Moments in Time – May 17, 2023

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• On June 4, 1411, France’s King Charles VI granted a monopoly for the ripening of Roquefort cheese to the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon. The cheese’s origin more than three centuries earlier was humble indeed, after a shepherd left his noon meal in a cave by accident.
• On June 1, 1843, antislavery activist Isabella Baumfree became a Methodist and adopted the memorable moniker “Sojourner Truth.” Born into slavery herself circa 1797, she chose the name after claiming that God had called her to leave the city for the countryside and testify “to the hope that was within her.”
• On June 2, 1908, the song “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” was copyrighted. Now the unofficial anthem of North American baseball, it wasn’t inspired by personal experience, as the tune’s writers, Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer, had never actually attended a game when they penned it.
• On May 31, 1911, the “unsinkable” RMS Titanic was launched from Belfast, Northern Ireland, where it had been built. Its tragic fate the following April remains the deadliest peacetime sinking of an ocean liner or cruise ship.
• On May 30, 1964, the Beatles’ official debut single, “Love Me Do,” made it to No. 1 on the U.S. music charts. The tune was co-written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, though Lennon later would say it was “Paul’s song … I do know he had the song around, in Hamburg, even, way, way before we were songwriters.”
• On June 3, 1989, following student unrest that was spreading to the rest of the country’s population, China began using troops armed with assault rifles and accompanied by tanks to subdue protesters in Tiananmen Square, Beijing. Estimates of the death toll ranged from several hundred to several thousand people, with thousands more wounded.
• On May 29, 2018, Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko faked his own death with the intention of exposing Russian agents. While the media at first reported that he’d been assassinated on his way home to his Kyiv apartment, Babchenko appeared very much alive the next day at a press conference broadcast on Ukrainian television.

© 2023 King Features Synd., Inc.