Wikipedia "On this day..." feed

On this day: May 25

2017-05-25T00:00:00Z

May 25: Africa Day (1963) First National Government in Argentina (1810); Independence Day in Jordan (1946); Towel Day

H.M.S. Pinafore poster

1810 – The Primera Junta, the first independent government in Argentina, was established in an open cabildo in Buenos Aires, marking the end of the May Revolution.
1878 – Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore (poster featured) opened at the Opera Comique in London.
1977 – Star Wars, a science fantasy film written and directed by George Lucas, was released, eventually becoming one of the most successful films of all time.
2009 – North Korea conducted a nuclear test and several other missile tests that were widely condemned by the international community and led to sanctions from the United Nations Security Council.

Anna Maria Rückerschöld (d. 1805) · Princess Helena of the United Kingdom (b. 1846) · Ian McKellen (b. 1939)

More anniversaries:

On this day: May 26

2017-05-26T00:00:00Z

May 26

British troops evacuating from Dunkirk

1644 – Portuguese Restoration War: Portuguese and Spanish forces both claimed victory in the Battle of Montijo.
1897 – The Church of England returned the original manuscript of Of Plymouth Plantation, the account of the Pilgrims and the early years of the colony they founded in North America, to Massachusetts.
1940 – Second World War: A flotilla of "little ships" (pictured) began a mass evacuation of British, French and Belgian troops cut off by the German army during the Battle of Dunkirk.
1991 – Lauda Air Flight 004 experienced an uncommanded thrust reverser deployment of an engine and broke apart in mid-air, killing all 223 people on board.

Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604) · Miles Davis (b. 1926) · Sally Ride (b. 1951)

More anniversaries:

On this day: May 27

2017-05-27T00:00:00Z

May 27: Ramadan begins (Islam, 2017)

Golden Gate Bridge

1799 – War of the Second Coalition: Austrian forces defeated the French and captured the strategically important town of Winterthur, Switzerland.
1874 – The first group of the Dorsland Trek, a series of explorations undertaken by Boers in search of political independence and better living conditions, departed South Africa for Angola.
1915 – HMS Princess Irene exploded and sank off Sheerness, United Kingdom, with the loss of 352 lives.
1937 – The Golden Gate Bridge (pictured), at the time the world's longest suspension bridge by span, opened between San Francisco and Marin County, California.
1967 – Australians voted overwhelmingly to include Indigenous Australians in the national census and for the government to make laws for their benefit.

Simeon I of Bulgaria (d. 927) · Hans Lammers (b. 1879) · Wols (b. 1913)

More anniversaries:

On this day: May 28

2017-05-28T00:00:00Z

May 28

The Spanish Armada

1588 – Anglo-Spanish War: The Spanish Armada (pictured), with 130 ships and over 30,000 men, set sail from Lisbon for the English Channel in an attempt to invade England.
1830 – US President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law, authorizing him to negotiate with Native Americans for their removal from their ancestral homelands.
1936 – English mathematician Alan Turing introduced the Turing machine, a basic abstract symbol-manipulating hypothetical device that can simulate the logic of any computer algorithm.
1998 – The Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission carried out five underground nuclear tests, becoming the seventh country in the world to successfully develop and publicly test nuclear weapons.
2010 – A train derailment and collision in the Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal, India, caused the deaths of at least 141 passengers.

Mary Polly Paaaina (d. 1873) · Patrick White (b. 1912) · Kylie Minogue (b. 1968)

More anniversaries:

On this day: May 29

2017-05-29T00:00:00Z

May 29: Democracy Day in Nigeria; Memorial Day in the United States (2017)

Jenny Lind

1453 – With the conquest of Constantinople, the Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottomans.
1852 – Swedish operatic soprano Jenny Lind (pictured) concluded a successful concert tour of the U.S. under the management of showman P. T. Barnum.
1911 – English dramatist W. S. Gilbert of the songwriting duo Gilbert and Sullivan died while saving a young woman from drowning in his lake.
1942 – Bing Crosby recorded his version of the song "White Christmas", which went on to become the best-selling single of all time, with over 50 million copies sold.
1953 – New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and Nepali-Indian Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

G. K. Chesterton (b. 1874) · John F. Kennedy (b. 1917) · Joyce Yakubowich (b. 1953)

More anniversaries:

On this day: May 30

2017-05-30T00:00:00Z

May 30: Dragon Boat Festival (Chinese calendar, 2017); Lod Massacre Remembrance Day in Puerto Rico

Pearl Hart

1815 – The East Indiaman ship Arniston was wrecked during a storm at Waenhuiskrans, near Cape Agulhas, present-day South Africa, with the loss of 372 lives.
1899 – Pearl Hart (pictured), one of the few female outlaws of the American Old West, committed one of the last recorded stagecoach robberies 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Globe, Arizona.
1963 – Buddhist crisis: A protest against pro-Catholic discrimination was held outside South Vietnam's National Assembly, the first open demonstration against President Ngô Đình Diệm.
1972 – Members of the Japanese Red Army carried out the Lod Airport massacre in Tel Aviv, Israel, on behalf of PFLP External Operations, killing over 20 people and injuring almost 80 others.
2005 – American student Natalee Holloway disappeared while on a high school graduation trip to Aruba.

Georg von Peuerbach (b. 1423) · Wyndham Halswelle (b. 1882) · Mary H. Gray Clarke (d. 1892)

More anniversaries:

On this day: May 31

2017-05-31T00:00:00Z

May 31: World No Tobacco Day; Feast of the Visitation (Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism)

The first Madison Square Garden

1223 – Mongol invasions: Mongol forces defeated a combined army of Kiev, Galich, and the Cumans at the Kalchik River in present-day Ukraine.
1879 – Gilmore's Garden in New York City was renamed Madison Square Garden (pictured), the city's first venue to use that name.
1902 – The Second Boer War came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging.
1935 – An earthquake of magnitude 7.7 M_w struck Balochistan in the British Raj, now part of Pakistan, killing between 30,000 and 60,000 people.
1981 – An organized mob of police and government-sponsored paramilitias began burning the public library in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, destroying over 97,000 items in one of the most violent examples of ethnic biblioclasm of the 20th century.

Albertino Mussato (d. 1329) · Walt Whitman (b. 1819) · Chien-Shiung Wu (b. 1912)

More anniversaries:

On this day: June 1

2017-06-01T00:00:00Z

June 1: Shavuot (Judaism, 2017)

Kronan

1676 – The Swedish warship Kronan (pictured), one of the largest ships in the world at the time, sank at the Battle of Öland with a loss of around 800 men.
1831 – British naval officer and explorer James Clark Ross successfully led the first expedition to reach the North Magnetic Pole.
1942 – Second World War: The crews of three Japanese Type A Kō-hyōteki-class submarines scuttled their boats and committed suicide after entering Sydney Harbour and launching a failed attack.
1980 – CNN was launched as the first television network to provide 24-hour television news coverage.
2015 – China's worst peacetime maritime disaster took place when the cruise ship Dongfang zhi Xing capsized in the Yangtze, resulting in 442 deaths.

Empress Dowager Xiao (d. 847) · Nargis (b. 1929) · Helene Bresslau Schweitzer (d. 1957)

More anniversaries:

On this day: June 2

2017-06-02T00:00:00Z

June 2

Diamond Rock

1805 – Napoleonic Wars: A Franco-Spanish fleet recaptured British-held Diamond Rock (pictured), an uninhabited island at the entrance to the bay leading to Fort-de-France.
1924 – U.S. President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act into law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States.
1953 – Elizabeth II was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom at Westminster Abbey.
1967 – German university student Benno Ohnesorg was killed during a protest in West Berlin against the visit of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi of Iran, sparking the formation of the militant group 2 June Movement.
1994 – The Royal Air Force suffered its worst peacetime disaster when a Chinook helicopter crashed on the Mull of Kintyre, Scotland, killing all 29 people on board.

Thomas Hardy (b. 1840) · George S. Kaufman (d. 1961) · Abby Wambach (b. 1980)

More anniversaries:

On this day: June 3

2017-06-03T00:00:00Z

June 3: Feast day of Saint Charles Lwanga and the Uganda Martyrs (Roman Catholic Church, Church of England, Lutheranism)

Wallis Simpson

1658 – Pope Alexander VII appointed François de Laval as vicar apostolic of New France.
1892 – Liverpool F.C., one of England's most successful football clubs, was founded.
1937 – Nearly six months after Edward, Duke of Windsor, abdicated the British throne, he married American socialite Wallis Simpson (pictured) in a private ceremony near Tours, France.
1963 – Buddhist crisis: South Vietnamese Army soldiers attacked protesting Buddhists in Huế, with liquid chemicals from tear gas grenades, causing 67 people to be hospitalised.
1982 – An assassination attempt on Shlomo Argov, the Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom, failed; this was later used as justification for the 1982 Lebanon War.

Sejanus (b. 20 BC) · Georges Bizet (d. 1875) · Franz Kafka (d. 1924)

More anniversaries: