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.
1736: Physicist and engineer Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit dies. He helped lay the foundations for the era of precision thermometry by inventing the mercury-in-glass thermometer and the Fahrenheit scale.
1891: Havelock survives shootout by running away.
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.