📜 This Day in History

May 25

• 1644Ming–Qing transition: Ming general Wu Sangui allowed the invading Manchu to cross the Great Wall of China, enabling them to capture Beijing and establish the Qing dynasty.
• 1816The poems Kubla Khan and Christabel by English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge were published.
• 1944The Wehrmacht and their collaborationist allies launched Operation Rösselsprung, a failed attempt to assassinate the Yugoslav Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito.
• 1962The Baltimore Steam Packet Company, the last overnight steamboat service in the United States, went out of business.
• 2009North Korea conducted a nuclear test and several other missile tests that were widely condemned internationally and led to sanctions from the United Nations Security Council.
• 2020George Floyd, a black American man, was murdered during an arrest by a white police officer in Minneapolis, sparking protests in the U.S. and other countries.

Born on this day

• 1803Ralph Waldo Emerson, American poet and philosopher (died 1882)
• 1865Pieter Zeeman, Dutch physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1943)
• 1939Ian McKellen, English actor
• 1976Cillian Murphy, Irish actor