May 25, 1818, the Swiss historian and academic Jacob Burckhardt was born. Burckhardt’s best known work is The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), but is remembered here as the author of Reflections on History (1905).
Erratum: In our daily email, we erroneously gave May 25 as the date for William of Okham’s fleeing the papal city of Avignon. That event, and John Calvin’s banishment years later, both occurred on May 26 of their respective years. We are sorry for the error.