May 24
After 14 years of construction and the deaths of 27 workers, the Brooklyn Bridge over New York’s East River opens. Newspapers call it “the eighth wonder of the world.” – 1883.
A referee’s call disallowed an apparent goal for Peru in a soccer match between Peru and Argentina, a qualifying game for the 1964 Olympics. The stadium crowd went wild and the resulting panic and crowd-control measures taken causes a stampede in which more than 300 fans were killed and another 500 were injured in the violent melee that followed at National Stadium in Lima, Peru. – 1964.
May 25
With George Washington presiding, the Constitutional Convention formally convenes on this day in 1787. The convention faced a daunting task: The peaceful overthrow of the new American government as it had been defined by the Articles of Confederation. – 1787.
Thousands of unemployed WWI veterans arrive in Washington, D.C. to demand a bonus they had been promised, but never received. They built a shantytown near the U.S. Capitol, but were burned out by U.S. troops after two months. – 1932.
American Airlines Flight 191, with 271 aboard, raises its nose during the initial stage of the takeoff and an engine under the left wing breaks off with its pylon assembly and falls to the runway at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Moments later, the aircraft crashes into an open field about a half-mile from its takeoff point, and kills all 271 aboard and two others in a nearby trailer park. It was the worst domestic air crash in U.S. history. – 1979.
May 26
The first copies of the classic vampire novel Dracula, by Irish writer Bram Stoker, appear in London bookshops on this day. – 1897.
One hundred thousand steel workers and miners in mines owned by steel companies strike in seven states. The Memorial Day Massacre, in which 10 strikers were killed by police at Republic Steel in Chicago, took place four days later, May 30. – 1937.
May 27
The Golden Gate Bridge, which connects San Francisco with Marin County, Calif., officially opens amid citywide celebration. – 1937.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces a state of unlimited national emergency in response to Nazi Germany’s threats of world domination on this day in 1941. In a speech on this day, he repeated his famous remark from a speech he made in 1933 during the Great Depression: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. – 1941.
A tornado in Jarrell, Texas, destroys the town and kills nearly 30 persons. This F5 tornado was unusual in that it went south along the ground; nearly all tornadoes in North America move northeast. The tornado stopped on top of Double Creek home development and the only structure to survive was a family’s tornado shelter. – 1997.
May 28
A 22-year-old lieutenant colonel of the Virginia militia named George Washington successfully defeats a party of French and Indian scouts in southwest Pennsylvania when Virginia attempts to lay claim to the territory for its settlers. The action snowballed into the Seven Years’ War and began the military career of the first American president. – 1754.
May 29
Rhode Island becomes the 13th state of the United States. – 1790.
Wisconsin enters the Union as the 30th state. – 1848.
Heavy fog causes a collision of boats on the St. Lawrence River in Canada that kills 1,073 individuals. Caused by a horrible series of blunders, it was one of the worst maritime disasters in history. -1914.
On the advice of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler orders all Jews in occupied Paris to wear an identifying yellow star on the left side of their coats. It was just one step of the Nazi regime’s plan to deal with the “Jewish problem.”- 1942.
Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, become the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest, at 29,035 feet above sea level, is the highest point on earth which straddle the border between Nepal and China. – 1953.
May 30
At Rouen in English-controlled Normandy, Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who became the savior of France, is burned at the stake for heresy. – 1431.
Former U.S. president William Howard Taft dedicates the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington Mall on this day in 1922. At the time, Taft was serving as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. – 1922.
Sources: History.com, Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards and Adam Wright, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council.
• “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” —George Santayana, Philosopher