In 1763, on the 25th of May, the first issue of Norske Intelligenz-Seddeler was published. This was the first regular Norwegian newspaper (1763 – 1920), an early mark for the beginning of the Age of Newspapers.
On the same day in 1787, the United States Constitutional Convention formally convened in Philadelphia, after a delay of 11 days, upon the securing of a quorum of seven states.
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). Burckhardt died on August 8, 1897.
Playwright, poet and novelist Oscar Wilde was convicted of “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons” and sentenced to serve two years in prison, on May 25, 1895. Laws against homosexuality in Britain were repealed in the 20th century, a liberation argued against chiefly on utilitarian grounds.
On May 25, 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy announced, before a special joint session of the U.S. Congress, the goal to initiate a project to put a “man on the Moon” before the end of the decade. The Apollo mission commenced, and with Apollo 11 the promise was fulfilled during the Nixon Administration. In 1977, the science fiction movie Star Wars was released in US theaters on May 25.