November 24 - Events

Events

• 380 – Theodosius I makes his adventus, or formal entry, into Constantinople.
• 1429 – Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges La Charité.
• 1542 – Battle of Solway Moss: The English army defeats the Scots.
• 1639 – Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree observe the transit of Venus, an event Horrocks had predicted.
• 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.
• 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 – The Canton Bulldogs-Massillon Tigers Betting Scandal, the first major scandal in professionalAmerican football.
• 1922 – Author and Irish Republican Army member Robert Erskine Childers is 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, paralyzes the northeastern United States and the Appalachians, bringing winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures. Pickens, West Virginia, records 57 inches of snow. 323 people 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.
• 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 supportingSouth 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 aNorthwest 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.
• 1992 – A China Southern Airlines domestic flight in the People's Republic of China, crashes, killing all 141 people on-board.
• 1993 – In Liverpool, 11-year-olds Robert Thompson and Jon Venables are convicted of the murder of 2-year-old James Bulger.