Mark, it's a toss-up between the vase and Friedrich Augustus II.

Here is a picture of St. Modwen's.

The church we see today dates from the 1720s, nothing remains above ground of the Mediaeval St Modwen's church, only the font survives from the earlier structure, which was founded in 1002.

It was the largest and richest abbey in the area with 35 monks in 1295. It was dissolved in 1539.

St Modwen was from Ireland and established a religious community on an island in the river Trent at what is now Burton-on-Trent around 685. Although, as with many tales from so long ago, there is doubt that she ever left Ireland and the St Modwen of Burton is another person altogether. 

And the Rockets Red Glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night that Queen Victoria was still respected here. 

Fireworks displays have come a long way since the odd banger and burning school house.

The 24th of May weekend is also when the Provincial parks first open up and when we are told it's safe to start planting flowers or starting a garden. Anytime before that you risk everything being ruined by a late frost. I've already had my lawn cut 3 times this year.

25 May 1865 - Friedrich August III, King of Saxony 1904-18, born.

The last King of Saxony, he abdicated, along with all the other German Princes, in November 1918.

Also remembered for the scandal of his wife's elopement. She was Louise, daughter of the last Grand Duke of Tuscany and married Prince Friedrich August in 1891. Suspected of numerous affairs in December 1902 Princess Louise (who was pregnant with her seventh child) was threatened by her father-in-law King Georg with confinement in an asylum. She fled in the night to Switzerland where her supposed lover, her chidren's French tutor Andre Giron was waiting. In February 1903 King Georg convened a special court to annul the marriage of his son and Louise and after her child was born in May, a daughter Anna, had the child examined to determine har parentage, it was concluded that she was indeed the daughter of Prince Friedrich August.

Louise went on to marry, not Giron, but an Italian pianist Enrico Toselli in 1907.

26 May 1867 - Mary of Teck, born.

Queen Mary, wife of King George V.

Although born into a junior branch of the Royal Family of Wurttemburg Mary was to all intents and purposes British. She was born in the same room in Kensington Palace as her future grandmother-in-law Queen Victoria. Her father, the product of a morganatic marriage, had moved to Britain and joined the British Army in 1866 and that same year married Princess Mary, daughter of George III's seventh son the Duke of Cambridge.

Princess Mary was destined to marry into the British Royal Family. She was first betrothed to Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence the eldest son of the Prince of Wales. However he died in January 1892 just six weeks before their wedding. She was then courted by her deceased fiance's younger brother George, Duke of York and they were married in July 1893. He eventually succeeded to the Throne in 1910 as King George V.

She had a reputation of purloining people's treasures! If visiting someone's house she would pick up an object she liked and say she wished she had one like it, so the poor owner would feel obliged to offer it as a gift.

27 May 1819 - George V, King of Hanover 1851-66, born.

Born three days after his cousin Victoria, if she had not been born or had died before she had her first child George would have been King of GB from 1851.

He was famously the blind King of Hanover, the son of Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, fifth son of George III. Young George lost the sight in one eye through disease and the other in an accident leaving him blind at the age of 14.

In 1837 his father succeeded as King of Hanover which passed to George upon his death in 1851. King George unwisely supported Austria in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 in which Austria was defeated. As a result he was deposed by the Prussians who occupied Hanover and formally annexed his country.

He died in exile in Paris in 1878. 

28 May 1972 - Edward VIII (Duke of Windsor) died.

We all know about his life up to his abdication in 1936, but what happened after that.

Within hours of his abdication Prince Edward (as he had become) sailed for Boulogne where he boarded a train for Vienna. Here he stayed while Mrs Simpson remained at Cannes in France until her divorce was finalised. In March 1937 the former King was created Duke of Windsor. The couple eventually reunited and were married at the Chateau de Cande near Tours on 3 June.

They remained in France (and visited Hitler in Germany in October 1937) until the outbreak of war in September 1939 when they were brought to England in a Royal Navy ship. However it was only a short visit, two weeks later Edward was attached to the British Military Mission in France with an office in Paris.

When the Germans invaded France the Windsors headed south, first to Biarritz before crossing the border into Spain and finally arriving in Portugal. Here the Duke received the news that he had been appointed Governor of the Bahamas to which the couple travelled in August. They remained there for the rest of the war.

They spent a year in the USA before finally settling in Paris in 1946. It is generally thought that they never returned to England, but they made several family visits throughout the 1950s and 60s. In May 1972 they were visited by the Queen at their home in the Route du Champ d'Entrainement where he lay dying from cancer. Ten days later he died.

He is buried in the Royal Burial Ground, Frogmore, Windsor where his widow joined him 14 years later.

29 May 1453 - Constantine XI, Byzantine Emperor 1449-53, killed.

The last Byzantine Emperor. The once mighty Empire that, at its height, covered the entire eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea and as far west as Spain and Morocco had been reduced to a few hundred square miles on the European side of the Bosphorus around the capital Constantinople, plus Morea in southern Greece. The Ottoman Turks had for centuries been chipping away at the borders of the Christian Empire until, by the mid 15th century, it was a mere fraction of its former glory.

Constantine, brother of Emperor John VIII, ruled in Morea from 1443 until John's death in 1448 and after a brief struggle with his brother Constantine was accepted as Emperor in 1449. In 1451 Murad the Ottoman Sultan, with whom Constantine had an uneasy peace, died. His successor Mehmed II decided to destroy the Byzantines once and for all and In April 1453 he laid siege to Constantinople. Little help was forthcoming from Europe despite repeated calls and on 29 May the city fell. Constantine was last seen fighting in one of the city gates, His body was never identified. 

30 May 1574 - Charles IX, King of France 1560-74, died.

King at the age of ten, died of tuberculosis at 23. He was entirely dominated by his mother, Catherine de Medici, throughout his 14 year reign. She acted as Regent from 1560 until Charles was declared of age at the unusually young age of 13, but she continued to hold the reins of power thereafter.

His reign is marked by the beginnings of the devastating Wars of Religion that only ended in the 1580s, a conflict brought about largely by his mother's policies. Charles' one attempt to break free of his mother's influence in 1570 and his adherence to the Huguenot leader Coligny ended in 1572 when she used a mother's influence to be restored at Court. She instituted a series of policies that resulted in the St Batholomew's Day Massacre of the Hugeneots (French Protestants) in which many thousands were killed.

The massacre broke Charles physically and mentally and he died less than two years later aged just 23. 

For Shula.

31 May 1443 - Margaret Beaufort, born.

Mother of Henry VII. She was the daughter of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset. Her early life was one as a political pawn in the marriage game, a common fate for female heiresses of that era. Her first marriage to the heir of the Duke of Suffolk took place in 1449/50 when she was no more than seven years old. It was annulled in 1453.

In 1455 she married Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond. He died in November 1456 leaving the 13 year old Margaret a pregnant widow. Her son Henry was born in January 1457, his mother was still several months short of her 14th birthday.

By the 1480s Henry Tudor found himself the Lancastrian claimant to the Throne (or rather his mother was, but she renounced her claims to her son) by which time Margaret was on her fourth husband Sir Thomas Stanley (her third husband, Sir Henry Stafford, whom she married in 1458 had died in 1471). After Henry seized the Throne from Richard III he created his step-father Earl of Derby and henceforth his mother was Countess of Derby. She had no more children, the birth of her son was ordeal enough. She survived Henry by three months and died in 1509.