24 April 2024 (MIA)

 

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).

 

1184 BC – Traditional date of the fall of Troy.

 

1547 – Battle of Mühlberg. Duke of Alba, commanding Spanish-Imperial forces of Charles I of Spain, defeats the troops of Schmalkaldic League.

 

1558 – Mary, Queen of Scots, marries the Dauphin of France, François, at Notre Dame de Paris.

 

1704 – The first regular newspaper in British Colonial America, The Boston News-Letter, is published.

 

1800 – The United States Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress”.

 

1877 – Russo-Turkish War: Russian Empire declares war on Ottoman Empire.

 

1885 – American sharpshooter Annie Oakley is hired by Nate Salsbury to be a part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.

 

1895 – Joshua Slocum, the first person to sail single-handedly around the world, sets sail from Boston, Massachusetts aboard the sloop “Spray”.

 

1904 – The Lithuanian press ban is lifted after almost 40 years.

 

1907 – Hersheypark, founded by Milton S. Hershey for the exclusive use of his employees, is opened.

 

1913 – The Woolworth Building skyscraper in New York City is opened.

 

1914 – The Franck–Hertz experiment, a pillar of quantum mechanics, is presented to the German Physical Society.

 

1915 – 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 led by nationalists Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, and Joseph Plunkett starts a rebellion in Ireland.

 

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.

 

1918 – First tank-to-tank combat, at Villers-Bretonneux, France, when three British Mark IVs meet three German A7Vs.

 

1922 – The first segment of the Imperial Wireless Chain providing wireless telegraphy between Leafield in Oxfordshire, England, and Cairo, Egypt, comes into operation.

 

1923 – In Vienna, the paper Das Ich und das Es (The Ego and the Id) by Sigmund Freud is published, which outlines Freud’s theories of the id, ego, and super-ego.

 

1926 – The Treaty of Berlin is signed. 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.

 

1932 – Benny Rothman leads the mass trespass of Kinder Scout, leading to substantial legal reforms in the United Kingdom.

 

1933 – Nazi Germany begins its persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses by shutting down the Watch Tower Society office in Magdeburg.

 

1944 – World War II: The SBS launches a raid against the garrison of Santorini in Greece.

 

1953 – Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

 

1955 – The Bandung Conference ends: Twenty-nine non-aligned nations of Asia and Africa finish a meeting that condemns colonialism, racism, and the Cold War.

 

1957 – Suez Crisis: The Suez Canal is reopened following the introduction of UNEF peacekeepers to the region.

 

1957 – The BBC first broadcast The Sky at Night presented by Patrick Moore.

 

1963 – Marriage of HRH Princess Alexandra of Kent to the Hon Angus Ogilvy at Westminster Abbey in London.

 

1965 – Civil war breaks out in the Dominican Republic when Colonel Francisco Caamaño, overthrows the triumvirate that had been in power since the coup d’état against Juan Bosch.

 

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.

 

1967 – Vietnam War: 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.”

 

1968 – Mauritius becomes a member state of the United Nations.

 

1970 – The first Chinese satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, is launched.

 

1970 – The Gambia becomes a republic within the Commonwealth of Nations, with Dawda Jawara as the first President.

 

1971 – Soyuz 10 docks with Salyut 1.

 

1980 – Eight U.S. servicemen die in Operation Eagle Claw as they attempt to end the Iran hostage crisis.

 

1990 – STS-31: The Hubble Space Telescope is launched from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

 

1990 – Gruinard Island, Scotland, is officially declared free of the anthrax disease after 48 years of quarantine.

 

1993 – An IRA bomb devastates the Bishopsgate area of London.

 

1996 – In the United States, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 is passed into law.

 

2004 – The United States lifts economic sanctions imposed on Libya 18 years previously, as a reward for its cooperation in eliminating weapons of mass destruction.

 

2005 – Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is inaugurated as the 265th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church taking the name Pope Benedict XVI.

 

2005 – Snuppy becomes world’s first cloned dog.

 

2013 – A building collapses near Dhaka, Bangladesh, killing 1,129 people and injuring 2,500 others.

 

2013 – Violence in Bachu County, Kashgar Prefecture, of China’s Xinjiang results in death of 21 people.

 

2015 – Armenia commemorates the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire.

 

2018 – Suffragist Millicent Fawcett is the first woman to have a statue erected in Parliament Square, London, England.

 

2021 – At least 82 COVID-19 patients die in a fire at Ibn Khatib hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, with 100 more injured.

 

2021 – Joe Biden becomes the first US President to officially recognize killing of Armenians in the Ottoman empire during WWII as genocide.

 

2022 – French President Emmanuel Macron wins re-election defeating National Rally's Marine Le Pen, first sitting French president re-elected in 20 years.

 

2022 – Slovenian populist prime minister Janez Janša defeated by Freedom Movement 's Robert Golob, a party only launched in January 2022.

 

2023 – India surpasses China as the worlds most populous country according to UN estimates, with 1,425,775,850 people (estimated to reach 1.7 billion by 2064).