Historical Events on 24 Jul

Historical Events on 24 Jul

1132 - Battle of Nocera between Ranulf II of Alife and Roger II of Sicily.
1148 - Louis VII of France lays siege to Damascus during the Second Crusade.
1411 - Battle of Harlaw, one of the bloodiest battles in Scotland, takes place.
1487 - Citizens of Leeuwarden, Netherlands strike against ban on foreign beer.
1534 - French explorer Jacques Cartier plants a cross on the Gaspé Peninsula and takes possession of the territory in the name of the Francis I of France.
1567 - Mary Queen of Scots is deposed and replaced by her 1 year old son James VI.
1701 - Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founds the trading post at Fort Pontchartrain, which later becomes the city of Detroit, Michigan.
1715 - A Spanish treasure fleet of 10 ships under Admiral Ubilla leaves Havana, Cuba for Spain. Seven days later, 9 of them sink in a storm off the coast of Florida. A few centuries later, treasure is salvaged from these wrecks.
1814 - War of 1812: General Phineas Riall advances toward the Niagara River to halt Jacob Brown's American invaders.
1823 - Slavery is abolished in Chile.
1832 - Benjamin Bonneville leads the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains by using Wyoming's South Pass.
1847 - After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City. Celebrations of this event include the Pioneer Day Utah state holiday and the Days of '47 Parade.
1864 - American Civil War: Battle of Kernstown - Confederate General Jubal Anderson Early defeats Union troops led by General George Crook in an effort to keep them out of the Shenandoah Valley.
1866 - Reconstruction: Tennessee becomes the first U.S. State to be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War.
1901 - O. Henry is released from prison in Austin, Texas after serving three years for embezzlement from a bank.
1911 - Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu, "the Lost City of the Incas".
1915 - The passenger ship S.S. Eastland capsizes in central Chicago, with the loss of 845 lives.
1923 - The Treaty of Lausanne, settling the boundaries of modern Turkey, is signed in Switzerland by Greece, Bulgaria and other countries that fought in World War I.
1924 - The World Chess Federation FIDE is founded in Paris.
1927 - The Menin Gate war memorial is unveiled at Ypres.
1929 - The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, goes into effect (it is first signed in Paris on August 27, 1928 by most leading world powers).
1931 - A fire at a home for the elderly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania kills 48 people.
1935 - The dust bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109°F (44°C) in Chicago and 104°F (40°C) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
1935 - The world's first children's railway opens in Tbilisi, USSR.
1937 - Alabama drops rape charges against the so-called "Scottsboro Boys".
1943 - World War II: Operation Gomorrah begins: British and Canadian airplanes bomb Hamburg by night, those of the Americans by day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of explosives will have killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000
1948 - Looney Tunes character Marvin the Martian makes his first appearance in the cartoon Haredevil Hare.
1950 - Cape Canaveral Air Force Station begins operations with the launch of a Bumper rocket.
1956 - Khartoum University College is awarded university status becoming the University of Khartoum.
1956 - At New York City's Copacabana Club, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their last comedy show together. They began performing together on July 25, 1946.
1959 - At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev have a "Kitchen Debate".
1965 - Vietnam War: four F-4C Phantoms escorting a bombing raid at Kang Chi are the targets of antiaircraft missiles in the first such attack against American aircraft in the war. One is shot down and the other three sustain damage.
1966 - Michael Pelkey makes the first BASE jump from El Capitan along with Brian Schubert. Both came out with broken bones. BASE jumping has now been banned from El Cap.
1967 - During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declares to a crowd of over 100,000 in Montreal: Vive le Québec libre! ("Long live free Quebec!"). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many
1969 - Apollo program: Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
1972 - Bugojno group is caught by Yugoslav security forces.
1974 - Watergate scandal: the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.
1974 - After the Turkish invasion of Cyprus the Greek military junta collapses and democracy is restored.
1977 - End of a four day long Libyan-Egyptian War.
1982 - Heavy rain causes a mudslide that destroys a bridge at Nagasaki, Japan, killing 299.
1983 - George Brett batting for the Kansas City Royals against the New York Yankees, has a game-winning home run nullified in the "Pine Tar Incident".
1990 - Iraqi forces start massing on the Kuwait-Iraq border.
1998 - Russell Eugene Weston Jr. bursts into the United States Capitol and opens fire killing two police officers. He is later ruled to be incompetent to stand trial.
2001 - Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office.
2002 - James Traficant is expelled from the United States House of Representatives on a vote of 420 to 1.
2005 - Lance Armstrong wins his seventh consecutive Tour de France.
2007 - Libya frees all six of the Medics in the HIV trial in Libya.