TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: AUGUST 24
0079 Believed until 2018 to be the date of the massive eruption of Mt. Vesuvius which buried the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis and Stabiae, killing untold thousands. Latest evidence suggests the eruption occurred after 17 October.
0410 Rome overrun by Visigoths under Alaric I for the first time in nearly 800 years, seen as the fall of the Western Roman Empire
1572 Some 50,000 people are put to death in the ‘Massacre of St. Bartholomew’ as Charles IX of France attempts to rid the country of Huguenots.
1662 Act of Uniformity requires English to accept Book of Common Prayer
1780 King Louis XVI abolishes torture as a means to get suspects to confess.
1814 British troops under General Robert Ross capture Washington, D.C., which they set on fire in retaliation for the American burning of the parliament building in York (Toronto), the capital of Upper Canada.
1894 Congress passes the first graduated income tax law, which is declared unconstitutional the next year.
1912 By an act of Congress, Alaska is given a territorial legislature of two houses.
1949 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) went into effect. The agreement was that an attack against on one of the parties would be considered “an attack against them all.”
1954 Congress outlaws the Communist Party in the United States.
1959 Three days after Hawaiian statehood, Hiram L. Fong was sworn in as the first Chinese-American U.S. senator while Daniel K. Inouye was sworn in as the first Japanese-American U.S. representative.
1963 US State Department cables embassy in Saigon that if South Vietnam’s president Ngo Dinh Diem does not remove his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu as his political adviser the US would explore alternative leadership, setting the stage for a coup by ARVN generals.
1979 NFL fans (60,916) choose old Patriots logo over new https://www.patriots.com/news/the-evolution-of-the-patriots-logo-and-uniform-255871
1989 Pete Rose, the manager of the Cincinnati Reds, was banned from baseball for life after being accused of gambling on baseball.
1989 Colombian drug lords declare “total and absolute war” on Colombia’s government, bombing the offices of two political parties and burning two politicians’ homes.
1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; Ukraine declares its independence from USSR.
1998 U.S. officials cited a soil sample as part of the evidence that a Sudan plant was producing precursors to the VX nerve gas. And, therefore made it a target for U.S. missiles on August 20, 1998.
2001 The remains of nine American servicemen killed in the Korean War were returned to the U.S. The bodies were found about 60 miles north of Pyongyang. It was estimated that it would be a year before the identies of the soldiers would be known.
2004 Chechnyan suicide bombers blow up two airliners near Moscow, killing 89 passengers.
2006 Pluto is downgraded to a dwarf planet when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines “planet.”
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
