June 24 in History

Mursili II was a king of the Hittite Empire c. 1330–1295 BC or 1321–1295 BC.

Julius Nepos, or simply Nepos, ruled as Roman emperor of the West from 24 June 474 to 28 August 475. After losing power in Italy, Nepos retreated to his home province of Dalmatia, from which he continued to claim the western imperial title, with recognition from the Eastern Roman Empire, until he was murdered in 480. Though Nepos's successor in Italy, Romulus Augustulus, is traditionally deemed the last western Roman emperor, Nepos is regarded by current historians as the true last emperor of the west, being the last widely recognised holder of the position.

Vikings were active in Brittany during the Middle Ages, even occupying a portion of it for a time. Throughout the 9th century, the Bretons faced threats from various flanks: they resisted full incorporation into the Frankish Carolingian Empire yet they also had to repel an emerging threat of the new duchy of Normandy on their eastern border by these Scandinavian colonists.

The Battle of São Mamede took place on 24 June 1128 near Guimarães and is considered a seminal event in the process that led to the foundation of Portugal as an independent kingdom and country.

The First War of Scottish Independence was the first of a series of different wars between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland. It lasted from the English invasion of Scotland in 1296 until the de jure restoration of Scottish independence with the Treaty of Edinburgh–Northampton in 1328. De facto independence was established in 1314 AD following an English defeat at the Battle of Bannockburn. The wars were caused by the attempts of the English kings to seize territory by claiming sovereignty over Scotland, while the Scots fought to keep both English rule and authority out of Scotland.

Dancing mania was a phenomenon which occurred primarily in mainland Europe between the 14th and 17th centuries. It involved groups of people dancing erratically, sometimes thousands at a time. The mania affected adults and children who danced until, allegedly, they collapsed from exhaustion and injuries, and sometimes died. One of the first major outbreaks was in Aachen, in the Holy Roman Empire, in 1374, and it quickly spread throughout Europe; one particularly notable outbreak occurred in Strasbourg in 1518 in Alsace, also in the Holy Roman Empire.

Henry VIII was King of England and Ireland from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547.

Anabaptism is a Christian movement which traces its origins to the Radical Reformation in the 16th century. Anabaptists believe that baptism is valid only when candidates freely confess their faith in Christ and request to be baptized. This stance, commonly referred to as believer's baptism, is opposed to the baptism of infants, who are not able to make a conscious decision to be baptized.

Don Miguel López de Legazpi, also known as El Adelantado and El Viejo, was a Spanish conquistador who financed and led an expedition to conquer the Philippine islands in the mid-16th century. He was joined by Guido de Lavezares, relative Martin de Goiti, friar Andrés de Urdaneta, and his grandsons Juan and Felipe de Salcedo, in the expedition. Legazpi established the first Spanish settlement in the East Indies after his expedition crossed the Pacific Ocean, arriving in Cebu in 1565.

Samuel de Champlain was a French explorer, navigator, cartographer, soldier, geographer, diplomat, and chronicler who founded Quebec City and established New France as a permanent French colony in North America.

Évora, officially the Very Noble and Ever Loyal City of Évora, is a city and a municipality in Portugal. It has 53,591 inhabitants (2021), in an area of 1,307.08 square kilometers (504.67 mi2). It is considered the historic capital of the Alentejo region and serves as the seat of the Évora District.

The Nativity of John the Baptist (or Birth of John the Baptist, or Nativity of the Forerunner, or colloquially Johnmas or St. John's Day is a Christian feast day. It is observed annually on 24 June. The Nativity of John the Baptist is a high-ranking liturgical feast, kept in the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Anglicanism, and Lutheranism. The sole biblical account of the birth of John the Baptist comes from the Gospel of Luke.

The American Revolutionary War, also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence or simply the American Revolution, was the armed conflict that comprised the final eight years of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and commanded by George Washington defeated the British Army. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war's outcome seemed uncertain for most of the war, but Washington and the Continental Army's decisive victory in the Siege of Yorktown in 1781 led King George III and the Kingdom of Great Britain to negotiate an end to the war. In 1783, in the Treaty of Paris, the British monarchy acknowledged the independence of the Thirteen Colonies, leading to the establishment of the United States as an independent and sovereign nation.

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–15) were a global series of conflicts fought by a fluctuating array of European coalitions against the French First Republic (1803–04) under the First Consul followed by the First French Empire (1804–15) under the Emperor of the French, Napoleon. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–99) and French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and produced a period of French domination over Continental Europe. The wars are categorised as seven conflicts, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres: the War of the Third Coalition, War of the Fourth Coalition, War of the Fifth Coalition, War of the Sixth Coalition, War of the Seventh Coalition, the Peninsular War, and the French invasion of Russia.

The Battle of Carabobo, on 24 June 1821, was fought between independence fighters, led by Venezuelan General Simón Bolívar, and the Royalist forces, led by Spanish Field Marshal Miguel de la Torre. Bolívar's decisive victory at Carabobo led to the independence of Venezuela and establishment of the Republic of Gran Colombia.

The Battle of Solferino on 24 June 1859 was the climactic battle of the Second Italian War of Independence and resulted in the victory of the allied French army under Napoleon III and the Piedmont-Sardinian army under Victor Emmanuel II against the Austrian army under Emperor Franz Joseph I. It was the last major battle in world history in which all the armies were under the personal command of their monarchs. There were approximately 300,000 soldiers on both sides in the most important battle, the largest since the Battle of Leipzig in 1813. The number of soldiers present was about 130,000 Austrian troops and a combined total of 140,000 French and allied Piedmontese troops, but not all were actually involved in the battle. After the battle, the Austrian emperor stopped directly commanding his army.

"O Canada" is the national anthem of Canada. The song was originally commissioned by Lieutenant Governor of Quebec Théodore Robitaille for the 1880 Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day ceremony; Calixa Lavallée composed the music, after which French-language words were written by the poet and judge Sir Adolphe-Basile Routhier.

Serbia, officially the Republic of Serbia, is a landlocked country in Southeast and Central Europe. Located in the Balkans, it is bordered by Hungary to the north, Romania to the northeast, Bulgaria to the southeast, North Macedonia to the south, Croatia to the northwest, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the west, and Montenegro to the southwest. Serbia also claims to share a border with Albania through the disputed territory of Kosovo. Serbia has about 6.5 million inhabitants, excluding Kosovo. Belgrade, Serbia's capital, is also its largest city.

Airmail is a mail transport service branded and sold on the basis of at least one leg of its journey being by air. Airmail items typically arrive more quickly than surface mail, and usually cost more to send. Airmail may be the only option for sending mail to some destinations, such as overseas, if the mail cannot wait the time it would take to arrive by ship, sometimes weeks. The Universal Postal Union adopted comprehensive rules for airmail at its 1929 Postal Union Congress in London. Since the official language of the Universal Postal Union is French, airmail items worldwide are often marked Par avion, literally: "by airplane".

The Khana Ratsadon staged a coup d'état in Siam on 24 June 1932. It ended Siam's centuries-long absolute monarchy rule under the Chakri dynasty and resulted in a bloodless transition of Siam into a constitutional monarchy, the introduction of democracy and the first constitution, and the creation of the National Assembly. Dissatisfaction caused by economic crisis and incompetent government, as well as the rise of Western-educated non-royals to positions of influence, fueled the revolution.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

Victory Day parades are military parades that are held on 9 May in some post-Soviet nations, primarily Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine. They are held to honor the traditional Victory Day holiday, which commemorates the German Instrument of Surrender on 8 May, 1945 and the end of the Second World War in Europe. In 2015, the Ukrainian government renamed the holiday as "Victory Day over Nazism in World War II" as part of decommunization laws and in 2023 moved the holiday to 8 May, renaming it to Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism in World War II 1939 – 1945.

The Cold War was a period of international geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc. It began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.

Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap, which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. Under this minoritarian system, white citizens held the highest status, followed by Indians, Coloureds and black Africans, in that order. The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day, particularly inequality.

Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957), along with its companion case Alberts v. California, was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which redefined the constitutional test for determining what constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment. The Court, in an opinion by Justice William J. Brennan Jr. created a test to determine what constituted obscene material: Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the material appeals to a prurient interest in sex, and whether the material was utterly without redeeming social value. Although the Court upheld Roth’s conviction and allowed some obscenity prosecutions, it drastically loosened obscenity laws. The decision dissatisfied both social conservatives who thought that it had gone too far in tolerating sexual imagery, and liberals who felt that it infringed on the rights of consenting adults.

Zanzibar is a Tanzanian semi-autonomous region off the coast of East Africa. It is located in the Indian Ocean, and consists of many small islands and two large ones: Unguja Island and Pemba Island. The capital is Zanzibar City, located on the island of Unguja. Its historic centre, Stone Town, is a World Heritage Site.

Eastern Air Lines Flight 66 was a regularly scheduled flight from New Orleans to New York City that crashed on June 24, 1975, when a Boeing 727-225 went on approach to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing 113 of the 124 people on board. The accident was determined to be caused by wind shear stemming from a microburst, but the failure of the airport and the flight crew to recognize the severe weather hazard was also a contributing factor.

The Humber Bridge is a 2.22-kilometre single-span road suspension bridge near Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England. When it opened to traffic on 24 June 1981, it was the longest of its type in the world; the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge surpassed it in 1998, and it became the fourteenth-longest by 2025.

Jiang Zemin was a Chinese politician who served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 1989 to 2002, as the chairman of the Central Military Commission from 1989 to 2004, and as the president of China from 1993 to 2003. Jiang was the third paramount leader of China from 1989 to 2002. He was the core leader of the third generation of Chinese leadership, one of four core leaders alongside Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping.

The 1995 Rugby World Cup was the third Rugby World Cup. It was hosted and won by South Africa, and was the first Rugby World Cup in which every match was held in one country.

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in such a manner is called a death sentence, and the act of carrying out the sentence is an execution. A prisoner who has been sentenced to death and awaits execution is condemned and is commonly referred to as being "on death row". Etymologically, the term capital refers to execution by beheading, but executions are carried out by many methods.

Julia Eileen Gillard is an Australian former politician who served as the 27th prime minister of Australia from 2010 to 2013. She held office as the leader of the Labor Party (ALP), having previously served as the 13th deputy prime minister from 2007 to 2010. She is the first and only woman to hold either office.

The prime minister of Italy, officially the president of the Council of Ministers, is the head of government of the Italian Republic. The office of president of the Council of Ministers is established by articles 92–96 of the Constitution of Italy; the president of the Council of Ministers is appointed by the president of the Italian Republic and must have the confidence of the parliament to stay in office.

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the court held that the United States Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. The court's decision overruled both Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), recognizing the authority of state governments to regulate any aspect of abortion that federal law does not preempt.

On 24 June 2026, two large strike-slip earthquakes affected northwestern and central Venezuela. The epicenters of both earthquakes were in Veroes Municipality, west of San Felipe, the capital city of Yaracuy. The first earthquake, which measured Mw 7.2, occurred at 18:04 VET and was classified as a foreshock. It was followed by a Mw 7.5 mainshock 39 seconds later. The two earthquakes caused widespread damage across the country, particularly in the capital Caracas and especially the state of La Guaira, where 80% of buildings collapsed. As of July 2026, it has been confirmed that more than 5,500 people were killed, 16,700 were injured, and tens of thousands still remain missing.