These historical events took place on May 24th:
1738: John Wesley is converted, launching the Methodist movement; celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day.
1755: Smuggler Louis Mandrin considered the French Robin Hood is sentenced to be broken on the wheel, a medieval form of torture and execution that breaks the subject’s bones.
1894: Lowell Observatory, Arizona, first begins observations of Mars with an eighteen-inch telescope, leading its builder Percival Lowell to conclude there are canals on Mars.
1915: Thomas Edison invents telescribe to record telephone conversations.
1954: Dr. Peter Murray Marshall becomes the first African American to head an American Medical Association unit in New York Country.
1963: Barbra Streisand performs “Happy Days Are Here Again” at White House Press Correspondents Dinner, and meets United States President John F. Kennedy.
1972: The United States performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.
1974: RCA releases “Diamond Dogs”, David Bowie’s eighth studio album, recorded in London and the Netherlands, with cover design by artist Guy Peellaert, it peaks in the United States charts at No. 5, and goes to No. 1 in the United Kingdom and Canada.
2001: The Democrats gained control of the United States Senate for the first time since 1994 when Senator James Jeffords of Vermont abandons the Republican Party and declared himself an independent.