May the Force Be With You

The Maundy Late Afternoon Newsletter - This Week in History May 23 - May 29.

Happy Monday afternoon, Okay History friends. Thank you for another opportunity to share major important history stuff.

This week we celebrate the release of the Star Wars space opera – Star Wars. On May 25, 1977, filmmaker George Lucas presented the saga of Luke Skywalker, a human being who lived on a planet a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away that had two suns and covered with sand.

The plot is pretty straightforward. Young Skywalker stumbles across a message intended for some old guy and finds said old guy. The old guy begins teaching Luke the ancient ways of the galaxy Guardian Angels called Jedi Knights, a society that Skywalker's dad used to be a part of until the evil Darth Vader killed him. (wink, wink)

Vader leads the Empire, who built this enormous moon gun thing called the Death Star. Fast forward, Luke manages to destroy the massive weapon, saving the day until we repeat the storyline in six of the subsequent nine films birthed by the original's popularity.

Star Wars is the second highest-grossing film franchise of all time, behind Marvel's Cinematic Universe, both owned by The Walt Disney Corporation. Just keep buying stock, people.

Since we like ranking things, here are my favorite movie Star Wars movies in order:

1.       Empire Strikes Back

2.       Rogue One

3.       A New Hope

4.       The Force Awakens

5.       The Last Jedi

6.       The Return of the Jedi

7.       You're Not a Jedi

8.       There are No More Jedis

9.       Solo

10.   Revenge of the Sith

11.   Attack of the Clones

12.   Phantom Menace

13.   The Rise of Skywalker

What's yours?

Okay, let's highlight what else happened this week. Here's what I got:

1. The Constitutional Convention convened on May 25, 1787, in Philadelphia. Led by the future first president, George Washington, the convention came up with this brilliant idea, The United States of America, which eventually would be run by the National Football League.

2. George Willig scaled the World Trade Center on May 25, 1977. Willig is a mountain climber from Queens. Do they have mountains in Queens? It took three and half hours to scale the building. Hilariously, Willig once stated he regretted doing it because he thought it motivated the terrorists of 9/11.

3. The first recorded execution of a witch was on May 27, 1647. Achsah Young was sentenced to death by hanging for failing to float or something. Actually, the flu hit Windsor, Connecticut, and a bunch of rich people died, so they blamed this poor woman for it because people in the 17th century were not smart. Young was exonerated in 2017.

I hope everyone enjoyed spring because it's now 90 degrees out here consistently. Last night in DC, we had July thunderstorms that were scary.

Thank you, Anonymous, for getting us home safe and sound.

I hope you have a great week, the last of the unofficial spring.

Okay,

Chris