Previous Day - Next Day
“We are here just for a spell and then pass on. So get a few laughs and do the best you can. Live your life so that whenever you lose it, you are ahead.”
~ Will Rogers
Wikiquote (William Penn Adair Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) an American humorist and entertainer; known primarily as Will Rogers.)
July 24th, 1132
Battle of Nocera between Ranulf II of Alife and Roger II of Sicily.
Wikipedia.org Painting: Roger II riding to war, from Liber ad honorem Augusti of Petrus de Ebulo, 1196.
July 24th, 1148
Crusades
1148 - Second Crusade: Louis VII of France lays siege to Damascus.
Wikipedia Image: The Siege of Antioch, from a 15th-century miniature; After the successful siege of Jerusalem in 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade, became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem; Baldwin I of Jerusalem; Medieval image of Peter the Hermit, leading knights, soldiers and women toward Jerusalem during the First Crusade; The Battle of Ager Sanguinis, 1337 miniature; Pope Innocent III excommunicating the Albigensians, Massacre against the Albigensians by the crusaders; The capture of Jerusalem marked the First Crusade's success.
Crusades: Baldwin I of Jerusalem is crowned the first King of Jerusalem.
July 24th, 1411
Wars of Scottish Independence:
1411 - Battle of Harlaw: one of the bloodiest battles in Scotland, takes place.
Wikipedia Image: Sir William Wallace - the huge freedom-fighter beast, by MacAulish ©
July 24th, 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.
Wikipedia Painting: Portrait of Jacques Cartier by Théophile Hamel, 1844.
July 24th, 1567
Mary, Queen of Scots is forced to abdicate and replaced by her 1-year-old son James VI.
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.
July 24th, 1701
Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founds the trading post at Fort Pontchartrain, which later becomes the city of Detroit, Michigan.
Wikipedia.org Photo: Statue of Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac
July 24th, 1823
Slavery:
1823 - Slavery is abolished in Chile.
Wikipedia Painting: The Slave Ship, J. M. W. Turner's representation of the mass-murder of slaves, inspired by the Zong Massacre.
July 24th, 1847
After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City.
Wikipedia Painting: Mormons head west for Salt Lake City carrying all their possessions in two-wheeled handcarts.
July 24th, 1864
American Civil War:
1864 -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.
Wikipedia Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● Battle of Mobile Bay (1890) by Xanthus Russell Smith.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.
July 24th, 1866
Reconstruction: Tennessee becomes the first U.S. State to be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War.
Wikipedia Image: World Maps Online
July 24th, 1911
Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu, "the Lost City of the Incas".
Wikipedia Photo: The mountain Huayna Picchu overlooks the ruins of Machu Picchu
July 24th, 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.
Wikipedia Photo: The SS Eastland docked
July 24th, 1922
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 by Bulgaria and other countries that fought in World War I.
Wikipedia Photo: Assembley of the League of Nations
July 24th, 1932
The world's first children's railway opens in Tbilisi, USSR.
Wikipedia Photo: Children's Railway / Youtube
July 24th, 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.
Wikipedia Photo: Dust Bowl and drought for farm families during the Great Depression of the 1930s. credit Library of Congress. Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother depicts destitute pea pickers in California, centering on Florence Owens Thompson, age 32, a mother of seven children, in Nipomo, California.
July 24th, 1938
First ascent of the Eigerl north face.
Wikipedia Photo: La cara nord de l'Eiger
July 24th, 1943
World War II:
1943 - 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.
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.
July 24th, 1969
Apollo program: Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
Neil Armstrong, just after stepping onto the Moon's surface: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."
Wikipedia Photo: Apollo Program: Apollo 11 first manned Moon landing and the first walk on the surface on the moon. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle. Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Sea of Tranquility for two and a half hours while crewmate Michael Collins orbited above in the command module Columbia.
The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth, taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance of about 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi).
July 24th, 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.
Wikipedia Photo: Watergate Scandal: was a political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement.
Watergate Complex Washington, DC, credit Watergate Notes; President Richard M. Nixon defended himself against many allegations, National Archives; Oliver F. Atkins' photo of Nixon leaving the White House shortly before his resignation became effective, August 9, 1974.
July 24th, 1990
Gulf War - Iraq War:
1990 - Invasion of Kuwait; Iraqi forces start massing on the Kuwait - Iraq border.
Wikipedia Photo: USAF F-15Es, F-16s, and a USAF F-15 flying over burning Kuwaiti oil wells; Iraqi Army T-72 main battle tanks. The T-72 tank was a common Iraqi battle tank used in the Gulf War; F-15Es parked during Operation Desert Shield; The oil fires caused were a result of the scorched earth policy of Iraqi military forces retreating from Kuwait; Aerial view of destroyed Iraqi T-72 tank, BMP-1 and Type 63 armored personnel carriers and trucks on Highway 8 in March 1991.
July 24th, 2005
Lance Armstrong wins his seventh consecutive Tour de France.
Wikipedia Photo: Lance Armstrong, Jasper Juinen, Getty Images
July 24th, 2013
Santiago de Compostela derailment: A high-speed train derails in Spain rounding a curve with an 80 km/h (50 mph) speed limit at 190 km/h (120 mph), killing 78 passengers.
Wikipedia Photo: Santiago de Compostela derailment (Google Image Search)
July 24th, 2014
Aviation accidents and incidents:
2014 - Air Algérie Flight 5017; loses contact with air traffic controllers 50 minutes after takeoff. It was travelling between Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and Algiers. The wreckage is later found in Mali. All 116 people onboard are killed.
Wikipedia Photo: ● Pan AM 747 ● U.S. Airways flight 1549 also known as the "Miracle on the Hudson" navigates an exit ramp near Burlington, New Jersey, June 5, 2011 ● Passengers stand on the wings of a U.S. Airways plane as a ferry pulls up to it after it landed in the Hudson River in New York, Reuters ● US Airways plane crashes into New York Hudson River, Photo: AP