July 24 in History

The War of the Spanish Succession was a European great power conflict fought between 1701 and 1714. The death of Charles II of Spain in November 1700 without children led to a contest for the succession between two candidates. These were Philip of Anjou, backed by his grandfather Louis XIV of France, and Archduke Charles of Austria, supported by the Grand Alliance. Significant related conflicts include the Great Northern War (1700–1721) and Queen Anne's War (1702–1713).

Richard March Hoe was an American inventor from New York City who designed a rotary printing press identical to Josiah Warren's original invention, and related advancements, including the "Hoe web perfecting press" in 1871; it used a continuous roll of paper and revolutionized newspaper publishing.

The Reconstruction era, often simply called Reconstruction, was a period in United States history that followed the American Civil War (1861–1865) and was dominated by the legal, social, and political challenges of the abolition of slavery and federal control over, and reintegration of, the former Confederate States into the United States. Three amendments were added to the United States Constitution to grant citizenship and equal civil rights to the newly freed slaves. To circumvent these, former Confederate states imposed poll taxes and literacy tests and sought to intimidate and control the Black population and discourage or prevent them from voting.

The Ottoman Empire, historically also known as the Turkish Empire, was a state that spanned much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th century to the early 20th century, centred in modern-day Turkey. It also controlled parts of southeastern Central Europe between the early 16th and early 18th centuries.

SS Eastland was an American Great Lakes passenger ship. On July 24, 1915, the ship capsized while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. In total, 844 passengers and crew were killed in what is, as of 2026, the largest loss of life from a shipwreck on the Great Lakes and the Chicago area.

The Treaty of Lausanne is a peace treaty negotiated during the Lausanne Conference of 1922–1923 and signed in the Palais de Rumine in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 24 July 1923. The treaty officially resolved the conflict that had initially arisen between the Ottoman Empire and the Allied French Republic, British Empire, Kingdom of Italy, Empire of Japan, Kingdom of Greece, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and the Kingdom of Romania since the outset of World War I. The original text of the treaty is in English and French. It emerged as a second attempt at peace after the failed and unratified Treaty of Sèvres, which had sought to partition Ottoman territories. The earlier treaty, signed in 1920, was later rejected by the Turkish National Movement which actively opposed its terms. As a result of Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War, Turkish forces recaptured İzmir, and the Armistice of Mudanya was signed in October 1922. This armistice provided for the exchange of Greek-Turkish populations and allowed unrestricted civilian, non-military passage through the Turkish Straits.

The Menin Gate, officially the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing, is a war memorial in Ypres, Belgium, dedicated to the British and Commonwealth soldiers who were killed in the Ypres Salient of World War I and whose graves are unknown. The memorial is located at the eastern exit of the town and marks the starting point for one of the main roads that led Allied soldiers to the front line.

The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors and human-made factors: a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion, most notably the destruction of the natural topsoil by settlers in the region. The drought came in three waves: 1934, 1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the High Plains experienced drought conditions for as long as eight years. It exacerbated an already existing agricultural recession.

Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) is an installation of the United States Space Force's Space Launch Delta 45, located on Cape Canaveral in Brevard County, Florida.

Bluenose II is a replica of the fishing and racing schooner Bluenose, commissioned by Sidney Culverwell Oland and built in 1963 as a promotional yacht for Oland Brewery. Sidney Oland donated the schooner to Nova Scotia in 1971 and it has since operated as a sailing ambassador and promotional device for Nova Scotia tourism. In honour of her predecessor's record, Bluenose II does not officially race.

Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces against Nazi Germany and Vichy France in World War II and chaired the Provisional Government of the French Republic from 1944 to 1946 to restore democracy in France. Following the 1958 Algiers putsch, he came out of retirement at the request of President René Coty, who appointed him Prime Minister. He commissioned a new constitution which was approved by voters in a referendum, establishing the Fifth Republic. He was subsequently elected President of France later that year, a position he held until his resignation in 1969.

The Watergate scandal, or simply Watergate, was a political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon. On June 17, 1972, operatives associated with Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign were caught burglarizing and planting listening devices in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at Washington, D.C.'s Watergate complex. Nixon's efforts to conceal his administration's involvement led to an impeachment process and his resignation in August 1974.

The Quietly Confident Quartet was the self-given name of the Australian men's 4 × 100 metres medley relay swimming team that won the gold medal at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. The United States boycotted the Moscow Olympics in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and, through the 2016 Olympics, the Australian victory remains the only occasion the United States has not won the event at Olympic level since its inception in 1960. The quartet consisted of backstroker Mark Kerry, breaststroker Peter Evans, butterflyer Mark Tonelli, and freestyler Neil Brooks. The team was nominally led by its oldest member Tonelli, who was 23 and was also a spokesperson for the Australian athletes' campaign for their right to compete at the Olympics against the wishes of the Fraser government. The team was seen as an unlikely prospect to win; all four of the swimmers had clashed with swimming authorities over disciplinary issues and three experienced suspension or expulsion from the Australian team during their careers.

Black July was an anti-Tamil pogrom that occurred in Sri Lanka during July 1983. The pogrom was premeditated, and was finally triggered by a deadly ambush on a Sri Lankan Army patrol by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on 23 July 1983, which killed 13 soldiers. Although initially orchestrated by members of the ruling UNP, the pogrom soon escalated into mass violence with significant public participation.

MV Bridgeton, ex-al-Rekkah, was a Kuwait Oil Company oil tanker that was reflagged to a U.S flag and renamed during Operation Earnest Will. The ship was built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in its Nagasaki shipyard and launched August 14, 1976. Bridgeton was part of the first Earnest Will convoy when it struck an Iranian mine near Farsi Island resulting in a major propaganda victory for the Iranians. In the late 1990s, Bridgeton transferred to Panamanian registry and was renamed Pacific Blue. It was scrapped in 2002 at Haryana Ship Demolition in Alang, India.

The 1998 United States Capitol shooting occurred on July 24, 1998, when Russell Eugene Weston Jr. entered the Capitol and fatally shot United States Capitol Police officers Jacob Chestnut and Detective John Gibson.

The Bandaranaike International Airport attack was a commando raid on 24 July 2001 by Black Tigers of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) targeting the Sri Lanka Air Force base SLAF Katunayake and the adjoining Bandaranaike International Airport in Katunayake, Sri Lanka. The attack was one of the boldest the LTTE mounted during its war with the Sri Lankan government, and had a profound impact on the country's military, economy, and airline industry.

On 24 July 2013, an Alvia high-speed train travelling from Madrid to Ferrol, in the north-west of Spain, derailed at high speed on a bend about 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) outside the railway station at Santiago de Compostela. Of the 178 people injured, the final number of deaths had reached 78.

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is a British politician and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2019 to 2022. He was previously Foreign Secretary from 2016 to 2018 and mayor of London from 2008 to 2016. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 2001 to 2008 and for Uxbridge and South Ruislip from 2015 to 2023.

Angara Airlines Flight 2311 was a scheduled domestic flight from Ignatyevo Airport to Tynda Airport, operated by Angara Airlines. On 24 July 2025, an Antonov An-24 operating that flight crashed in Amur Oblast, Russia during its second landing attempt in poor visibility. The crashed site is about 16 kilometres from Tynda airport into a forest near Tynda in eastern Russia. All 42 passengers and 6 crew members on board died.