Back In The Day ------------- October 24 439 Carthage, the leading Roman city in North Africa, falls to Genseric and the Vandals. 1531 Bavaria, despite being a Catholic region, joins the League of Schmalkalden, a Protestant group which opposes Charles V. 1648 The signing of the Treaty of Westphalia ends the German Thirty Years War. 1755 A British expedition against the French held Fort Niagara in Canada ends in failure. 1836 The match is patented. 1861 Western Union completes the first transcontinental telegraph line, putting the Pony Express out of business. 1863 General Ulysses S. Grant arrives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, to find the Union Army there starving. 1897 The first comic strip appears in the Sunday color supplement of the New York Journal called the Yellow Kid. 1901 Anna Edson Taylor, 43, is the first woman to go safely over Niagara Falls in a barrel. She made the attempt for the cash award offered, which she put toward the loan on her Texas ranch. 1916 Henry Ford awards equal pay to women. 1917 The Austro-German army routs the Italian army at Caporetto, Italy. 1929 Black Thursday–the first day of the stock market crash which began the Great Depression. 1930 John Wayne debuts in his first starring role in The Big Trail . 1931 Al (Alphonse) Capone, the prohibition-era Chicago gangster, is sent to prison for tax evasion. 1934 Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, called Mahatma or Great Soul, resigns from Congress in India. 1938 The Fair Labor Standards Act becomes law, establishing the 40-hour work week. 1944 The aircraft carrier USS Princeton is sunk by a single Japanese plane during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. 1945 The United Nations comes into existence with the ratification of its charter by the first 29 nations. 1945 Vidkun Quisling, Norways wartime minister president, is executed by firing squad for collaboration with the Nazis. 1952 Presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower announces that if elected, he will go to Korea. 1970 Leftist Salvador Allende elected president of Chile. 1973 Yom Kippur War ends. 1980 Polands government legalizes the Solidarity trade union. 1992 Toronto Blue Jays win the World Series, defeating the Atlanta Braves in the 11th inning of the 6th game, to become the first Major League Baseball team from outside the US to win the series. 2003 The supersonic Concorde jet made its last commercial passenger flight from New York Citys John F. Kennedy International Airport to Londons Heathrow Airport, traveling at twice the speed of sound. 2008 Many stock exchanges worldwide suffer the steepest declines in their histories; the day becomes known as Bloody Friday. ------------- Back in the 1800s, composer Franz Liszt was worshiped like a rock star. In fact, he received so many requests for locks of his hair that he eventually bought a dog, only to snip off patches of its fur to send to his admirers.
Posted on: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 14:49:23 +0000
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