24 April History
- 858 - St. Nicholas I begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
- 1519 - Envoys of Montezuma II attend the first Easter mass in Central America.
- 1547 - Charles V's troops defeat the Protestant League of Schmalkalden at the battle of Muhlburg.
- 1558 - Mary, Queen of Scotland, marries the French dauphin, Francis.
- 1792 - Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle composes "La Marseilles". It will become France's national anthem.
- 1800 - The Library of Congress is established in Washington, D.C. with a $5,000 allocation.
- 1805 - U.S. Marines attack and capture the town of Derna in Tripoli from the Barbary pirates.
- 1833 - A patent is granted for first soda fountain.
- 1877 - Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire.
- 1884 - Otto von Bismarck cables Cape Town, South Africa that it is now a German colony.
- 1898 - Spain declares war on United States, rejecting an ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.
- 1915 - Turks of the Ottoman Empire begin massacring the Armenian minority in their country.
- 1916 - Irish nationalists launch the Easter Uprising against British occupation.
- 1944 - The first B-29 arrives in China, over the Hump of the Himalayas.
- 1948 - The Berlin airlift begins to relieve surrounded city.
- 1953 - Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
- 1961 - President John Kennedy accepts "sole responsibility" for the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
- 1968 - Leftist students take over Columbia University in protest over the Vietnam War.
- 1980 - A rescue attempt of the U.S. hostages held in Iran fails when a plane collides with a helicopter in the Iranian desert.
- 1981 - The IBM Personal Computer is introduced.
- 1989 - Thousands of Chinese students strike in Beijing for more democratic reforms.
24 April Birthdays
- 1620 - John Graunt, statistician, founder of demography.
- 1743 - Edmund Cartwright, English parson who invented the power loom.
- 1766 - Robert Bailey Thomas, founder of the Farmer's Almanac.
- 1769 - Arthur Wellesley, general during the Napoleonic Wars, Duke of Wellington.
- 1815 - Anthony Trollope, British novelist.
- 1856 - Henri Philippe Pétain, French Marshall, WWI hero, Nazi collaborator.
- 1900 - Elizabeth Goudge, English author.
- 1904 - Willem de Kooning, abstract impressionist painter.
- 1905 - Robert Penn Warren, novelist, America's first poet laureate.
- 1906 - William Joyce, 'Lord Haw-Haw,' British traitor, Nazi propagandist.