30 May - Guru Arjan rememberence 1606

 

Guru Arjan (15 April 1563 – 30 May 1606)was the first of the two Gurus martyred in the Sikh faith and the fifth of the ten total Sikh Gurus. He compiled the first official edition of the Sikh scripture called the Adi Granth, which later expanded into the Guru Granth Sahib.

He was born in Goindval, in the Punjab, the youngest son of Bhai Jetha, who later became Guru Ram Das, and Mata Bhani, the daughter of Guru Amar Das.He completed the construction of Darbar Sahib at Amritsar, after the fourth Sikh Guru founded the town and built a pool.Guru Arjan compiled the hymns of previous Gurus and of other saints into Adi Granth, the first edition of the Sikh scripture, and installed it in the Harimandir Sahib.

Guru Arjan reorganized the Masands system initiated by Guru Ram Das, by suggesting that the Sikhs donate, if possible, one-tenth of their income, goods or service to the Sikh organization (dasvand). The Masand not only collected these funds but also taught tenets of Sikhism and settled civil disputes in their region. The dasvand financed the building of gurdwaras and langars (shared communal kitchens).

Guru Arjan was arrested under the orders of the Mughal Emperor Jahangir and asked by him to remove all references to Hinduism and Islam in his book. He refused, was tortured and executed in 1606 CE. Historical records and the Sikh tradition are unclear whether Guru Arjan was executed by drowning or died during torture.His martyrdom is considered a watershed event in the history of Sikhism.It is remembered as Shaheedi Divas of Guru Arjan in May or June according to the Nanakshahi calendar released by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee in 2003.

27 May - The Queen Mary sailed her maiden voyage 1936

 

ON THIS DAY: 27th May 1936 

The Queen Mary sailed on her maiden voyage and won the Blue Riband that August; she lost the title to SS Normandie in 1937 and recaptured it in 1938, holding it until 1952, when it was taken by the new SS United States. With the outbreak of World War II, she was converted into a troopship and ferried Allied soldiers during the conflict. The 80,000 + tonne British Liner sailed primarily on the North Atlantic Ocean from 1936 to 1967 for the Cunard-White Star Line and was built by John Brown & Company in Clydebank, Scotland. She left Southampton for the last time on 31 October 1967 and sailed to the port of Long Beach, California, United States, where she was permanently moored until the present day.

26 May - British Guiana gained independence 1966

 

On 26 May 1966, , became Guyana.

British Guiana was the name of the British colony, part of the British West Indies, on the northern coast of South America, now known as the independent nation of Guyana. The first European to discover Guiana was Sir Walter Raleigh, an English explorer.

10 May - The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began

The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown.The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the Company's army in the garrison town of Meerut, 40 mi (64 km) northeast of Delhi. It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic plain and central India,though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east.The rebellion posed a considerable threat to British power in that region,and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior on 20 June 1858.On 1 November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities to have formally ended until 8 July 1859. Its name is contested, and it is variously described as the Sepoy Mutiny, the Indian Mutiny, the Great Rebellion, the Revolt of 1857, the Indian Insurrection, and the First War of Independence.