12 History Lessons + 6 Births & 6 Deaths for May 24, 2025
Today’s History:
- 1543 – Nicolaus Copernicus dies on the day his groundbreaking work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres is published.
- 1607 – 100 English settlers establish the colony of Jamestown in Virginia.
- 1689 – The English Parliament passes the Act of Toleration, granting freedom of worship to Protestants (but not Catholics).
- 1844 – Samuel Morse sends the first official telegraph message from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore: “What hath God wrought?”
- 1883 – The Brooklyn Bridge opens to traffic after 14 years of construction.
- 1930 – Amy Johnson becomes the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia.
- 1941 – The German battleship Bismarck sinks the British battlecruiser HMS Hood in the North Atlantic.
- 1958 – United Press International (UPI) is formed by the merger of United Press and International News Service.
- 1976 – The Judgment of Paris: California wines beat French wines in a blind taste test, revolutionizing the wine world.
- 1993 – Eritrea gains independence from Ethiopia after a 30-year war.
- 2000 – Israeli troops withdraw from southern Lebanon after 18 years of occupation.
- 2014 – Thailand’s military formally declares a coup d’état and takes control of the government.
Today’s Birthdays:
- 1941 – Bob Dylan, American singer-songwriter and Nobel laureate (84)
- 1953 – Alfred Molina, British-American actor (Frida, Spider-Man 2) (72)
- 1960 – Kristin Scott Thomas, English actress (The English Patient) (65)
- 1965 – John C. Reilly, American actor (Chicago, Step Brothers) (60)
- 1976 – Alessandro Costacurta, Italian footballer (49)
- 1981 – Paddy Madden, Irish professional footballer (44)
Today’s Deaths:
- 1543 – Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish astronomer who proposed the heliocentric model (Age 70)
- 1686 – Gabriel Fahrenheit, physicist and inventor of the Fahrenheit temperature scale (Age 50)
- 1949 – Maurice Maeterlinck, Belgian Nobel Prize-winning playwright and poet (Age 86)
- 1974 – Duke Ellington, legendary jazz musician and bandleader (Age 75)
- 1995 – Harold Wilson, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (Age 79)
- 2006 – Lloyd Richards, influential American theater director (Age 87)
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