TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: JUNE 24
0217 Carthaginian forces led by Hannibal destroy a Roman army under consul Gaius Flaminius in a battle at Lake Trasimene in central Italy.
1314 Scottish forces, led by Robert the Bruce, win an overwhelming victory against English King Edward II at the Battle of Bannockburn.
1322 Jews are expelled from France
1497 John Cabot claims Eastern Canada for England (believes he has found Asia in Nova Scotia)
1509 Henry VIII is crowned King of England.
1647 Margaret Brent, demands a voice and a vote for herself in the Maryland colonial assembly.
1664 The colony of New Jersey, named after the Isle of Jersey, is founded.
1675 King Philip’s War, the most devastating war between the colonists and Indians, began with Indians attacking the Swansea (Mass.) settlement.
1853 US President Franklin Pierce signs the Gadsden Purchase, buying 29,670 square-miles (76,800 square km) from Mexico for $10 million (now southern Arizona and New Mexico)
1910 The Japanese army invades Korea.
1931 The Soviet Union and Afghanistan sign a treaty of neutrality.
1941 President Franklin Roosevelt pledges all possible support to the Soviet Union.
1947 Kenneth Arnold, an American pilot, reported seeing strange objects near Mt. Rainier, Washington. He described them as “saucers skipping across the water,” hence the term “flying saucers” was born.
1948 The Soviet Union began a blockade of Berlin. Allied forces responded with what would be known as the Berlin Airlift flying in more than 2 million tons of supplies over the next year.
1964 The Federal Trade Commission announces that, starting in 1965, cigarette makers must include warning labels about the harmful effects of smoking.
1970 The U.S. Senate votes overwhelmingly to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
1977 IRS reveals Jimmy Carter paid no taxes in 1976
1982 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that no president could be sued for damages connected with actions taken while serving as President of the United States.
1997 The U.S. Air Force released The Roswell Report, closing the case on the 1947 Roswell, N.M. incident concerning UFOs and alien bodies.
2002 Africa’s worst ever train disaster kills 281
2011 New York passes a law to allow same-sex marriage, becoming the largest state that allows gay and lesbian couples to marry.
2012 Lonesome George, the last known Pinta Island Tortoise, died at a Galapagos National Park, making the subspecies extinct.
REFERENCE: HISTORY.NET, ONTHISDAY.COM, TIMEANDDATE.COM, INFOPLEASE.COM, FACTMONSTER.COM, SCOPESYS.COM, ON-THIS-DAY.COM, THEPEOPLEHISTORY.COM
