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“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
~ Charles Darwin
Wikiquote (Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species published November 24, 1859)
November 24th, 380
Theodosius I makes his adventus, or formal entry, into Constantinople.
Wikipedia Image: Theodosius I 67th Emperor of the Roman Empire; Missorium of Theodosius I, flanked by Valentinian II and Arcadius, 388
November 24th, 1227
Polish Prince Leszek I the White is assassinated at an assembly of Piast dukes at Gąsawa.
Wikipedia Painting: The death of Leszek the White, by Jan Matejko.
November 24th, 1429
Hundred Years' War, Joan of Arc:
1429 - Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges La Charité.
Wikipedia Painting: Joan of Arc: An artist's interpretation, since the only known direct portrait has not survived. (Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, Paris, AE II 2490) (1485); Joan of Arc's Death at the Stake, by Hermann Stilke (1843); Jeanne d' Arc, by Eugene Thirion (1876); Joan at the coronation of Charles VII, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres in (1854); Joan of Arc and Prophet-French Pilgrimage; Joan interrogated in her prison cell by Cardinal Winchester, by Hippolyte Delaroche, (1824); Saint Joan of Arc, Vatican City; Joan of Arc in Battle, by Hermann Anton Stilke.
November 24th, 1642
Dutch explorer Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).
Wikipedia Photo: Australian satellite (Tasmania, the 26th largest island in the world, and the surrounding 334 islands) and scenery.
Image: The Charlotte Jane and the Randolph bring the first of the Canterbury Pilgrims to Lyttelton, New Zealand, credit Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand.
November 24th, 1835
Texas Rangers:
1835 - The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers (which is now the Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety).
Wikipedia Photo: © Unidentified Texas Rangers on Patrol, ©2009, TRHFM; Frontier Battalion Co. "B" about 1880, ©2009, TRHFM; Frontier Battalion Co. "F" in 1882 ©2009 TRHFM; Capt. Bill McDonald, ©2009, TRHFM; Captain John "Jack" Coffee Hays in Later Life, ©2009, TRHFM, credit TexasRanger.org.
November 24th, 1859
Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species, the anniversary of which is sometimes called "Evolution Day".
Wikipedia Image: Charles Darwin, while still a young man joined the scientific elite; Evolutionary tree in mid-July 1837 Darwin started his "B" notebook on Transmutation of Species, and on page 36 wrote "I think" above his first evolutionary tree; The hominoids are descendants of a common ancestor.
November 24th, 1863
American Civil War:
1863 - Chattanooga Campaign; near Chattanooga, Tennessee Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.
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
● First Battle Between Ironclads: CSS Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads.
● 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.
November 24th, 1906
Canton Bulldogs-Massillon Tigers Betting Scandal: the first major scandal in professional American_football.
Wikipedia Photo: 1906 Canton Bulldog: (Back L-R) Jack Ernst, Clark Schrontz, Tom Thorpe, Dave Cure, Blondy Wallace, Ed Murphy, "Bullet" Riley and Townsend (Front L-R) Sheldon, Jack Lang, Reemsnyder, Vince Stevenson, "Pop" Sweet and Paul Steinberg; 1905 Massillon Tigers, "Ohio League" Champions.
November 24th, 1922
Irish War of Independence: Author and Irish Republican Army member Robert Erskine Childers, is executed by an Irish Free State firing squad for illegally carrying a revolver.
Wikipedia Photo: British troops in Dublin City 1920's during the Irish War of Independence; Not everyone was a separatist in Ireland in 1919. Here the Union Jack flies over Trinity College at the Victory Parade for the First World War in Dublin; It believe the story behind the headlinesin the photo was with the shooting by members of Michael Collins squad of a high-ranking official of the G. N. R. (The Great Northern Railway) on the Southside of Dublin.
November 24th, 1940
World War II:
1940 - Slovakia becomes a signatory to the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers.
1941 - The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French.
1943 - The USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed near Tarawa Atoll and sinks, killing 650 men.
1944 - Bombing of Tokyo;The first bombing raid against the Japanese capital from the east and by land is carried out by 88 American aircraft.
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.
Bombing of Tokyo; The first big raid by the 8th Air Force was on a Focke Wulf plant at Marienburg. Coming back, the Germans were up in full force and we lost at least 80 ships – 800 men, many of them pals.” 1943. Army Air Forces
November 24th, 1950
"Storm of the Century": a violent snowstorm takes shape on this date before paralyzing the northeastern United States and the Appalachians the next day, bringing winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures, records 57 inches of snow, 353 people would die as a result of the storm.
Wikipedia Photo: Great Lakes Storm of 2010. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
November 24th, 1963
Assassination of John F. Kennedy:
1963 - In Dallas, Texas, Lee Harvey Oswald is murdered by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters. The shooting happens to be broadcast live on television.
Wikipedia Photo:
Dealey Plaza, with Elm Street on the right and the underpass in the middle;
President Kennedy with his wife, Jacqueline, and Texas Governor John Connally in the presidential limousine, minutes before the President's assassination;
Texas School Book Depository;
Aerial view of Dealey Plaza, credit Paullee.com -
A - "The Sniper's Nest", south-east corner window of the 6th floor (5th floor for Europeans) of the Texas School Book Depository Building
B - "The Grassy Knoll", speculated location of second gunman
C - Approximate location of limousine at time of first shot
D - Approximate location of limousine at time of the "neck wound" shot
E - Approximate location of limousine at time of fatal head wound
F - James Tague's location. Note how far away he is from the shots!
G - Abraham Zapruder's filming location, on top of a stone pedestal,
James Altgen's Press Photograph;
Secret Service agent Clint Hill climbs onto the presidential limousine, seconds after the fatal shot.
Associated Press photo open-topped limo in Dallas, Time Magazine;
Mary Moorman's Polaroid photo taken a fraction of a second after the fatal shot;
Zapruder film at moment of fatal head shot.
Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald in the basement of Dallas police department headquarter, credit Murderpedia.org.
November 24th, 1963
Vietnam War:
1963 - Newly sworn-in United States President Lyndon B. Johnson confirms that the United States intends to continue supporting South Vietnam both militarily and economically.
Wikipedia Photo: Vietnam War: Hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border, in Vietnam on March 1965. (AP Photo / Horst Faas) / Boston Globe
November 24th, 1965
Joseph Désiré Mobutu seizes power in the Congo and becomes President; he rules the country (which he renames Zaire in 1971) for over 30 years, until being overthrown by rebels in 1997.
Wikipedia Photo: Republic of the Congo is Africa’s most important stronghold for wildlife (Located in the heart of the world’s second-largest rainforest, this 23,500-square-mile landscape encompasses two national parks and the Lac Télé Community Reserve)
November 24th, 1969
Apollo Program:, Apollo 12; command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon.
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).
November 24th, 1974
Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed "Lucy" (after The Beatles"), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.
Wikipedia Image: Lucy skeleton reconstruction. Cleveland Natural History Museum; Cast of the remains of "Lucy"; ‘Lucy’ Australopithecus afarensis skull; A reconstruction of a female Australopithecus afarensis; 3.5 million-year-old skull has been found in Kenya, and scientists say it might evict the Ethiopian fossil nicknamed "Lucy" from the line of direct human ancestry, Asociated Press.
November 24th, 1976
Earthquake:
1976 - Çaldıran-Muradiye earthquake; in eastern Turkey kills between 4,000 and 5,000 people.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
November 24th, 2012
Dhaka fire: A fire at a clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, kills at least 112 people.
Wikipedia Photo: Dhaka fire; At least 112 die in garment factory fire outside Bangladesh's capital that manufactures products for Western companies. Hasan Raza, AP.