May 22
1592: Giordano Bruno arrested. Among the numerous charges of blasphemy and heresy brought against him is his belief in the plurality of worlds.
1873: Lawyer, translator, and inventor Per Georg Scheutz born. He will invent the Scheutzian calculation engine, based on Charles Babbage's difference engine.
1930: Mathematician, academic, and rabbi Eliezer 'Leon' Ehrenpreis born. He will prove the Malgrange–Ehrenpreis theorem, the fundamental theorem about differential operators with constant coefficients.
1946: The WAC Corporal becomes the first US rocket to reach edge of space.
1997: Chemist and US military officer Myrtle Bachelder dies. Bachelder was responsible for the analysis of the spectroscopy of uranium for the Manhattan Project during the Second World War. After the war, Bachelder made pioneering contributions to metallochemistry.
2010: Mathematics and science writer Martin Gardner dies. His interests included stage magic, scientific skepticism, philosophy, religion, and literature.
2024: Self portrait.