May 24: What Happened on This Day in History (High_school Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1595 - Nomenclator of Leiden University Library appears, the first printed catalog of an institutional library.
2. 1607 - 100 English settlers disembark in Jamestown, the first English colony in America.
3. 1689 - The English Parliament passes the Act of Toleration protecting Protestants. Roman Catholics are intentionally excluded.
4. 1844 - Samuel Morse sends the message "What hath God wrought" (a biblical quotation, Numbers 23:23) from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the United States Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland, to inaugurate the first telegraph line
5. 1883 - The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction.
6. 1930 - Amy Johnson lands in Darwin, Northern Territory, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).
7. 1961 - American civil rights movement: Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, for "disturbing the peace" after disembarking from their bus.
8. 1962 - Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.
9. 1970 - The drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins in the Soviet Union.
10. 2001 - Mountain climbing: Temba Tsheri, a 15-year-old Sherpa, becomes the youngest person to climb to the top of Mount Everest.
11. Famous Birthdays: William Gilbert (English physician, physicist, and astronomer), Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (Polish-German physicist and engineer, developed the Fahrenheit scale), Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Mikhail Sholokhov (Russian author, Nobel Prize laureate), Joseph Brodsky (Russian-American poet, Nobel Prize laureate)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: May 23

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: May 25

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.