Make May 26th the day you make that change

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus said: “Change is the only constant in life.” He’d obviously never met Her Majesty the Queen, but, nevertheless, he did have a point. Not only is change always happening, but it is unavoidable. Therefore, if we want to keep up, it’s incumbent on us to change with it - standing still being the fastest way of moving backwards etc.

The American polymath Benjamin Franklin said: “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”

Hang on, so that means...?

That's right. Why not embrace change today? It’s as good a day as any and, as you’ll see if you continue reading, May 26th does have a bit of history when it comes to change.

MAY 26 – WORLD EVENTS

1805: Fancying a change of scene, Napoléon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, is crowned king of Italy at Milan Cathedral. He then sets his sights on the British throne, but ‘Mad’ King George III dashes any hopes he has by proclaiming a jar of Colman's English mustard as his designated heir.

1879: Dracula, a Gothic horror novel by Bram Stoker is published. It’s a worldwide success; vampires go global, and the lives of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Wesley Snipes and Kristen Stewart are changed forever.

1908: Mr. & Mrs. Jacob Murdock and their children become the first family to travel across the United States by car. Arriving in New York City from Los Angeles after 327 games of ‘I Spy,’ 135 games of ’20 Questions’ and 32 days, 5 hours, and 25 minutes, a visibly spent Jacob is asked what possessed him to undertake such a daunting, dangerous trip, to which he replies: “Well, a change is as good as a rest isn’t it?”

1908: The first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East is made in Persia (Iran), changing both the history of the region and the future of European football.

1927: The last Ford Model T rolls off the assembly line. Marketed as reliable, cheap, and easily maintained, it is the most sold car in history before being overtaken by the Volkswagen Beetle. Its maker Henry Ford famously boasted: “If I’d asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have said ‘Don’t change anything.’” He also famously quipped: “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants, so long as it’s black.” in reference to its assembly line production, and enraged Christians by declaring that “My cars are more popular than Jesus - and they’ve been responsible for fewer deaths.”

1936: In the House of Commons of Northern Ireland, Tommy Henderson begins speaking on the Appropriation Bill in the early afternoon. When he sits down 10 hours later at 3:55 am on May 27th, 7 members of the House have fallen asleep, 6 are struggling to remember whether they’re unionists or republicans and the Speaker of the House has changed into his Mickey Mouse pyjamas.

1967: The Beatles release Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and in doing so change music forever by breaking traditional rules about what a rock album should be. Its allusions to drug-taking bring the values of the counterculture into the mainstream: Lennon’s hallucinatory Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, Harrison’s overtly mystical Within You, Without You, Ringo’s nudge-nudge, wink-wink on With a Little Help from my Little Friends and McCartney’s When I’m Sixty-Four, 64 being the number of knocks it takes to open the doors of perception.

1968: In Iceland, traffic changes from driving on the left to driving on the right overnight. The cost of the change amounts to over 33 million kronur for modifications to buses, 12 million kronur for changes to signs, and 3 million kronur to change the traffic lights from red-orange-green to green-orange-red.

1969: John Lennon and Yoko Ono begin their 2nd bed-in for peace at a hotel in Montreal, Canada. Coming a mere 2 months after their first bed-in in Amsterdam, critics urge them to change the record. The round-the-clock press attention has the watching world screaming “John, Yoko - change your bloody bed sheets.” at their television screens.

1999: Deep into Fergie Time and stoppage time, super-sub/game-changer Ole Gunnar Solskjær is in the right place at the right time to score the 93rd-minute winner as Manchester United come back from a goal down after 90 minutes to beat Bayern Munich 2-1 in the Champions League Final. The goal cements the Baby-Faced Assassin’s status as a club legend to the degree whereby he is even given the manager’s job in December 2018 after Jose Mourinho gets the boot. However, he is unable to change their wretched fortunes and in November 2021 he too is sacked after a 4-1 defeat away at Watford(!), becoming the Red Devils’ 5th management casualty in 8 years since Fergie hung up his hairdryer after 27 years in charge.

2012: Pope Benedict XVI’s butler is arrested for allegedly stealing confidential letters and other documents from His Holiness’s desk and leaking them to an Italian journalist. Among the items lifted by the light-fingered lackey are a report detailing planned changes to traditional Catholic doctrine and values, a critique of relativism’s denial of objective truth, an unfinished novel about a vampire-hunting man of the cloth, and the pontiff’s season ticket to Lazio.

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MAY 26 – BIRTHS

1907 - John Wayne, actor

As every self-respecting trivia buff knows, the Duke changed his name from Marion Morrison after having the p*ss taken out of him in the school playground by a boy named Sue.

1946 – Mick Ronson, guitarist

Played on David Bowie’s 1972 single Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes before changing into a purple and tangerine flock top with white satin tucked-in trousers to be a Spider from Mars.

1966 - Zola Budd, runner

Famously changed from being South African to being British in less time than it took her to run a mile before even more famously tripping up home favourite Mary Decker in the 1984 Olympic 3000 metres final.

1949 – Jeremy Corbyn, politician

Told voters that things ‘can and must change’ in British politics just prior to them electing Eton College- and Oxford University-educated Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as Prime Minister in 2019.

1953 – Michael Portillo, TV presenter and politician

Proving that a leopard can change its spots (or at least cover them with a pink jacket), the smug former Conservative Cabinet member has reinvented himself as an amiable presenter of railway documentaries.

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MAY 26 – DEATHS

735 – The Venerable Bede, monk

These days, we take for granted the fact that the date of Easter changes every year. We know that it’s to do with the lunar cycle, the Spring equinox etc. but only because moon experts like Galileo, Jules Verne, Patrick Moore, Neil Armstrong, and Gru from Despicable Me told us. Bede was working out stuff like this with a pencil and a bit of paper in the 7th century, well before NASA, the Hubble Telescope, jet propulsion, calculators, and long division had even been invented! In 1899, Pope Leo XIII declared him a Doctor of the Church, meaning that if he hadn’t already been dead for over a thousand years, he would have been authorised to use the church defibrillator, perform exorcisms, diagnose agnostics, treat sceptics, and operate on heretics without anaesthetic.

1703 - Samuel Pepys, diarist

His frank first-hand accounts of the coronation of Charles II, the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the Great Plague, the Great Fire of London, his cat’s nocturnal habits and the political, social, and economic events and changes of the time have enabled modern-day scholars to gain a greater understanding of life in 17th century London. Pepys is regarded as one of Britain’s greatest diarists alongside Adrian Mole and Bridget Jones.

There you have it; as you can see, the times they have been a-changin' since the beginning of time. It’s natural; it’s necessary. So, if you’re stuck, stalled, or stifled, do what the ‘King of Pop’ Michael Jackson - a man who, let's face it, knows more than most about changing - suggests on Man in the Mirror, and simply “Make that Change.”