TODAY HISTORY LESSON: MARCH 24
1603 Scottish King James VI son of Mary Queen of Scots, becomes King James I of England in succession to Elizabeth I, thus joining the English and Scottish crowns
1663 Charles II of England awards land known as Carolina in North America to eight members of the nobility who assisted in his restoration.
1664 In London, Roger Williams is granted a charter to colonize Rhode Island.
1765 Britain passes the Quartering Act, requiring the colonies to house 10,000 British troops in public and private buildings.
1832 Mormon Joseph Smith beaten, tarred & feathered in Ohio
1837 Canada gives its black citizens the right to vote
1862 Abolitionist Wendell Phillips speaks to a crowd about emancipation in Cincinnati, Ohio and is pelted by eggs.
1882 German scientist Robert Koch discovers and describes the tubercle bacillus which causes tuberculosis (Mycobacterium tuberculosis), and establishes germ theory
1896 Aleksander Popov achieves the world’s first radio transmission
1900 Mayor Van Wyck of New York breaks ground for the New York subway tunnel that will link Manhattan and Brooklyn.
1906 The “Census of the British Empire” revealed that England ruled 1/5 of the world.
1927 Chinese Communists seize Nanking and break with Chiang Kai-shek over the Nationalist goals.
1930 Planet Pluto named
1934 U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed a bill granting future independence to the Philippines.
1944 In Rome, The Gestapo rounded up innocent Italians and shot them to death in response to a bomb attack that killed 32 German policemen. Over 300 civilians were executed.
1947 Congress proposes limiting the United States presidency to two terms.
1955 1st seagoing oil drill rig placed in service
1958 Elvis Presley trades in his guitar for a rifle and Army fatigues.
1965 Millions watch NASA spacecraft Ranger 9 crash into the Moon
1965 The Freedom Marchers, citizens for civil rights, reach Montgomery, Alabama.
1966 Selective Service announces college deferments based on performance
1972 Great Britain imposes direct rule over Northern Ireland.
1976 Argentine President Isabel Martínez de Perón is deposed in a military coup
1980 ABC’s nightly Iran Hostage crisis program renamed “Nightline with Ted Koppel”
1988 Former national security aides Oliver L. North and John M. Poindexter and businessmen Richard V. Secord and Albert Hakim pled innocent to Iran-Contra charges.
1989 In one of worst oil spills in recent history, the tanker, Exxon Valdez, ran aground and released 240,000 barrels of oil into Prince William Sound.
1995 The U.S. House of Representatives passed a welfare reform package that made the most changes in social programs since the New Deal.
1998 In Jonesboro, AR, two young boys open fire at students from woods near a school. Four students and a teacher were killed and 10 others were injured. The two boys were 11 and 13 years old cousins.
1999 For the first time in its history, NATO attacks a sovereign country. The military alliance bombed Yugoslavia during the Kosovo War – without a UN mandate.
2004 The notorious Bird family’s more than half-century stronghold on the nation of Antigua and Barbuda came to an end when Baldwin Spencer won the post of prime minister in the general election.
2005 The government of Kyrgyzstan collapsed after opposition protesters took over President Askar Akayev’s presidential compound and government offices.
2020 Indian PM Narendra Modi orders a 21 day lockdown for world’s second most populous country of 1.3 billion people to deal with COVID-19
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
