1521 – The Diet of Worms ends when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw.
1659 – Richard Cromwell resigns as Lord Protector of England following the restoration of the Long Parliament, beginning a second brief period of the republican government called the Commonwealth of England.
1738 – A treaty between Pennsylvania and Maryland ends the Conojocular War with settlement of a boundary dispute and exchange of prisoners.
1837 – The Rebels of Lower Canada (Quebec) rebel against the British for freedom.
1865 – In Mobile, Alabama, 300 are killed when an ordnance depot explodes.
1878 – Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore opens at the Opera Comique in London.
1895 – The playwright, poet, and novelist Oscar Wilde is convicted of “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons” and sentenced to serve two years in prison.
1914 – The United Kingdom’s House of Commons passes the Home Rule Act for devolution in Ireland.
1925 – Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in Tennessee.
1935 – Jesse Owens of Ohio State University breaks three world records and ties a fourth at the Big Ten Conference Track and Field Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
1936 – The Remington Rand strike, led by the American Federation of Labor, begins.
1953 – Nuclear testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conduct their first and only nuclear artillery test.
1961 – Apollo program: The U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces before a special joint session of the Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a “man on the Moon” before the end of the decade.
1962 – The Old Bay Line, the last overnight steamboat service in the United States, goes out of business.
1969 – Glen Drover, Canadian guitarist and songwriter (Megadeth, Eidolon, and King Diamond) was born.
1977 – Star Wars is released in theaters, inspiring the Jediism religion and Geek Pride Day holiday.
1977 – Chinese government removes a decade old ban on William Shakespeare’s work, effectively ending the Cultural Revolution started in 1966.
1979 – Etan Patz, who is six years old, disappears from the street just two blocks away from his home in New York City, prompting an international search for the child, and causing the U.S. President Ronald Reagan to designate May 25 as National Missing Children’s Day (in 1983).
1986 – Hands Across America takes place.
1999 – The United States House of Representatives releases the Cox Report which details the People’s Republic of China’s nuclear espionage against the U.S. over the prior two decades.
2009 – North Korea allegedly tests its second nuclear device. Following the nuclear test, Pyongyang also conducted several missile tests building tensions in the international community.
2011 – Oprah Winfrey airs her last show, ending her twenty-five-year run of The Oprah Winfrey Show.
2013 – Marshall Lytle, American bass player and songwriter (Bill Haley & His Comets and The Jodimars) (b. 1933) died.
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