May 25

Croatian/Austrian writer, Paula von Preradovic died on this day in 1951. Little is known about her work due to a predilection for writing in these strange foreign languages. Her Croatian poetry has been derided in some quarters because of how easy it is to rhyme when everything ends in ic.

May 25 1606 is remembered as the day that St Charles Garnier was baptised in Paris. He spent much of his life as a missionary among the Hurons in Canada. After his arrival was followed by a drought-ending rainfall, the Hurons nicknamed him "Al Gore".

Happy 24th birthday to former Miss World Unnur Birna Vilhjálmsdóttir. One look at the Unnur Birna, and it is not so hard to see why Earth continues to take all before it in the Miss Universe competition.

On this day in 2001, 32-year-old Erik Weihenmayer of Boulder, Colorado became the first blind person to reach the summit of Mt Everest. The United States Guide Dog Society later made an undisclosed payout to Erik when it admitted it should have provided him with a regular labrador, rather than a Himalayan sheep dog.