17 May 1749 - Edward Jenner born.

English physician, the father of immunology through his development of the smallpox vaccine.

Although the practice of infecting people with the relatively harmless cowpox protected them from the deadly smallpox no serious studies had ever been carried out until Jenner, a physician in Gloucestershire, collected pus from the hands of a milkmaid with cowpox and introduced it through cuts in the arms of an eight year old boy in 1796. After the boy suffered no more than mild effects Jenner infected him with smallpox but with no serious results other than a mild fever. The boy, James Phipps, became somewhat Jenner's guinea pig being infected more than 20 times with smallpox without succumbing to the disease. In fact he lived to the age of 65.

Jenner was awarded grants of £10,000 in 1802 and £20,000 in 1807 to continue his studies and became physician to King George IV in 1821.

It is estimated that his discovery has saved many billions of lives. At the time of his invention, people actually thought that his injections were turn people into cows

He did become so in later life, the subject of many lampoons.

And then there was Charles "The Bald" or something like that. 

He was King of West Francia (France) and Emperor of the Romans in the ninth century. We don't have bald Kings (or Queens) in GB, or at least we don't highlight the point. 

Never heard of him Major. I suppose he is in an British rock band, the Alternative kind?

19 May 1906 - The Simplon Tunnel opened.

A railway tunnel in the Alps connecting Brig in Switzerland with Domodossola in Italy, at 12.3 miles long it was the longest tunnel in the world until 1982. It took eight years to construct with teams working from both ends. 

Still in use today. In 1945 the retreating Germans had plans to destroy it but were thwarted by Italian partisans and the Swiss.

20 May 1570 - The first modern atlas published.

The Theatrum Orbis Terrarum written by the Dutch cartographer Abraham Ortelius and printed in Antwerp. It consisted of 53 maps supplied by cartographers from across Europe and bound into one volume. 

That must have been an amazing thing to own in its day.

The most interesting thing about the map above is the existence of the southern continent we now know as Antarctica. It was entirely conjecture in 1570 as European had ever seen it, they hadn't even discovered Australia.

21 May 1927 - The first solo flight across the Atlantic.

25 year old Charles Lindbergh in a custom built Ryan Airlines monoplane Spirit of St Louis took off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island NY at 0752 hrs on 20 May landing 33 hours 30 minutes later at Le Bourget Airfield, Paris. 

22 May 1977 - The last running of the Orient Express.

Probably the world's most famous train journey. Beginning in 1883 between Paris and Constantinople the route underwent several changes over the decades due to political matters and no service at all during the two World Wars. 

The final service left Paris at midnight 19/20 May and pulled into Sirkeci Station, Istanbul on 22 May. 

The original route through France, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey ended in 1962 to be replaced by a more southerly route through France, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Turkey until 1977. 

22 May 1977 - The last running of the Orient Express.

Probably the world's most famous train journey. Beginning in 1883 between Paris and Constantinople the route underwent several changes over the decades due to political matters and no service at all during the two World Wars. 

The final service left Paris at midnight 19/20 May and pulled into Sirkeci Station, Istanbul on 22 May. 

The original route through France, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey ended in 1962 to be replaced by a more southerly route through France, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Turkey until 1977. 

Was Hercule Poirot on board?

This is where it gets complicated. The Orient Express was a term used to describe more than one route between Paris and Constantinople/Istanbul. The southerly route (which became the only route in its final years 1962-77) ran in conjunction with the northerly route from 1919 to 1962, you had a choice of which Orient Express to take. Hercule Poirot travelled on the southerly route in the novel set in the 1930s.  

You could buy a ticket from London to Turkey, but it meant three trains and a Channel ferry before you got there, between Paris and London it was not on an Orient Express locomotive. 

All of the above, after the overthrow of the Ottoman Sultans Turkey made great efforts to Westernize thus attracting investment etc. Plus of course the lure of the exotic East for tourists and historians. 

23 May 1848 - (Karl Wilhelm) Otto Lilienthal born.

German aeronaut who developed a series of successful gliders paving the way for the first powered heavier-than-air flights after his tragic death in a gliding accident aged 48. Between 1891 and 1896 he made over 2000 glider flights in a number of machines he built himself.

24 May 1930 - Amy Johnson's flight to Australia.

Taking off from Croydon Airport on 5 May 26 year old Amy Johnson flew 11,000 miles solo to Darwin, Australia arriving on 24 May. She was the first woman to make the flight solo and only the second to do so after the Australian Bert Hinckler in 1928. All the more remarkable in that her longest solo flight previously had been a hop of 130 miles across England. 

Her aeroplane a de Haviland DH.60 Gypsy Moth she named Jason is on display in the London Science Museum. 

"I was poor, so poor when I was growing up............lucky I was a boy, for I had nothing to play with." Rodney Dangerfield

25 May 1789 - Anders Dahl died. Swedish botanist who is honoured in the naming of the flowering plant the dahlia.

A student of the great Carl Linnaeus Dahl was appointed, on Linnaeus' recommendation, curator of Baron Alströmer's gardens and private museum outside Gothenburg. In that capacity he made several journeys around Europe collecting plants. He published a number of botanical works, although his early death at the age of 38 left a huge collection of papers unpublished.

The dahlia was named after him in the 1790s, after his death, by the Spanish botanist Antonio Cavanilles.