History of 24 May
1913 – The U.S. Department of Labor entered into its first strike mediation. The dispute was between the Railroad Clerks of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad.
1930 – Amy Johnson became the first woman to fly from England to Australia.
1931 – B&O Railroad began service with the first passenger train to have air conditioning throughout. The run was between New York City and Washington, DC.
1935 – The Cincinnati Reds played the Philadelphia Phillies in the first major league baseball game at night. The switch for the floodlights was thrown by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.
1941 – The HMS Hood was sunk by the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic. Only three people survived.
1950 – ‘Sweetwater’ (Nat) Clifton’s contract was purchased by the New York Knicks. Sweetwater played for the Harlem Globetrotters.
1954 – The first moving sidewalk in a railroad station was opened in Jersey City, NJ.
1958 – United Press International was formed through a merger of the United Press and the International News Service.
1961 – The Freedom Riders were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi.
1962 – The officials of the National Football League ruled that halftime of regular season games would be cut to 15 minutes.
1967 – California Governor Ronald Reagan greeted Charles M. Schulz at the state capitol in observance of the legislature-proclaimed “Charles Schulz Day.”
1974 – The last “Dean Martin Show” was seen on NBC. The show had been aired for 9 years.
1976 – Britain and France opened trans-Atlantic Concorde service to Washington.
1980 – The International Court of Justice issued a final decision calling for the release of the hostages taken at the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979.
1983 – The Brooklyn Bridge’s 100th birthday was celebrated.
1983 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had the right to deny tax breaks to schools that racially discriminate.
1986 – Montreal won its 23rd National Hockey League (NHL) Stanley Cup championship.
1990 – The Edmonton Oilers won their fifth National Hockey League (NHL) Stanley Cup.
1993 – Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posada Ocampo and six other people were killed at the Guadalajara, Mexico, airport in a shootout that involved drug gangs.
1993 – The Ethiopian province of Eritrea declared itself an independent nation.
1994 – The four men convicted of bombing the New York’s World Trade Center were each sentenced to 240 years in prison.
1999 – 39 miners were killed in an underground gas explosion in Ukraine.
2000 – Five people were killed and two others wounded when two gunmen entered a Wendy’s restaurant in Flushing, Queens, New York. The gunmen tied up the victims in the basement and then shot them.
2000 – The U.S. House of Representatives approved permanent normal trade relations with China. China was not happy about some of the human rights conditions that had been attached by the U.S. lawmakers.
2000 – A Democratic Party event for Al Gore in Washington brought in $26.5 million. The amount set a new record, which had just been set the previous month by Republicans for Texas Gov. George W. Bush.
2001 – Temba Tsheri, 15, became the youngest person to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
2011 – NASA announced the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) spacecraft. It is intended to facilitate exploration of the Moon, asteroids, and Mars.
2014 – A 6.4 magnitude earthquake occurs in the Aegean Sea between Greece and Turkey, injuring 324 people.
2014 – At least three people are killed in a shooting at Brussels’ Jewish Museum of Belgium.
Celebrating Birthday Today
- 1981 – Andy Lee, Australian comedian, actor, and screenwriter
- 1982 – Issah Gabriel Ahmed, Ghanaian footballer
- 1982 – Rian Wallace, American football player
- 1983 – Custódio Castro, Portuguese footballer
- 1983 – Pedram Javaheri, Iranian-American meteorologist and journalist
- 1983 – Woo Seung-Yeon, South Korean model and actress (d. 2009)
- 1984 – Sarah Hagan, American actress
- 1984 – Dmitri Kruglov, Estonian footballer
- 1985 – Tim Bridgman, English race car driver
- 1986 – Mark Ballas, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, dancer, and actor
- 1986 – Giannis Kontoes, Greek footballer
- 1987 – Guillaume Latendresse, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1988 – Artem Anisimov, Russian ice hockey player
- 1988 – Monica Lin Brown, American sergeant
- 1988 – Billy Gilman, American musician
- 1988 – Lucian Wintrich, American political artist and White House correspondent
- 1989 – Andrew Jordan, English race car driver
- 1990 – Mattias Ekholm, Swedish ice hockey player
- 1991 – Aled Davies, Welsh discus thrower
- 1991 – Cody Eakin, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1999 – Tarjei Sandvik Moe, Norwegian actor