November 24 - Events

Events

• 380 – Theodosius I makes his adventus, or formal entry, into Constantinople.
• 1227 – Polish Prince Leszek I the White is assassinated at an assembly of Piast dukes at Gąsawa.
• 1248 – In the middle of the night a mass on the north side of Mont Granier suddenly collapsed, in one of the largest historical rockslope failures known in Europe.
• 1429 – Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges La Charité.
• 1542 – Battle of Solway Moss: An English army defeats a much larger Scottish force near the River Esk in Dumfries and Galloway.
• 1642 – Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).
• 1835 – The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers (which is now the Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety).
• 1850 – Danish troops defeat a Schleswig-Holstein force in the town of Lottorf, Schleswig-Holstein.
• 1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species, the anniversary of which is sometimes called "Evolution Day"
• 1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain – Near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.
• 1906 – A 13-6 victory by the Massillon Tigers over their rivals, the Canton Bulldogs, for the "Ohio League" Championship, leads to accusations that the championship series was fixed and results in the first major scandal in professional American football.
• 1922 – Author and Irish Republican Army member Robert Erskine Childers and eight others are executed by an Irish Free State firing squad for illegally carrying a revolver.
• 1932 – In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.
• 1935 – The Senegalese Socialist Party holds its second congress.
• 1940 – World War II: Slovakia becomes a signatory to the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers.
• 1941 – World War II: The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French.
• 1943 – World War II: The USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed near Tarawa and sinks, killing 650 men.
• 1944 – World War II: Bombing of Tokyo – The first bombing raid against the Japanese capital from the east and by land is carried out by 88 American aircraft.
• 1950 – The "Storm of the Century", a violent snowstorm, takes shape on this date before paralyzing the northeastern United States and the Appalachians the next day, bringing winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures. Pickens, West Virginia, records 57 inches of snow. 353 people would die as a result of the storm.
• 1962 – The West Berlin branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany forms a separate party, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin.
• 1962 – The influential British satirical television programme That Was The Week That Was is first broadcast.
• 1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald is murdered by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters. The shooting happens to be broadcast live on television.
• 1963 – Vietnam War: Newly sworn-in US President Lyndon B. Johnson confirms that the United States intends to continue supporting South Vietnam both militarily and economically.
• 1965 – Joseph Désiré Mobutu seizes power in the Congo and becomes President; he rules the country (which he renames Zaire in 1971) for over 30 years, until being overthrown by rebels in 1997.
• 1966 – Bulgarian TABSO Flight 101 crashes near Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, killing all 82 people on board.
• 1969 – Apollo program: The Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon.
• 1971 – During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (AKA D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money. He has never been found.
• 1973 – A national speed limit is imposed on the Autobahn in Germany because of the 1973 oil crisis. The speed limit lasted only four months.
• 1974 – Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed "Lucy" (after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.
• 1976 – The 1976 Çaldıran-Muradiye earthquake in eastern Turkey kills between 4,000 and 5,000 people.