On February 24th...

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1387 King Charles III of Naples and Hungary was assassinated.

1510 Pope Julius II excommunicated the Republic of Venice.

1527 Ferdinand of Austria was crowned as King of Bohemia.

1536 Pope Clement VIII was born.

1582 Pope Gregory XIII announced a new calendar.

1714 Edmund Andros, American colonial governor, died.

1723 British General John Burgoyne was born.

1772 William Harris Crawford, U.S. Senator, Secretary of War and Secretary of the Treasury, was born.

1779 George Rogers Clark captured Vincennes (now in Indiana).

1785 John Adams was appointed the first United States Minister to Great Britain.

1786 Wilhelm Karl Grimm, collector and publisher of fairy tales, was born.

1803 The U.S. Supreme Court established itself as the final authority on the constitutionality of laws in Marbury vs Madison.

1804 London, England's, Drury Lane Theatre burned to the ground.

1810 Chemist Henry Cavendish died.

1815 Robert Fulton, inventor of the first commercially successful steamboat, died.

1821 Mexico became independent of Spain.

1836 Painter Winslow Homer was born.

1839 William Otis patented the steam shovel.

1848 King Louis Philippe of France abdicated.

1855 The U.S. Court of Claims was formed.

1863 Arizona Territory was organized.

1868 The House of Representatives voted to impeach President Andrew Johnson.

1874 Baseball player Honus Wagner was born.

1875 The SS Gothenburg hit the Great Barrier Reef and sank off the east coast of Australia, killing approximately 100 persons.

1885 U.S. Navy Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was born.

1893 The American University was chartered by an act of the U.S. Congress.

1899 Western Washington University was established.

1903 The United States signed an agreement with Cuba to lease Guantanamo Bay for a naval base.

1909 The Hudson Motor Car Company was founded.

1918 Estonia declared its independence from Russia.

1921 Actor Abe Vigoda was born.

1922 Actor Steven Hill was born.

1938 Actor James Farentino was born.
1938 Phil Knight, co-founder of Nike, was born.

1942 The Voice of America went on the air for the first time.
1942 U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman was born.

1944 Juan Perón led a coup in Argentina.

1945 American forces liberated Manila, Philippines, from the Japanese.
1945 Egyptian Premier Ahmed Maher Pasha was killed in Parliament after reading a decree.
1945 Actor Barry Bostwick was born.

1946 Congregational minister Charles Monroe Sheldon died.

1947 Singer Rupert Holmes was born.
1947 Actor Edward James Olmos was born.

1948 The Communist Party seized complete control of Czechoslovakia.

1949 Israel and Egypt signed an armistice agreement.

1951 Actress Debra Jo Rupp was born.

1955 Iraq and Turkey signed the Pact of Baghdad.
1955 Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Computers, was born.

1956 Television journalist Paula Zahn was born.

1958 Singer Sammy Kershaw was born.

1959 Actress Beth Broderick was born.

1966 Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown as President of Ghana.

1970 An avalanche struck the village of Reckinger, Switzerland, killing 29 Swiss Army officers..

1974 Pakistan formally recognized Bangladesh.
1974 Television personality Jillian Michaels was born.

1977 Boxer Floyd Mayweather, Jr., was born.

1981 An earthquake registering 6.7 on the Richter scale struck Athens, Greece, killing 16 persons and destroying buildings in several towns west of the city.

1983 A special commission of the U.S. Congress released a report condemning the practice of Japanese internment during World War II.

1987 Astronomers at a University of Toronto observatory in the mountains of Chile announced their discovery of a huge supernova that was the closest and brightest to be seen since 1604.

1988 Matti Nykanen became the first ever Winter Olympics triple gold medalist.

1990 Businessman Malcolm Forbes died.

1991 U.S.-led forces began Operation Desert Sabre, the ground invasion of southern Iraq and Iraqi-occupied Kuwait.
1991 Game show host John Charles Daly died.
1991 Comedian George Gobel died.

1994 Singer Dinah Shore died.

1998 Elton John was knighted.
1998 Comedian Henny Youngman died.

1999 A China Southern Airlines Tupolev TU-154 crashed on approach to the Wenzhou, China, airport, killing 61 persons.

2006 Actor Don Knotts died.
2006 Actor Dennis Weaver died.

2008 Fidel Castro retired as the President of Cuba.

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This page was last updated on December 20, 2017.