TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Saturday, May 25, the 146th day of 2024. There are 220 days left in the year. On this date in: 1660: England’s King Charles II returned from exile with an invitation from Parliament to restore the monarchy. Charles I had been executed in 1649, and England, Ireland and Scotland had been operating under a Lord Protector since 1653.
1787: The Constitutional Convention began in Philadelphia with delegates from states meeting in what is now Independence Hall. They decided against simply amending the Articles of Confederation, opting to work through the coming months on what became the Constitution, signed in September of 1787.
1935: In the span of 45 minutes at a conference meet, Ohio State University student-athlete Jesse Owens set three world records (long jump, 26-21⁄8; 220-yard dash, 20.3 seconds; 220-yard low hurdles, 22.6 seconds) and tied a fourth (100-yard dash, 9.4 seconds). 1955: An F5 tornado hit Udall, Kansas, leaving just one habitable structure in the town. The storm killed 80 people across two Kansas counties.
1961: President John Kennedy proposed to Congress what became the Apollo space program: “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 the Earth.” The space race against the Soviet Union was viewed as a proxy to the Cold War, Kennedy saying in his speech that people around the world were captivated by it, and it could sway their “determination of which road they should take” in what he characterized as a battle “between freedom and tyranny.”
1977: The sci-fi film “Star Wars” was released in just a few dozen theaters. It caught on, however, and soon spread to a wide release. The film became so popular that more than 40 theaters kept “Star Wars” playing for a year or longer.
1978: The first bomb attributed to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski was found in a parking lot at the University of Illinois in Chicago and “returned” to the target whose name was listed as the return address, Buckley Crist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. The next day, suspicious of the package he knew he did not send, Crist involved campus security. The package exploded when an officer opened it, causing minor injuries. 1979: American Airlines Flight 191, a DC-10 aircraft leaving Chicago for Los Angeles, stalled and crashed into an abandoned nearby airport and killed 273 people, including all who were aboard and two people on the ground.
1986: In an effort to raise money to fight hunger and homelessness, Hands Across America attempted to link people hand-in-hand from coast to coast, each participant being encouraged to make a donation. Though the human chain was broken in many places along the way, the event raised more than $36.4 million.
1994: The post-Johnny Carson era began as a new host took the reins, and the show’s title was altered to “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.”
2008: NASA’s Phoenix probe landed on Mars to search for evidence of water and past or present microbial life.
2011: The finale of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” aired. The popular and influential talk show has been running since 1986.
2020: With a police officer kneeling on his neck and back for more than nine minutes, George Floyd died in Minneapolis, spurring widespread protests with demonstrators declaring, “Black lives matter.” The white officer, Derek Chauvin, was convicted the following year of murdering Floyd and sentenced to 15 years in prison and 71⁄2 years parole. Later that year, he pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges and was sentenced to 21 years in prison.
– William Cain, USA TODAY Network