Previous Day - Next Day
So little time we live in Time,
And we learn all so painfully,
That we may spare this hour's term
To practice for Eternity.
~ Robert Penn Warren
Wikiquote (Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism.)
April 24th, 1479 BC
1479 BC - Thutmose III ascends to the throne of Egypt, although power effectively shifts to Hatshepsut (according to the Low Chronology of the 18th Dynasty).
Wikipedia Photo: Ancient Egypt; ● Giza Pyramids ● Great Sphinx ● Abu Simbel Temples Egypt, credit National Geographic ● Egyptian King Tutankhamun, credit National Geographic ● Beautiful images of Egyptian gods and goddesses adorn tomb walls in the Valley of the Kings - The god Ptah, a creator deity, in the tomb of Ramesses III. ● Abu Simbel Egypt.
April 24th, 1184 BC
1184 BC – Trojan War: Traditional date of the fall of Troy.
Stanford.edu / Wikipedia Image: The Trojan War was the beginning of a series of wars which ultimately led to the destruction of the Persian empire at the hands of Alexander; Persian war chariot; The story of the Trojan Horse, whether true or mythical, profoundly influenced Western civilization and inspired many artists.
April 24th, 1547
Schmalkaldic War: Battle of Mühlberg; Duke of Alba, commanding Spanish-Imperial forces of Charles I of Spain, defeats the troops of Duke of Alba.
Wikipedia Painting: Titian's Equestrian Portrait of Charles I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman Empire (1548) celebrates Charles' victory at Schmalkaldic League.
April 24th, 1558
Mary, Queen of Scots, marries the Dauphin of France, François, at Notre Dame de Paris.
Wikipedia Painting: Mary, Queen of Scots (8 December 1542 – 8 February 1587), also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, was queen regnant of Scotland from 14 December 1542 to 24 July 1567 and queen consort of France from 10 July 1559 to 5 December 1560.
April 24th, 1800
The United States Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 USD to purchase "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress".
Wikipedia Image: Library of Congress: Construction of the Thomas Jefferson Building, from July 8, 1888, to May 15, 1894 ● Library of Congress Art and Architecture ● Library of Congress interior, credit Jeffrey Ross, Flickr.
April 24th, 1877
Russo-Turkish War: The Russian Empire declares war on the Ottoman Empire.
Wikipedia Painting: Russo-Turkish War; Action of May 26, 1829, by Nikolay Krasovsky
April 24th, 1885
American Old West: American sharpshooter, Annie Oakley is hired by Nate Salsbury to be a part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
Wikipedia Annie Oakley, credit: The Annie Oakley Center at the Garst Museum.
April 24th, 1898
Spanish-American War: The United States declares war on Spain.
Wikipedi Image: Satellite image Cuba, credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA / GSFC; A Catalan satirical drawing published in La Campana de Gràcia (1896), criticizing U.S. behavior regarding Cuba; W. A. Rogers. "The Battle of Desmayo - The Cuban Balaklava" In: Harper's Pictorial History of the War with Spain. Vol. 1. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1899. NYPL, United States History, Local History and Genealogy Division.
April 24th, 1907
Hersheypark, founded by Milton S. Hershey for the exclusive use of his employees, is opened.
Wikipedia Photo: Hersheypark (Hershey Chocolate Company) is a family theme park situated in Hershey, Derry Township, Pennsylvania.
April 24th, 1913
The Woolworth Building in New York City is opened.
Wikipedia Photo: Woolworth Building credit Digital Apoptosis.
April 24th, 1915
World War I:
1915 - Armenian Genocide; The arrest of 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Istanbul marks the beginning of the Armenian Genocide.
1916 - Easter Rising; The Irish Republican Brotherhood starts a rebellion in Ireland.
1918 - First tank-to-tank combat, at Villers-Bretonneux, France, when three British Mark IVs meet three German A7Vs.
Wikipedia Photo: Trenches on the Western Front; a British Mark IV Tank crossing a trench; Royal Navy battleship HMS Irresistible sinking after striking a mine at the Battle of the Dardanelles; a Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks, and German Albatros D.III biplanes. National Archives and Records Administration.
April 24th, 1916
1916 - Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launch a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island in the Southern Ocean to organise a rescue for the ice-trapped ship Endurance.
Wikipedia Photo: Ill-Fated Antarctic Voyage Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, State Library of New South Wales ● A bust of Captain Luis Pardo Villalon sits on the site of the camp of the stranded crew of Sir Ernest Shackleton's ship Endurance, on Elephant Island. credit Jason Auch, The Atlantic.
April 24th, 1926
Pre World War II:
1926 - Treaty of Berlin; Germany and the Soviet Union each pledge neutrality in the event of an attack on the other by a third party for the next five years.
World War II:
1933 - The Nazi Germany begins its persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses by shutting down the Watch Tower Society office in Magdeburg.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
April 24th, 1953
Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
Wikipedia Photo: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ● WW2 photograph Winston Churchill congratulating the troops. ● Never was so much owed by so many to so few - Winston Churchill Speeches, Youtube 
April 24th, 1957
Suez Crisis:
The Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is reopened following the introduction of United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) peacekeepers to the region.
Wikipedia Image: Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea.
April 24th, 1967
Soviet space program:
1967 - cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov dies in Soyuz 1 when its parachute fails to open. He is the first human to die during a space mission.
Wikipedia Photo: Soviet space program; Soviet Soyuz rockets were among the first reliable means to transport objects into Earth orbit ● Vostok I capsule used by Yuri Gagarin on the first manned space flight, on display at the RKK Energiya Museum outside of Moscow. ● Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space ● Space Shuttle Atlantis approached the Russian space station before docking during the STS-76 mission. ● Mir's Legacy - The core modules of the International Space Station, Phase Two of the ISS program. ● Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a pioneer of space exploration science.
April 24th, 1967
Vietnam War:
1967 - American General William Westmoreland says in a news conference that the enemy had "gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily."
Wikipedia Photo: Vietnam_War; Side view of an HH-53 helicopter of the 40th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron as seen from the gunner's position on an A-1 of the 21st Specialist Operations Squadron. (USAF Photo by Ken Hackman), Boston Globe;
● Mobs of Vietnamese people scale the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam, trying to get to the helicopter pickup zone, just before the end of the Vietnam War on April 29, 1975. Neal Ulevich, AP.
Vietnam War: The Big Picture / Boston Globe.
April 24th, 1980
Islamic revolution of Iran, Iran hostage crisis:
1980 - Operation Eagle Claw; Eight U.S. servicemen die as they attempt to end the Iran hostage crisis.
Wikipedia Photo: The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American Embassy in Tehran in support of the Iranian Revolution. President Carter called the hostages "victims of terrorism and anarchy", adding that the "United States will not yield to blackmail". The hostages were formally released into United States custody the following day, just minutes after the new American president Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.
April 24th, 1990
Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Discovery (Mission STS-33); The Hubble Space Telescope is launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Wikipedia Photo: Space Shuttle Discovery credit NASA
Hubble Space Telescope; Artist's concept of the star Fomalhaut and the Jupiter-type planet that the Hubble Space Telescope observed. A ring of debris appears to surround Fomalhaut as well. The planet, called Fomalhaut b, orbits the 200-million-year-old star every 872 years. credit: ESA, NASA, and L. Calcada (ESO for STScI); Infrared Array Camera (IRAC), Visible Light (2006-04-26); Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) credit NASA.
April 24th, 1993
1993 - Bishopsgate bombing (1993); An Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb devastates the Bishopsgate area of London.
Wikipedia Photo: Irish Republican Army; Belfast, Northern Ireland.
April 24th, 2013
2013 - Savar building collapse; A building collapses near Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing 1,129 people and injuring 2,500 others.
Wikipedia Photo: On April 24, 2013, Rana Plaza, an eight-story commercial building, collapsed in Savar, a sub-district in the Greater Dhaka Area, the capital of Bangladesh. The search for the dead ended on 13 May with the death toll of 1,129. Approximately 2,515 injured people were rescued from the building alive.
April 23rd, 2013
Modern conflicts in the Middle East and terrorist attacks:
2013 - Bachu unrest; Violence in Bachu County, Kashgar Prefecture of China's Xinjiang results in death of 21 people.
Wikipedia Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)