May 24: What Happened on This Day in History (Elementary Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1607 - 100 English settlers disembark in Jamestown, the first English colony in America.
2. 1844 - Samuel Morse sends the message "What hath God wrought" (a biblical quotation, Numbers 23:23) from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the United States Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland, to inaugurate the first telegraph line
3. 1883 - The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction.
4. 1961 - American civil rights movement: Freedom Riders are arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, for "disturbing the peace" after disembarking from their bus.
5. 1962 - Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.
6. Famous Birthdays: William Gilbert (English physician, physicist, and astronomer), Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (Polish-German physicist and engineer, developed the Fahrenheit scale), Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, Mikhail Sholokhov (Russian author, Nobel Prize laureate), Joseph Brodsky (Russian-American poet, Nobel Prize laureate)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: May 23

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: May 25

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.