Daily Calendar for Friday, May 23, 2025

Died

  • Captain William Kidd (hanged in London) –
  • John D. Rockerfeller (entrepreneur) –
  • Sam Snead (golfer) –
  • Anne Meara (actress) –
  • Eric Carle (children’s book author, most notably The Very Hungry Caterpillar) –

Born

  • Carolus Linnaeus (botanist) –
  • Douglas Fairbanks (actor) –
  • John Bardeen (physicist) –
  • Artie Shaw (bandleader) –
  • Rosemary Clooney (singer) –
  • Barbara Barrie (actress) –
  • Joan Collins (actress) –
  • Robert Moog (inventor) –
  • Drew Carey (actor; host of The Price is Right) –
  • Mitch Albom (author) –
  • Ken Jennings (won 74 straight games on Jeopardy! game show in 2004) –
  • Jewel (musician) –

Events

  • Benjamin Franklin created his own pair of bifocals–
  • South Carolina was admitted to the Union as the 8th state–
  • Explorer William Clark: β€œWater freeses [sic] on the oars” in what is now Montana.–
  • North-West Mounted Police formed (now Royal Canadian Mounted Police)–
  • New York Public Library in New York City is established–
  • Townsend-Purnell Plant Patent Act became the first in the United States to grant patent protection to plant breeders–
  • Actor Errol Flynn appeared on the cover of LIFE Magazine–
  • Queen Juliana of the Netherlands laid the cornerstone of the tower housing the Netherlands Centennial Carillon in Victoria, British Columbia–
  • Five people were killed, when a large part of the roof of a new terminal collapsed at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport in France–
  • Hugh Laurie was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace–

Weather

  • Folks were sleighing in Farmington, Maine–
  • Late season snowstorm blanketed eastern Iowa with 4 to 6 inches of snow–

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