This Day in History – January 24
Today is the 24th day of 2014. There are 341 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1985: The space shuttle Discovery is launched in NASA’s first secret military flight.
OTHER EVENTS
1848: James Marshall finds gold nugget in US territory of California, touching off Gold Rush of ’49.
1908: The first Boy Scout troop is organised in England by Robert Baden-Powell.
1924: Petrograd is renamed Leningrad in honour of founder of Soviet Union.
1935: Canned beer goes on sale for the first time in the United States.
1946: UN General Assembly votes to create UN Atomic Energy Commission.
1972: The US Supreme Court strikes down laws that deny welfare benefits to people who have resided in a state for less than a year.
1973: US negotiator Henry Kissinger says Vietnam peace agreement worked out in Paris also means end to fighting in Laos and Cambodia. Hanoi’s Le Duc Tho calls agreement “a great victory for the Vietnamese people”.
1978: A nuclear-powered Soviet satellite plunges through Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrates, scattering radioactive debris over parts of northern Canada.
1986: Guerrillas advance into Ugandan capital of Kampala as army opposition crumbles, pushing military government to edge of collapse; the Voyager 2 space probe sweeps past Uranus, coming within 81,542 kilometres (50,679 miles) of the seventh planet of the solar system.
1989: Confessed serial killer Ted Bundy is put to death in Florida’s electric chair.
1991: Lithuania asks Soviet Union to withdraw its troops from buildings seized in the Baltic republic.
1992: Judge sentences army colonel and lieutenant to 30 years in prison for 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests in El Salvador.
1995: In a move of uncertain efficacy, US President Bill Clinton freezes assets of suspected terrorist groups in American banks; the prosecution gives its opening statement at the O J Simpson murder trial.
1998: The government of Mexican state of Chiapas frees 300 prisoners as a way of opening talks with the indigenous rebels.
1999: Olympic leaders recommend the expulsion of six members of the International Olympic Committee in an unprecedented response to the biggest corruption scandal in the history of the games.
2001: Japan’s military dumped swarms of infected fleas on China that triggered outbreaks of bubonic plague in the 1940s, two Chinese doctors testify at a trial in Tokyo. Nearly 200 Chinese plaintiffs demand compensation and an apology from the Japanese government for the deaths of their relatives.
2005: With calls of “never again,” the UN General Assembly commemorates the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps with a special session, a stark change for a body that has been reluctant to address the extermination of the Jews during World War II.
2008: French bank Société Generale uncovers an alleged 4.9-billion euro ($7.14-billion) fraud by a futures trader, Jerome Kerviel, who fooled regulators and overstepped his authority.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
John Belushi, US actor (1949-1982); Neil Diamond, US singer (1941-); Aaron Neville, US singer with The Neville Brothers (1941-); Michael Ontkean, Canadian actor (1946-); Tatyana Ali, US actress/singer (1979-)
— AP
