This is a list of selected May 24 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Before doing so, please review the selected anniversaries guidelines. If your suggestion is potentially controversial or relates to a day currently or soon to appear on the Main Page, post it on the talk page instead.
Please note:
- Events listed on the Main Page are selected based on article quality and to provide a diverse range of topics, rather than solely on the importance or significance of the events.
- Only four or five events are featured each day; therefore, not all important or significant events can be included.
- An event is generally excluded if it is already the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.
To report an error in content currently on the Main Page, see Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors. If a listed event is inaccurate, please first seek consensus and update the corresponding article before making changes here.
Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
Eric XIV of Sweden
Antonio José de Sucre
German battleship Bismarck
Patrick Francis Healy
Brooklyn Bridge
Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia
John Wesley
Theobald Wolfe Tone, one of the leaders of the Irish Rebellion of 1798
Operation Solomon evacuees arriving in Israel
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_-_LINE_OF_ETHIOPIAN_IMMIGRANTS_STREAMING_OUT_OF_THE_HERCULES.jpg)
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| ; Saints Cyril and Methodius Day in Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Russia | refimprove section |
| ; Independence Day in Eritrea (1993) | advertisement, unreferenced section |
| 1487 – Impostor Lambert Simnel was crowned in Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland, as "King Edward VI". | refimprove |
| 1822 – Ecuadorian War of Independence: Troops led by Antonio José de Sucre secured the independence of Quito from Spain at the Battle of Pichincha. | multiple issues |
| 1830 – The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the first common carrier and Class I railroad in the United States, opened for scheduled service. | refimprove section |
| 1960 – Cordón Caulle in the Chilean Andes began to erupt, less than two days after the Valdivia earthquake struck the region. | unreferenced section |
| 1982 – Iran–Iraq War: The port city of Khorramshahr was retaken by Iranian forces after 575 days, marking a turning point in the war. | stats/commanders are not sourced; main event is 5 sentences and the popular culture is the same size |
| 1999 – Former President of Serbia Slobodan Milošević was indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo. | refimprove section |
| Germanicus |b|15 BC | unreferenced section (Ancestry) |
| * 1873 – Patrick Francis Healy became the president of Georgetown University; he is regarded as the first black president of a predominantly white university in the United States. | Only states he became rector on 24 May and that the process to appoint him president began |
Eligible
- 1567 – The mentally ill King Erik XIV of Sweden (pictured) and his guards murdered five incarcerated nobles, including some members of the influential Sture family.
- 1683 – Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum, the world's first university museum, opened.
- 1689 – The Act of Toleration became law, granting freedom of worship to English nonconformists under certain circumstances, but deliberately excluding Catholics.
- 1738 – At a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate, London, John Wesley (pictured) experienced a spiritual rebirth, leading him to launch the Methodist movement.
- 1798 – The Irish Rebellion of 1798 began, with battles beginning in County Kildare and fighting later spreading across the country.
- 1883 – New York City's Brooklyn Bridge opened as the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time.
- 1930 – English aviator Amy Johnson landed in Darwin, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia.
- 1913 – Princess Victoria Louise of Prussia married Prince Ernest Augustus of Hanover; the occasion was one of the last great social events of European royalty before World War I began.
- 1941 – Second World War: The German battleship Bismarck sank the British battlecruiser Hood at the Battle of the Denmark Strait.
- 1948 – Arab–Israeli War: After five days of fighting, Egyptian forces captured the Israeli community of Yad Mordechai after the defenders had abandoned it.
- 1956 – The first edition of the Eurovision Song Contest was held in Lugano, Switzerland.
- 1962 – Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbited the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.
- 1963 – United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy met with African American author James Baldwin in an unsuccessful attempt to improve race relations.
- 1970 – On the Kola Peninsula in Russia, drilling began on the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which eventually reached a depth of 12,262 metres (40,230 ft), making it the deepest borehole ever drilled and the lowest artificial point on Earth.
- 1988 – Section 28 of the United Kingdom's Local Government Act of 1988, a controversial amendment stating that a local authority cannot intentionally promote homosexuality, was enacted.
- 1991 – The Israel Defense Forces began Operation Solomon, a covert operation to bring thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel (evacuees pictured).
- 2006 – An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary film that has been credited for raising international public awareness of climate change and re-energizing the environmental movement, was released.
- 2014 – A gunman involved in Islamic extremism opened fire at the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels, killing four people.
- 2026 – A suicide bombing targeting a shuttle train in Quetta, Balochistan, Pakistan, kills at least 47 people.
- Born/died: | Lanfranc |d|1089| David I of Scotland |d|1153| Nicolaus Copernicus |d|1543| Robert Hues |d|1632| Cathinka Buchwieser |b|1789| Henry Sandham |b|1842| Annette von Droste-Hülshoff |d|1848| Arthur Wing Pinero |b|1855| Jan Smuts |b|1870| Philip Pearlstein|b|1924| Cristina Calderón |b|1928| Fanny Searls |d|1939| Magnus Manske|b|1974| Guy Tardif |d|2005| Huguette Clark |d|2011| Stormé DeLarverie |d|2014| Santiago Omar Riveros |d|2024|
Notes
- Alan Shepard appears on May 5, so Scott Carpenter should not appear in the same year
- Israeli Declaration of Independence appears on May 14 and 1948 Arab–Israeli War appears on May 15, so Battle of Yad Mordechai should not appear in the same year
- 1960 Valdivia earthquake appears on May 22, so Puyehue-Cordón Caulle should not appear in the same year
- Elias Ashmole appears on May 23, so Ashmolean Museum should not appear in the same year
May 24: Aldersgate Day (Methodism)
Bottle of 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay
- 1667 – Led by King Louis XIV, the French army invaded the Spanish Netherlands, beginning the War of Devolution.
- 1830 – The nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was first published as a poem by Sarah Josepha Hale.
- 1976 – In a wine competition in Paris (wine bottle pictured), French judges shocked the wine industry by rating California wines higher than French ones.
- 1986 – A stationary front began over the central Caribbean Sea, leading to severe floods that over two weeks killed dozens of people in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.
- 2022 – An 18-year old gunman shot and killed nineteen students and two teachers in a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.
- Elizabeth Carey, Lady Berkeley (b. 1576)
- Marek Sobieski (b. 1628)
- Carmine Infantino (b. 1925)
- Beverly White (d. 2021)