1644–Ming Dynasty general Wu Sangui forms an alliance with the invading Manchus and opens the gates of the Great Wall of China at Shanhaiguan Pass, letting the Manchus through towards the capital, Beijing.
1953– The US conducts its only nuclear artillery test in Nevada.
1955– A night-time Force 5 tornado strikes the small city in Udall, Kansas, killing 80 people; it is the deadliest tornado ever to strike Kansas.
1955– First successful climb of Kanchenjunga (8,586 metres), the third-highest mountain in the world on the India–Nepal border, by a British expedition led by Joe Brown and George Band.
1979– 6-year-old Etan Patz disappears on his way to school near his home in New York City. This becomes one of the most notorious missing–child cases in US history and leads to Ronald Reagan declaring May 25 National Missing Children's Day in 1983.
1883–Carl Johan Lind, Swedish hammer thrower (d. 1965)
1886–Philip Murray, Scottish-American labor leader (d. 1952)
1886–Rash Behari Bose, Indian revolutionary (d. 1945)
1887–Francesco Forgione, better known as Padre Pio and also Saint Pius of Pietrelcina, Italian Franciscan Capuchin friar, priest and Saint in the Catholic Church (d. 1968)