May 26

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  1497: Mathematician and architect Antonio Manetti dies. He investigated the site, shape and size of Dante's Inferno, and wrote a biography of the architect Filippo Brunelleschi.

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  1667: Mathematician and theorist Abraham de Moivre born. His book on probability theory, The Doctrine of Chances, will be prized by gamblers.

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  1814: Glassblower, physicist, and inventor Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Geißler born. He will invent the Geissler tube, made of glass and used as a low pressure gas-discharge luminescence tube.

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  1895: Documentary photographer and photojournalist Dorothea Lange born. Lange will be remembered for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Her photographs will influence the development of documentary photography and humanize the consequences of the Great Depression.

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  1938: In the United States, the House Un-American Activities Committee begins its first session.