History for May 25

History for May 25 - On-This-Day.com

Igor Sikorsky (Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky) 1889 - Pioneer in aviation with helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft

• 1787 - The Constitutional convention opened in Philadelphia with George Washington presiding.
• 1844 - The gasoline engine was patented by Stuart Perry.
• 1961 - America was asked by U.S. President Kennedy to work toward putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade.
• 1977 - An opinion piece by Vietnam verteran Jan Scruggs appeared in "The Washington Post." The article called for a national memorial to "remind an ungrateful nation of what it has done to its sons" that had served in the Vietnam War.
• 1979 - An American Airlines DC-10 crashed during takeoff at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. 275 people were killed.
• 1992 - Jay Leno debuted as the new permanent host of NBC's "Tonight Show."
• 1999 - A report by the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People's Republic of China concluded that China had "stolen design information on the U.S. most-advanced thermonuclear weapons" and that China's penetration of U.S. weapons laboratories "spans at least the past several decades and almost certainly continues today."