On this Day... May 25
■ In 1895, Oscar
Wilde was condemned to a maximum sentence of two years at hard labor for homosexual offenses. The case was the culmination of a vendetta pursued against the poet and playwright by the mad marquis of Queensberry who was outraged by Wilde’s affair with his son, Lord Alfred Douglas. Lord Alfred himself said Wilde had been sacrificed to prevent similar charges against, “a degraded band of politicians,” and the reforming editor W.T. Stead pointed out that “if all persons guilty of Oscar Wilde’s offenses were to be clapped in jail, there would be a very surprising exodus from Eton, Harrow, Rugby and Winchester” – Britain’s most prestigious schools!
■ In 1961, the bid to get a man to the moon began in earnest. In a historic Special State of the Nation address, President Kennedy asked the U.S. Congress for an additional $531 million for the Apollo program, saying, “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.” Twenty-four billion dollars and 2,979 days later, Neil Armstrong took his giant step – just six months before the decade ended.
— from Today’s the Day! By Jeremy Beadle
In Christian history ■ In 1876, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland united with the Free Church of Scotland to form the new Free Church of Scotland.
— from This Day in Christian History By William D. Blake In the Philippines
■ In 1895, Governor General Ramon Blanco ordered the exile of nine prominent citizens of Malolos, Bulacan, mostly friends and relatives of Marcelo H. del Pilar, some to Mindanao and some to Palawan for conspiracy against the Church. This came after the parish priest of Malolos complained to the Archbishop of Manila, Father Bernardino, about the presence of “illegal” Masonic associations and “state of indiscipline and insubordination of his parish, due to the hostile attitude adopted towards the parish priest of the leading residents of that town.” Bernardino in his letter to Blanco said, “We see a system of persistent conspiracy against the Church, we find ourselves in the necessity of applying to Your Excellency for measures that will put an effective stop to the scandal, which measures are so much the more urgent because of the fact that unless they are taken now, it is much to be feared and almost sure that the evil will not confine itself to Malolos, but will, by the law of all contagions, spread to other pueblos.”
— www.kahimyang.info In Cebu
■ In 1952, acting Mayor Pedro Tecala of Danao, Cebu was murdered in a Danao schoolroom during a public meeting in what was reported as part of the fierce post-election feud between the Osmeña and Cuenco political camps in Cebu.
— from Cebuano Studies Center, University of San Carlos