Category: Today

On June 2, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act into law, granting citizenship to all Native Americans born within the territorial limits of the United States.

On June 1, 1792, Kentucky was admitted as the 15th state of the United States. Four years later, Tennessee became the 16th state.

On May 31, 455, Emperor Petronius Maximus was stoned to death by an angry mob while fleeing Rome. On the same date in 1678, Lady Godiva’s procession through Coventry began.

On May 30, 1868, the United States observed Decoration Day (the predecessor of the modern “Memorial Day”) for the first time.

On May 29, 1848, the territory of Wisconsin officially became a state. In December, a second state constitutional convention had been held — producing a document less radical than the first, which had been voted down by the people earlier in the year — and soon after the territorial legislature called for a popular vote, by referendum. The measure passed, and Wisconsin became the thirtieth of the United States of America, the last east of the Mississippi to enter into the union.

On May 28, 1952, the women of Greece gained the right to vote.

On May 27, 1860, Giuseppe Garibaldi began his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian unification.

In 1927 on this date in May, the Ford Motor Company ceased manufacture of the Ford Model T, the last of this model coming off the line the day previous. Over 16 million Model T Fords had been sold, and was a world transformative product. On the 27th, the company began to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.

Exactly 70 years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Paula Jones could pursue her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton while he was in office.

In 2015, 27 May, the commercial space company SpaceX was approved as a contractor to the U.S. military for satellite launches; SpaceX would go on to compete for contracts against the Boeing-Lockheed Martin United Launch Alliance, currently the primary military launch provider

On May 26, 451, the Sassanid Empire defeated the Armenians at the battle of Battle of Avarayr, but guaranteed them freedom to openly practice Christianity.

On May 26, 1328, scholastic philosopher and Franciscan friar William of Ockham and other Franciscan leaders secretly exited Avignon, fearing a death sentence from Pope John XXII. On the same day in 1538, the city of Geneva expelled John Calvin and his followers, who headed to exile in Strasbourg.

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).

On May 24, 1775, John Hancock was elected president of the Second Continental Congress.

Hancock’s involvement with Samuel Adams and his radical group, the Sons of Liberty, won the wealthy merchant the dubious distinction of being one of only two Patriots (the other being Sam Adams) that the Redcoats marching to Lexington in April 1775 to confiscate Patriot arms were ordered to arrest. When British General Thomas Gage offered amnesty to the colonists holding Boston under siege, he excluded those same two men from his offer.