TODAY in HISTORY
Today is Friday May 25, the 145th day of 2018. There are 220 days left in the year.
1085 Alfonso VI of Castile takes Toledo, Spain, back from the Moors. 1420 Henry the Navigator is appointed governor of the Order of Christ.
1798 United Irishmen Rebellion: Battle of Carlow begins; executions of suspected rebels at Carnew and at Dunlavin Green take place.
1819 The Argentine Constitution of 1819 is promulgated. 1837 The Rebels of Lower Canada ( Quebec) rebel against the British for governmental reforms. 1878 Gilbert and Sullivan’s comic opera H. M. S. Pinafore opens at the Opera Comique in London. 1895 Playwright, poet, novelist and aesthete Oscar Wilde is convicted of “committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons” and sentenced to serve two years in prison. 1914 The House of Commons of the United Kingdom passes the Home Rule Bill for devolution in Ireland.
1925 Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in Tennessee.
1946 The parliament of Transjordan makes Abdullah I of Jordan their Emir. 1953 Nuclear weapons testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its first and only nuclear artillery test. 1973 Velos, while participating in a NATO exercise and in order to protest against the dictatorship in Greece, anchored at Fiumicino, Italy, refusing to return to Greece. 1977 Chinese government removes a decade old ban on William Shakespeare’s work, effectively ending the Cultural Revolution started in 1966. 1978 The first bomb of a series of bombings orchestrated by the Unabomber detonates at Northwestern University resulting in minor injuries. 1981 In Riyadh, the Gulf Cooperation Council is created between Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. 1982 Falklands War: HMS Coventry is sunk by Argentine Air Force A- 4 Skyhawks. 1997 A military coup in Sierra Leone replaces President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah with Major Johnny Paul Koroma. 2000 Liberation Day of Lebanon. Israel withdraws its army from Lebanese territory ( except for the disputed Shebaa farms zone) 22 years after its invasion in 1978. 2008 NASA’s Phoenix lander lands in Green Valley region of Mars to search for environments suitable for water and microbial life. 2011 Oprah Winfrey airs her last show, ending her twenty- five- year run of the Oprah Winfrey Show.