Today in History, 5/24

1218: The Fifth Crusade leaves for Acre, Israel.
1626: Peter Minuit buys Manhattan Island from the Indian.1686 Gabriel Fahrenheit, inventor and thermometer maker is born.1689: The English Parliament passes the Act of Toleration which protects all the different flavors of Protestantism (but no Catholics).
1798: The Irish Rebellion of 1798 kicks off.
1819: Queen Victoria is born.1830: Sarah Josepha Hale publishes Mary Had A Little Lamb.
1844: Samuel Morse sends the message "What hath God wrought?" (Numbers 23:23) from the old Supreme Court Chamber in the US Capitol building to an assistant in Baltimore.1846: During the Mexican-American War, General Zachary Taylor captures Monterey.1856: John Brown and his men murder five slavers at Pottawatomie Creek, KS.1879: H.B. Reese, inventor of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups is born. This alone makes him one of the greatest men in history.1883: The Brooklyn Bridge opens to traffic after fourteen years of construction.1921: The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti begins.1935: The first major league baseball game to be played at night takes place at Cincinnati's Crosley Field as the Reds defeat the Phillies 2-1.
1938: Tommy Chong is born.
1940: Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.1941: Bob Dylan is born.

1941: The German battleship sinks the HMS Hood killing all but three crewmen.

1943: Gary Burghoff is born. Here's the whole MASH gang peddling the IBM PC.

1943: Josef Mengele becomes the chief medical officer of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
1944: Patti LaBelle is born.

1945: Priscilla Presley is born.

1949: The Soviet Union ends the 11-month Berlin Blockade.
1953: Alfred Molina is born. He played Doctor Octopus in the Spiderman 2.

1970: The drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole on the Kola Peninsula in the Soviet Union begins. It would eventually reach almost eight miles down - barely a third of the way through the Earth's crust.
Today in History elements mostly cribbed from The History Channel, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Jewish World Review, The Writer's Almanac and anything else I can dig up.