July 24 - Events

Events

• 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 a 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 Francis I of France.
• 1567 – Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate 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.
• 1783 – The Kingdom of Georgia and the Russian Empire sign the Treaty of Georgievsk.
• 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.
• 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 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.
• 1897 – Amelia Earhart is born.
• 1901 – O. Henry is released from prison in Austin, Texas after serving three years for embezzlement from a bank.
• 1910 – The Ottoman Empire captures the city of Shkodër, putting down the Albanian Revolt of 1910.
• 1911 – Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu, "the Lost City of the Incas".
• 1915 – The passenger ship S.S. Eastland capsizes while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew are killed in the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.
• 1922 – The draft of the British Mandate of Palestine was formally confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations; it came into effect on 26 September 1923.
• 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 – Archeologist Themistoklis Sofoulis becomes Prime Minister of Greece.
• 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 (43°C) in Chicago, Illinois and 104°F (40°C) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
• 1937 – Alabama drops rape charges against the so-called "Scottsboro Boys".
• 1938 – First ascent of the Eiger north face.
• 1943 – World War II: Operation Gomorrah begins: British and Canadian aeroplanes 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 buildings.
• 1950 – Cape Canaveral Air Force Station begins operations with the launch of a Bumper rocket.
• 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".
• 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 Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians.
• 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 – Konstantinos Karamanlis arrives in Greece following the collapse of the Greek military junta, beginning Greece's metapolitefsi era.
• 1977 – End of a four day long Libyan–Egyptian War.
• 1980 – The Quietly Confident Quartet of Australia wins the Men's 4 x 100 metre medley relay at the Moscow Olympics, the only time the United States has not won the event at Olympic level.
• 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.
• 1991 – Manmohan Singh presents his budget speech to the Indian Parliament which led to economic liberalisation in India
• 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.
• 2001 – Bandaranaike Airport attack is carried out by 14 Tamil Tiger commandos, all died in this attack. They destroyed 11 Aircraft (mostly military) and damaged 15, there are no civilian casualties. This incident slowed down Sri Lankan economy.
• 2002 – Democrat 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.
• 2009 – The MV Arctic Sea, reportedly carrying a cargo of timber, is allegedly hijacked in the North Sea by pirates, but much speculation remains as to the actual cargo and events.
• 2011 – Digital switchover is completed in 44 of the 47 prefectures of Japan, with Iwate, Miyagi, and Fukushima television stations terminating analog broadcasting operations later as a result of the Tohoku earthquake.