, won the Indianapolis 500 motor race, making history as the first Asian, and the first Japanese driver to take the big prize.  Proving his Indy prowess was not a fluke, Sato won the Indy 500 again in 2020, becoming the 20th driver to claim two victories at Indianapolis. Digging Deeper Sato, born in Tokyo in 1977, has also won titles in other racing formats, including the Macau Grand Prix, the Masters of Formula 3, and the British Formula Three.  In 2004, he placed 8th for the season…

A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on May 27th.  For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On May 27, 1703, Czar Peter the Great founded St. Petersburg, Russia. On May 27, 1907, in the aftermath of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the city by the bay came down with an epidemic of Bubonic Plague, the same plague responsible for the infamous “Black Death” in earlier centuries. On May 27, 1958, the McDonnell Aircraft (later McDonnell Douglas) F-4 Phantom…

A Brief History On May 27, 1996, President Boris Yeltsin of Russia met with Chechen rebels to negotiate a cease fire in what is known as The First Chechen War.  The Chechen Republic is an almost autonomous region within the Russian Federation, which fought a war for independence from December of 1994 to August of 1996. Digging Deeper The Chechen people lost as many as 14,000 fighters killed in the war, and another 80,000 to 100,000 civilians slain.  The Russians lost about 3,000 to 5,000 killed.  A second Chechen War was fought from 1999 to 2009. Chechnya is part of…

A Brief History This article presents a chronological list of notable events that happened on May 26th.  For each date below, please click on the date to be taken to an article covering that date’s event. Digging Deeper On May 26, 946, King Edmund I of the English was unceremoniously killed in a street brawl in the conspicuously named town of Pucklechurch in Gloucestershire, England. On May 26, 1328, William of Ockham, a Franciscan Friar, snuck out of Avignon fearing his execution would be ordered by the Pope. On May 26, 1868, US President Andrew Johnson was acquitted at his impeachment trial…

A Brief History On May 26, 1951, Sally Ride was born in Los Angeles, California.  She would grow up to earn BA, BS, MS and PhD diplomas from Stanford University, and in June of 1983 became the first American woman to take a ride into space, via the Space Shuttle Challenger. Digging Deeper Ride became the third woman space explorer, having been preceded into space by Soviet cosmonauts Belarusian Valentina Tereshkova in 1963 and Russian Svetlana Savitskaya in 1982. Since the flights of these history making women, women have made over 75 space flights by at least 70 women.  In…