May 24

• May 24, 1153
  Malcolm IV, also known as Malcolm the Maiden, becomes king of Scotland
• May 24, 1300
  King Philip IV of France occupies Flanders. Guy, Count of Flanders is captured
• May 24, 1370
  Hanseatic League and Danish king Valdemar IV sign peace treaty ending the war and giving an effective trade and political monopoly in Scandinavia to the League
• May 24, 1543
  Nicolaus Copernicus, a mathematician and astronomer, dies in Poland
• May 24, 1658
  Battle of the Dunes ends with a victory of the French army and their Commonwealth of England allies over the Spanish army and their English Royalist and French Fronde rebels
• May 24, 1667
  French troops invade the Southern Netherlands beginning the War of Devolution between France and Spain as a result of the claim by Louis XIV that the ownership of the Spanish Netherlands devolved to his wife upon the death of her father, Philip IV of Spain
• May 24, 1689
  English Parliament passes the Act of Toleration, protecting Protestants, but Roman Catholics are specifically excluded from exemption
• May 24, 1798
  Believing that a French invasion of Ireland is imminent, Irish nationalists rise up against the British occupation
• May 24, 1822
  At Battle of Pichincha in Ecuador General Antonio José de Sucre win a decisive victory against Spanish forces
• May 24, 1823
  The Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company is founded to build a railway between the North West England towns of Liverpool and Manchester in the United Kingdom, the first railway to rely exclusively on steam power
• May 24, 1844
  Samuel Morse sends the first telegraphic message via publicly funded telegraph line in the world between Washington, DC and Baltimore ushering in the age of the telegraph
• May 24, 1856
  The Pottawatomie Massacre takes place in Kansas when John Brown, American abolitionist and horse thief, preside over the hacking to death with machetes of five unarmed pro-slavery Border Ruffians in Potawatomi, Kansas
• May 24, 1883
  The Brooklyn Bridge, one of the oldest suspension bridges, is dedicated by President Chester Arthur and New York Govener Grover Cleveland, and officially opened to traffic linking the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn
• May 24, 1923
  Irish Civil War ends with victory of Pro-Treaty
• May 24, 1993
  Eritrea gains independence from Ethiopia
• May 24, 2006
  East Timor's Foreign Minister José Ramos-Horta officially requests military assistance from the governments of Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Portugal