August 24

Events49 BC - Julius Caesar's general Gaius Curio is defeated in the Second Battle of the Bagradas River by the Numidians under Attius Varus and King Juba of Numidia. Curio commits suicide to avoid capture. 79 - Mount Vesuvius erupts. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash.410 - The Visigoths under Alaric begin to pillage Rome for three days.1215 - Pope Innocent III declares Magna Carta invalid.1349 - Six thousand Jews are killed in Mainz after being blamed for the bubonic plague.1391 - Jews massacred in Palma de Mallorca.1456 - The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed.1511 - Alfonso de Albuquerque of Portugal conquers the Sultanate of Malacca.1561 - Willem of Orange marries duchess Anna of Saxony.1572 - Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre: On the orders of king Charles IX of France, a massacre of Huguenots (French Protestants) begins.1608 - The first official English representative to India lands in Surat.1662 - Act of Uniformity requires England to accept the Book of Common Prayer.1682 - William Penn receives the area that is now the state of Delaware, and adds it to his colony of Pennsylvania.1690 - Calcutta, India is founded.1814 - British and Canadian troops invade Washington, D.C. and burn down the White House and several other buildings.1816 - The Treaty of St. Louis is signed in St. Louis, Missouri.1820 - Constitutionalist insurrection at Oporto, Portugal; see Portugal's crises of the Nineteenth Century.1821 - The Treaty of Córdoba is signed in Córdoba, now in Veracruz, Mexico, concluding the Mexican War of Independence from Spain.1831 - Charles Darwin is asked to travel on HMS Beagle.1847 - Charlotte Brontë finishes Jane Eyre.1853 - Potato chips are first prepared.1857 - The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in U.S. history.1858 - In Richmond, Virginia, 90 blacks are arrested for learning.1870 - The Wolseley Expedition reaches Manitoba to end the Red River Rebellion.1875 - Captain Matthew Webb became first person to swim English Channel1891 - Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera.1909 - Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.1912 - Alaska becomes a United States territory.1914 - World War I: German troops capture Namur.1929 - Turkey and Persia sign a friendship treaty.1929 - Riots in Palestine of 1929: 18 Jews in Safed, 67 in Hebron, and 22 in Jerusalem killed by Arab Palestinians.1931 - France and the Soviet Union sign a neutrality/no attack treaty.1931 - Resignation of the United Kingdom's Second Labour Government. Formation of the UK National Government.1932 - Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop (from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey).1936 - The Australian Antarctic Territory is created.1937 - In the Spanish Civil War, the Basque Army surrenders to the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie following the Santoña Agreement.1939 - The Nazi-Soviet Pact is signed between Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin.1942 - World War II: The Battle of the Eastern Solomons. Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō is sunk and US carrier Enterprise heavily damaged.1944 - World War II: Allied troops start the attack on Paris.1949 - The treaty creating NATO goes into effect.1950 - Edith Sampson becomes the first black U.S. delegate to the UN.1954 - The Communist Control Act goes into effect. The American Communist Party is outlawed.1954 - Getúlio Dornelles Vargas, president of Brazil, commits suicide and is succeeded by João Café Filho.1960 - A temperature of −88°C (−127°F) is measured in  Vostok, Antarctica — a world-record low.1963 - The 200-metre freestyle is swum in less than 2 minutes for the first time by Don Schollander (1:58).1967 - Led by Abbie Hoffman, a group of hippies temporarily disrupt trading at the NYSE by throwing dollar bills from the viewing gallery, causing a cease in trading as the brokers scramble to grab them up.1968 - France explodes its first hydrogen bomb, thus becoming the world's fifth nuclear power.1981 - Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon.1989 - Colombian drug barons declare "total war" on the Colombian government.1989 - Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose is banned from baseball for gambling by Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti.1989 - Voyager 2 passes Neptune.1990 - A judge rules that Judas Priest are not responsible for the deaths of two youths who committed suicide after listening to the band's music.1990 - Sinéad O'Connor refuses to perform at the Garden State Arts Plaza in Holmdel, New Jersey if "The Star-Spangled Banner" is played before her show, as is customary.1991 - Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.1991 - Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union.1992 - Diplomatic relations are established between the People's Republic of China and South Korea.1992 - Hurricane Andrew hits South Florida as a Category 5 Hurricane.1994 - Initial accord between Israel and the PLO about partial self-rule of the Palestinians on the West Bank.1995 - Windows 95, a computer operating system by Microsoft, is released with much fanfare.1998 - The Netherlands is selected as the site for the trial of the two Libyan suspects of the 1988 Pan Am bombing.1998 - First RFID human implantation tested in the United Kingdom.2001 - Air Transat Flight 236 runs out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean (en route to Lisbon from Toronto) and makes an emergency landing in the Azores.2004 - 89 passengers die after two airliners explode after flying out of Domodedovo International Airport, near Moscow. The explosions were caused by suicide bombers (reportedly female) from the Russian Republic of Chechnya.2006 - The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term "planet" such that Pluto is considered a "Dwarf Planet."
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