24 October History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 439    -    Carthage, the leading Roman city in North Africa, falls to Genseric and the Vandals.
  • 1531    -    Bavaria, despite being a Catholic region, joins the League of Schmalkalden, a Protestant group which opposes Charles V.
  • 1648    -    The signing of the Treaty of Westphalia ends the German Thirty Years' War.
  • 1755    -    A British expedition against the French held Fort Niagara in Canada ends in failure.
  • 1836    -    The match is patented.
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  • 1861    -    Western Union completes the first transcontinental telegraph line, putting the Pony Express out of business.
  • 1863    -    General Ulysses S. Grant arrives in Chattanooga, Tennessee to find the Union Army there starving.
  • 1897    -    The first comic strip appears in the Sunday color supplement of the New York Journal called the 'Yellow Kid.'
  • 1901    -    Anna Edson Taylor, 43, is the first woman to go safely over Niagara Falls in a barrel. She made the attempt for the cash award offered, which she put toward the loan on her Texas ranch.
  • 1916    -    Henry Ford awards equal pay to women.
  • 1917    -    The Austro-German army routs the Italian army at Caporetto, Italy.
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  • 1929    -    Black Thursday–the first day of the stock market crash which began the Great Depression.
  • 1930    -    John Wayne debuts in his first starring role in The Big Trail .
  • 1931    -    Al (Alphonse) Capone, the prohibition-era Chicago gangster, is sent to prison for tax evasion.
  • 1934    -    Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, called Mahatma or "Great Soul," resigns from Congress in India.
  • 1938    -    The Fair Labor Standards Act becomes law, establishing the 40-hour work week.
  • 1944    -    The aircraft carrier USS Princeton is sunk by a single Japanese plane during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
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  • 1945    -    The United Nations comes into existence with the ratification of its charter by the first 29 nations.
  • 1945    -    Vidkun Quisling, Norway's wartime minister president, is executed by firing squad for collaboration with the Nazis.
  • 1952    -    Presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower announces that if elected, he will go to Korea.
  • 1970    -    Leftist Salvador Allende elected president of Chile.
  • 2003    -    The supersonic Concorde jet made its last commercial passenger flight from New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport to London's Heathrow Airport, traveling at twice the speed of sound.

  • 24 October Birthdays

  • 1632    -    Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, Dutch naturalist.
  • 1788    -    Sarah Josepha Hale, magazine editor and poet whose book Poems for Our Children included "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (the first words to be recorded in sound)
  • 1904    -    Moss Hart, American playwright who, with George S. Kaufman, wrote plays such as You Can't Take it with You and The Man who came to Dinner.
  • 1911    -    Sonny Terry, blues performer.
  • 1923    -    Denise Levertov, English poet.
  • 1929    -    George Henry Crumb, American composer.