24th May is the 144th day of the year (145th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. 221 days remain until the end of the year. Find out some of the important events that occurred on this day, 24th May, in history.

 

Historical events

1153 — Malcolm IV becomes the King of Scots.

1487 — Imposter Lambert Simnel crowned as King Edward VI of Dublin.

1595 — Nomenclator of Leiden University Library appears, the first printed catalogue of an institutional library.

1621 — The Protestant Union is formally dissolved.

1738 — Evangelist John Wesley converts. This launches the Methodist movement celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day.

1815 — George Evans discovers Lachlan River, Australia.

1819 — Britain’s Queen Victoria is born.

1830 — Boston firm Marsh, Capen and Lyon first publishes “Mary Had A Little Lamb” by Sarah Josepha Hale.

1830 — The first passenger rail service in the US (Baltimore and Elliots Mill, Maryland).

1832 — The First Kingdom of Greece declared in the London Conference.

1844 — Inventor Samuel Morse taps out “What hath God wrought” in the world’s first telegraph message.

1854 — US Deputy marshals in Boston arrest Escaped slave Anthony Burns under the Fugitive Slave Act.

1854 — Lincoln University, Pennsylvania is the first Black college in the US, founded by John Miller Dickey and Sarah Emlen Cresson.

1861 — Union Major General Benjamin Butler declares slaves “contraband of war”.

1862 — London’s present Westminster Bridge opens. It brings to end years of conflict which even involved the payment of a big bribe to the King.

1862 — Beardslee field telegraph used for the first time.

1870 — Memoria of Jackson Kemper, the first missionary bishop in the US.

1895 — Henry Irving becomes the first actor to receive a knighthood.

1899 — The first auto repair shop opens in Boston.

 

24th May in the 20th Century

1902 — Empire Day first celebrated in Britain.

1915 — Thomas Edison invents telescribe to record telephone conversations.

1923 — Stanley Baldwin succeeds Andrew Bonar Law as British Prime Minister.

1930 — Amy Johnson becomes the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia.

1931 — The first air-conditioned train installed.

1944 — Icelandic voters severe all ties with Denmark.

1951 — Racial segregation in Washington, DC restaurants ruled illegal.

1951 — The US performs a nuclear test at Enwetak (atmospheric tests).

1953 — Pope Pius XII publishes encyclical Doctor Mellifluus.

1954 — Dr Peter Murray Marshall becomes the first African American to head an American Medical Association unit.

1954 — IBM announces vacuum tube “electronic” brain. It could perform 10 million operations an hour.

1954 — German airline Lufthansa forms.

 

More 24th May dates

1956 — Conclusion of the Sixth Buddhist Council on Vesak Day, marking the 2,500 year anniversary after the Lord Buddha’s Parinibbāna.

1959 — The first house with built-in bomb shelter exhibited (Pleasant Hills, Pennsylvania).

1959 — Empire Day renamed Commonwealth Day in Great Britain.

1960 — One-millionth Dutch telephone installed.

1961 — NASA Explorer Ionosphere research mission fails to reach Earth orbit.

1964 — Panic in Lima Peru soccer stadium, kills 300.

1968 — Rockstar Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull arrested for drug possession.

1978 — Dutch Investment bill (WIR) law goes into effect.

1978 — American management consultant Marilyn Loden first coins the term “glass ceiling” to describe invisible career barriers for women.

1986 — Margaret Thatcher becomes the first British Prime Minister to visit Israel.

1988 — John Moschitta sets record for fast talking: 586 words per minute.

1988 — Porntip Nakhirunkanok, 19, of Thailand, crowned 37th Miss Universe.

1989 — Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the Yorkshire Ripper, is awarded £600,000 in damages after winning a libel action against satirical magazine Private Eye (later reduced to £60,000 on appeal).

1993 — Eritrea achieved independence from Ethiopia after the 30-year civil war.

1993 — Star Trek episode “Second Chances” airs starring guest astronaut and physician Mae Jemison, the first real-life astronaut to appear on the show.

1998 — 51st Cannes Film Festival: “Mia aioniotita kai mia mera / Eternity and a Day” by Theo Angelopoulos wins the Palme d’Or.

1999 — Venezuela enters the Antarctic Treaty System.

2000 — Israeli troops withdraw from southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation.

 

24th May in the 21st Century

2001 — Mountain climbing: 15-year-old Sherpa Temba Tsheri becomes the youngest person to climb to the top of Mount Everest.

2001 — The Democrats gain control of the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1994 when Senator James Jeffords of Vermont abandons the Republican Party and declares himself an independent.

2001 — The Versailles wedding hall disaster in Jerusalem, Israel, kills 23 and injures over 200 in Israel’s worst-ever civil disaster.

2002 — Russia and the United States sign the Moscow Treaty.

2004 — North Korea bans mobile phones.

2009 — 62nd Cannes Film Festival: “The White Ribbon” directed by Michael Haneke wins the Palme d’Or.

2013 — Governor of Rivers State Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, CON, re-elected as the chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum.

2013 — Communities in the downstream of the Taylor creek traversing Bayelsa communities in Yenagoa local government area hit by an oil spill from a Shell Petroleum Development Company facility.

2016 — Kaduna State in Nigeria declares a state of emergency due to ‘Tomato Ebola’, as moth destroys 80% of tomato crops.

2016 — Actor and comedian Bill Cosby ordered to stand trial in a s****l assault case in Norristown.

2018 — Actor Morgan Freeman accused of s****l harassment by several women in CNN report.

2018 — US President Donald Trump cancels summit with North and South Korea. This happens because of hostile statements from North Korea.

2018 — At least 14 children reported mauled to death by wild dogs near Khairabad, India after the closure of slaughterhouses.

2018 — World’s largest cat-proof fence (44km) completed at Newhaven Wildlife Sanctuary, central Australia to protest endangered species.