October 24 in History

William Lassell was an English merchant and astronomer. He is remembered for his improvements to the reflecting telescope and his ensuing discoveries of four planetary satellites.

The Convention of Peking or First Convention of Peking is an agreement comprising three distinct unequal treaties concluded between the Qing dynasty of China and Great Britain, France, and the Russian Empire in 1860.

The Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871 was a racial massacre targeting Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles, California, United States that occurred on October 24, 1871. Approximately 500 white and Latino Americans attacked, harassed, robbed, and murdered the ethnic Chinese residents in what is today referred to as the old Chinatown neighborhood. The massacre took place on Calle de los Negros, also referred to as "Negro Alley". The mob gathered after hearing that a policeman and a rancher had been killed as a result of a conflict between rival tongs, the Nin Yung, and Hong Chow. As news of their death spread across the city, fueling rumors that the Chinese community "were killing whites wholesale", more men gathered around the boundaries of Negro Alley.

The Normanton incident was a series of events surrounding the sinking of the British merchantman Normanton of the coast of Japan's Wakayama Prefecture on 24 October 1886. Normanton, which had a mixed crew of Europeans and Asians along with 25 Japanese passengers onboard, was sailing from Yokohama to Kobe when it ran aground in bad weather and began sinking. The ship's British captain, John William Drake, escaped in Normanton's lifeboats along with his European crew members. None of the Asian crew or Japanese passengers survived the sinking, and three European sailors died of hypothermia while making their way back to the shore.

The First Sino-Japanese War, or the First China–Japan War, was a conflict between the Qing dynasty of China and the Empire of Japan primarily for influence over Korea. In China it is commonly known as the Jiawu War. After over 6 months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the ports of Lüshunkou and Weihaiwei, the Qing government sued for peace in February 1895 and signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki two months later, ending the war.

Annie Edson Taylor was an American schoolteacher who, on her 63rd birthday, October 24, 1901, became the first person to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Her motives were financial but she never made much money from her adventure. She died penniless and her funeral was paid for by public donations.

The Wright brothers, Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright, were American aviation pioneers generally credited with inventing, building, and flying the world's first successful airplane. They made the first controlled, sustained flight of an engine-powered, heavier-than-air aircraft with the Wright Flyer on December 17, 1903, four miles (6 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, at what is now known as Kill Devil Hills. In 1904 the Wright brothers developed the Wright Flyer II, which made longer-duration flights including the first circle, followed in 1905 by the first truly practical fixed-wing aircraft, the Wright Flyer III.

The Battle of Kumanovo, on 23–24 October 1912, was a major battle of the First Balkan War. It was an important Serbian victory over the Ottoman army in the Kosovo Vilayet, shortly after the outbreak of the war. After this defeat, the Ottoman army abandoned the major part of the region, suffering heavy losses in manpower and in war materiel.

The Battle of Vittorio Veneto was fought from 24 October to 3 November 1918 near Vittorio Veneto on the Italian Front during World War I. After having thoroughly defeated Austro-Hungarian troops during the defensive Battle of the Piave River, the Royal Italian Army launched a great counter-offensive: the Italian victory marked the end of the war on the Italian Front, secured the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and contributed to the end of the First World War just one week later. The battle led to the capture of over 5,000 artillery pieces and 448,000 Austro-Hungarian troops, including Germans, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Croatians, Poles, Romanians, Ukrainians, and also a small number of Austro-Hungarian Italians.

The Wall Street crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major stock market crash in the United States which began in October 1929 with a sharp decline in prices on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). It triggered a rapid erosion of confidence in the U.S. banking system and marked what would later cascade into the worldwide Great Depression that lasted until the United States entered into World War II on December 8th, 1941, making it the most devastating crash in the country's history. It is most associated with October 24, 1929, known as "Black Thursday", when a record 12.9 million shares were traded on the exchange, and October 29, 1929, or "Black Tuesday", when some 16.4 million shares were traded.

The George Washington Bridge is a double-decked suspension bridge spanning the Hudson River, connecting Fort Lee in Bergen County, New Jersey, with the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It is named after George Washington, a Founding Father of the United States and the country's first president. The George Washington Bridge is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge, carrying a traffic volume of over 104 million vehicles in 2019, and is the world's only suspension bridge with 14 vehicular lanes. The George Washington Bridge measures 4,760 feet (1,450 m) long, and its main span is 3,500 feet (1,100 m) long. It was the longest main bridge span in the world from its 1931 opening until the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco opened in 1937.

USS Shark (SS-314), a Balao-class submarine, was the sixth ship of the United States Navy to be named for the shark, a large marine predator.

The Charter of the United Nations, also referred to as the UN Charter, is the foundational treaty of the United Nations. It establishes the purposes, governing structure, and overall framework of the United Nations System, including its principal organs: the Secretariat, the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council, the International Court of Justice, and the Trusteeship Council. The UN Charter is an important part of public international law, and is the foundation for much of international law governing the use of force, pacific settlement of disputes, arms control, and other important functions of the maintenance of international peace and security.

Walter Elias Disney was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards won (22) and nominations (59) by an individual. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and have also been named as some of the greatest films ever by the American Film Institute.

The headquarters of the United Nations (UN) is on 17 to 18 acres of grounds in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States. It borders First Avenue to the west, 42nd Street to the south, 48th Street to the north, and the East River to the east. Completed in 1952, the complex consists of several structures, including the Secretariat, Conference, and General Assembly buildings, and the Dag Hammarskjöld Library. The complex was designed by a board of architects led by Wallace Harrison and built by the architectural firm Harrison & Abramovitz, with final projects developed by Oscar Niemeyer and Le Corbusier. The term Turtle Bay is occasionally used as a metonym for the UN headquarters or for the United Nations as a whole.

Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th president of the United States, serving from 1953 to 1961. A General of the Army, Eisenhower was the supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. His successful leadership in Operation Torch (1942–1943) and Operation Overlord was pivotal to the Allied victory in World War II.

The Nedelin catastrophe or Nedelin disaster, known in Russia as the Catastrophe at Baikonur Cosmodrome, was a launch pad accident that occurred on 24 October 1960 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Soviet Kazakhstan. As a prototype of the R-16 intercontinental ballistic missile was being prepared for a test flight, an explosion occurred when the second stage engine ignited accidentally, killing an unknown number of military and technical personnel working on the preparations. Despite the magnitude of the disaster, information was suppressed for many years and the Soviet government did not acknowledge the event until 1989. With more than 54 recognized casualties, it is the deadliest disaster in space exploration history. The catastrophe is named for the Chief Marshal of Artillery Mitrofan Ivanovich Nedelin, who was the head of the R-16 development program and perished in the explosion.

Northern Rhodesia was a British protectorate in Southern Africa, now the independent country of Zambia. It was formed in 1911 by amalgamating the two earlier protectorates of Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia and North-Eastern Rhodesia. It was initially administered, as were the two earlier protectorates, by the British South Africa Company (BSAC), a chartered company, on behalf of the British Government. From 1924, it was administered by the British Government as a protectorate, under similar conditions to other British-administered protectorates, and the special provisions required when it was administered by BSAC were terminated.

Solidarity, full name Independent Self-Governing Trade Union "Solidarity", is a Polish trade union founded in August 1980 at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland. Subsequently, it was the first independent trade union in a Warsaw Pact country to be recognised by the state.

Giulio Andreotti was an Italian politician and statesman who served as the 41st prime minister of Italy in seven governments. He was leader of the Christian Democracy party and its conservative faction; he was the sixth-longest-serving prime minister since the Italian unification and the second-longest-serving post-war prime minister. Andreotti is widely considered the most powerful and prominent politician of the First Republic.

Deep Space 1 (DS1) was a NASA technology demonstration spacecraft which flew by an asteroid and a comet. It was part of the New Millennium Program, dedicated to testing advanced technologies.

The Arsenal Football Club is an English professional football club based in Islington, North London, England. They compete in the Premier League, the top tier of English football. In domestic football, Arsenal have won 13 league titles, a record 14 FA Cups, 2 League Cups, 17 FA Community Shields and a Football League Centenary Trophy. In European football, they have won one European Cup Winners' Cup and one Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. In terms of trophies won, it is the third-most successful club in English football.

A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a major cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper wealth. Crashes are driven by panic selling and underlying economic factors. They often follow speculation and economic bubbles.

The 2015 Oklahoma State University homecoming parade attack occurred on October 24, 2015, in Stillwater, Oklahoma, when Adacia Avery Chambers intentionally drove her sedan into a crowd watching the homecoming parade for Oklahoma State University–Stillwater on the university's campus. Four people were killed in the crash, and 47 others were reported injured. Chambers pleaded no contest to second-degree murder and assault charges, and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The Islamic State – Khorasan Province is a regional branch of the Salafi jihadist group Islamic State (IS) active in Central and South Asia, primarily Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. ISIS–K seeks to destabilize and replace current governments within the historic Khorasan region with the goal of establishing a caliphate, governed under a strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law, which they plan to expand beyond the region.