Template:Selected anniversaries/May 24
1089: Celebrated jurist and monk Lanfranc dies.
1543: Mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus dies. He formulated a model of the universe that places the Sun rather than the Earth at the center of the universe.
1686: Physicist and engineer Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit born. He will help lay the foundations for the era of precision thermometry by inventing the mercury-in-glass thermometer and the Fahrenheit scale.
1734: Chemist and physician Georg Ernst Stahl dies. His works on phlogiston continue to be accepted as an explanation for chemical processes until the late 18th century.
1891: Havelock survives shootout by running away.
1928: Mathematician Bertram Kostant born. He will be one of the principal developers of the theory of geometric quantization.
1940: Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.
1944: Field Report Number One (Peenemunde edition) reveals Nazi efforts to use Gnomon algorithm functions for rocket propulsion.
1963: Plutonium used for crimes against mathematical constants, says John Brunner.