TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – OCT 24
0439 Carthage, the leading Roman city in North Africa, falls to Genseric and the Vandals.
1260 Qutuz, Mamluk Sultans of Egypt (1259-60), is assassinated by Baibars, a fellow Mamluk leader, who seizes power for himself
1531 Bavaria, despite being a Catholic region, joins the League of Schmalkalden, a Protestant group which opposes Charles V.
1648 The Holy Roman Empire was effectively destroyed by the Peace of Westphalia that brought an end to the Thirty Years War
1836 The match is patented.
1861 Western Union completes the first transcontinental telegraph line, putting the Pony Express out of business.
1897 The first comic strip appears in the Sunday color supplement of the New York Journal called the ‘Yellow Kid.’
1916 Henry Ford awards equal pay to women.
1929 Black Thursday–the first day of the stock market crash which began the Great Depression.
1939 Nylon stockings were sold publicly for the first time, in Wilmington, Del.
1940 40 hour work week goes into effect (Fair Labor Standards of 1938)
1948 The term “cold war” was used for the first time. It was in a speech by Bernard Baruch before the Senate War Investigating Committee.
1960 All remaining American-owned property in Cuba was nationalized. The process of nationalizing all U.S. and foreign-owned property in Cuban had begun on August 6, 1960.
1980 Polish government legalizes independent labor union Solidarity
1986 Britain broke off relations with Syria after a Jordanian was convicted in an attempted bombing. The evidence in the trial led to the belief that Syria was involved in the attack on the Israeli jetliner.
1987 Bork’s supreme court nomination rejected by senate
1989 Rev Jim Bakker is sentenced to 50 years for fraud
2001 The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation that gave police the power to secretly search homes, tap all of a person’s telephone conversation and track people’s use of the Internet.
2003 The last Concordes landed in London, ending supersonic air travel.
2008 “Bloody Friday” saw many of the world’s stock exchanges experienced the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
