180 Twelve inhabitants of Scillium in North Africa are executed for being Christians. This is the earliest record of Christianity in that part of the world.
924 Edward the Elder (died), English king (born 877)
1429 Hundred Years’ War: Charles VII of France is crowned the King of France in the Reims Cathedral after a successful campaign by Joan of Arc
1571 Georg Fabricius (died), German poet and historian (born 1516)
1674 Isaac Watts (born), English hymn writer and theologian (died 1748)
1698 Pierre Louis Maupertuis (born), French mathematician and philosopher (died 1759)
1709 Robert Bolling (died), English-American planter and merchant (born 1646)
1714 Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (born), German philosopher (died 1762)
1717 King George I of Great Britain sails down the River Thames with a barge of 50 musicians, where George Frideric Handel’s Water Music is premiered.
1762 Catherine II becomes tsar of Russia upon the murder of Peter III of Russia.
1762 Peter III of Russia (died) (born 1728)
1763 John Jacob Astor (born), German-American businessman (died 1848)
1771 Bloody Falls Massacre: Chipewyan chief Matonabbee, traveling as the guide to Samuel Hearne on his Arctic overland journey, massacres a group of unsuspecting Inuit.
1790 Adam Smith (died), Scottish economist and philosopher (born 1723)
1791 Members of the French National Guard under the command of General Lafayette open fire on a crowd of radical Jacobins at the Champ de Mars, Paris, during the French Revolution, killing as many as 50 people.
1839 Ephraim Shay (born), American engineer, invented the Shay locomotive (died 1916)
1867 Harvard School of Dental Medicine is established in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the first dental school in the U.S. that is affiliated with a university.
1870 Charles Davidson Dunbar (born), Scottish bagpipe player (died 1939)
1881 Jim Bridger (died), American mountain man and explorer (born 1804)
1887 Dorothea Dix (died), American activist (born 1802)
1889 Erle Stanley Gardner (born), American lawyer and author (died 1970)
1894 Georges Lemaître (born), Belgian priest, astronomer, and cosmologist (died 1966)
1899 James Cagney (born), American actor, singer, and dancer (died 1986)
1899 NEC Corporation is organized as the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital.
1901 Luigi Chinetti (born), Italian-American race car driver (died 1994)
1907 Hector Malot (died), French author (born 1830)
1910 Frank Olson (born), American microbiologist (died 1953)
1911 Heinz Lehmann (born), German-Canadian psychiatrist (died 1999)
1912 Art Linkletter (born), Canadian-American radio and television host (died 2010)
1912 Henri Poincaré (died), French mathematician, physicist, and engineer (born 1854)
1917 King George V issues a Proclamation stating that the male line descendants of the British Royal Family will bear the surname Windsor.
1917 Phyllis Diller (born), American comedian, actress and singer (died 2012)
1918 The RMS Carpathia, the ship that rescued the 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic, is sunk off Ireland by the German SM U-55; 5 lives are lost.
1918 Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his immediate family and retainers are murdered by Bolshevik Chekists at the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, Russia.
1920 Gordon Gould (born), American physicist, invented the laser (died 2005)
1920 Juan Antonio Samaranch (born), Spanish businessman, 7th President of the International Olympic Committee (died 2010)
1923 John Cooper (born), English car designer, co-founded the Cooper Car Company (died 2000)
1935 Donald Sutherland (born), Canadian actor
1935 George William Russell (died), Irish poet and painter (born 1867)
1938 Douglas Corrigan takes off from Brooklyn to fly the “wrong way” to Ireland and becomes known as “Wrong Way” Corrigan.
1939 Ali Khamenei (born), Iranian politician, 2nd Supreme Leader of Iran
1939 Spencer Davis (born), Welsh singer-songwriter and guitarist (The Spencer Davis Group)
1944 William James Sidis (died), American mathematician (born 1898)
1944 World War II: Napalm incendiary bombs are dropped for the first time by American P-38 pilots on a fuel depot at Coutances, near Saint-Lô, France.
1945 World War II: the main three leaders of the Allied nations, Winston Churchill, Harry S. Truman and Joseph Stalin, meet in the German city of Potsdam to decide the future of a defeated Germany.
1947 Camilla (born), Duchess of Cornwall
1948 The South Korean constitution is proclaimed.
1949 Geezer Butler (born), English bass player and songwriter (Black Sabbath, Geezer Butler Band, GZR, and Heaven & Hell)
1950 Damon Harris (born), American singer (The Temptations) (died 2013)
1950 Phoebe Snow (born), American singer-songwriter and guitarist (Sisters of Glory) (died 2011)
1952 David Hasselhoff (born), American actor, singer, and producer
1952 Nicolette Larson (born), American singer (died 1997)
1954 Angela Merkel (born), German politician, 8th Chancellor of Germany
1955 Disneyland is dedicated and opened by Walt Disney in Anaheim, California.
1959 Billie Holiday (died), American singer-songwriter and actress (born 1915)
1961 Ty Cobb (died), American baseball player and manager (born 1886)
1962 Nuclear weapons testing: The “Small Boy” test shot Little Feller I becomes the last atmospheric test detonation at the Nevada National Security Site.
1967 John Coltrane (died), American saxophonist and composer (Miles Davis Quintet) (born 1926)
1968 A revolution occurs in Iraq when Abdul Rahman Arif is overthrown and the Ba’ath Party is installed as the governing power in Iraq with Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr as the new Iraqi President.
1974 Dizzy Dean (died), American baseball player and sportscaster (born 1910)
1975 Apollo–Soyuz Test Project: An American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock with each other in orbit marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the two nations.
1976 East Timor is annexed, and becomes the 27th province of Indonesia.
1976 The opening of the Summer Olympics in Montreal is marred by 25 African teams boycotting the New Zealand team.
1981 A structural failure leads to the collapse of a walkway at the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City, Missouri killing 114 people and injuring more than 200.
1989 First flight of the B-2 Spirit Stealth Bomber.
1995 Juan Manuel Fangio (died), Argentinian race car driver (born 1911)
1996 Chas Chandler (died), American bass player and producer (The Animals) (born 1938)
1998 Papua New Guinea earthquake: A tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake destroys 10 villages in Papua New Guinea killing an estimated 3,183, leaving 2,000 more unaccounted for and thousands more homeless.
2001 Katharine Graham (died), American publisher (born 1917)
2003 Walter Zapp (died), German inventor, invented the Minox (born 1905)
2006 Mickey Spillane (died), American author (born 1918)
2009 Walter Cronkite (died), American journalist (born 1916)
EO Smith
Latest posts by EO Smith (see all)
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- Alternative Facts and Science - 24 January, 2017