May 24 birthdays & history

Famous people born on May 24

• 1941Bob Dylan, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, artist, writer, and producer; Nobel Prize laureate
• 1819Queen Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom from 1837 to 1901
• 1940Joseph Brodsky, Russian-American poet and essayist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1905Mikhail Sholokhov, Russian novelist and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1686Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Polish-German physicist and engineer, developed the Fahrenheit scale
• 1966Eric Cantona, French footballer and actor
• 1544William Gilbert, English physician, physicist, and astronomer
• 1965John C. Reilly, American actor
• 1899Suzanne Lenglen, French tennis player
• 1945Priscilla Presley, American actress and businesswoman

What happened on May 24

• 1683Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum, the world's first university museum, opened.
• 1830The nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb" was first published as a poem by Sarah Josepha Hale.
• 1832The First Kingdom of Greece is declared in the London Conference.
• 1883New York City's Brooklyn Bridge opened as the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time.
• 1930English aviator Amy Johnson landed in Darwin, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia.
• 1956The first edition of the Eurovision Song Contest was held in Lugano, Switzerland.
• 1962Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbited the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.
• 1963United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy met with African American author James Baldwin in an unsuccessful attempt to improve race relations.
• 1970On 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.
• 1976In a wine competition in Paris, French judges shocked the wine industry by rating California wines higher than French ones.
• 1988Section 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.
• 2006An 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.

Also observed on May 24

• Aldersgate Day/Wesley Day (Methodism)
• Bermuda Day (Bermuda), celebrated on the nearest weekday if May 24 falls on the weekend.
• Commonwealth Day (Belize)
• Independence Day (Eritrea), celebrates the independence of Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1993.
• Lubiri Memorial Day (Buganda)