This Day in History – July 24
This is the 205th day of 2023. There are 160 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2019: Global warming is noted to be at its fastest in 2,000 years and scientific consensus that humans are the cause is at 99 per cent, according to three major reports published in the journals Nature and Nature Geoscience.
OTHER EVENTS
1534: By erecting a 30-foot cross at Pointe-Penouille, French explorer Jacques Cartier claims for France the lands around Gaspé.
1567: Barely more than one year old, the son of Mary of Scotland is crowned James VI when his mother, defeated by rebel Scottish lords, abdicates the throne.; he becomes King James I of England when his cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, dies.
1651: Anthony Johnson, a free African American, receives a grant of 250 acres in Virginia.
1660: During the Great Fire of 1660 in Constantinople two-thirds of the city is destroyed, including 280,000 wooden houses, with a death toll of around 40,000.
1793: France passes the first copyright law.
1847: Brigham Young and the first Latter-Day Saints arrive at Great Salt Lake in present-day Utah.
1851: The long-hated Window Tax is abolished in the United Kingdom, where even larger houses previously had their windows bricked up to avoid paying the tax.
1923: Greece gives up Smyrna, eastern Thrace, and two islands to Turkey under the Treaty of Lausanne, settling the borders of modern-day Turkey.
1937: Alabama drops charges against five blacks accused of rape in Scottsboro.
1946: The United States carries out the first underwater test of an atomic bomb off Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
1996: In Colombo, Sri Lanka, two bombs rip through separate cars of a commuter train, killing 63 people in an attack blamed on Tamil Tiger separatist rebels.
1997: After 290 years of union the British Government offers Scots the power to legislate, to tax, and to speak for themselves in the European Union.
2019: Facebook agrees to pay a US$5-billion fine to the US Federal Trade Commission, the largest ever for violating consumer privacy.
2022: Pope Francis arrives in Edmonton, Canada, to begin “a penitential trip” organised in order to meet with and apologise to First Nation, Métis and Inuit communities for their treatment at church-run residential schools.
2003: The joint US Congressional Committee on Intelligence releases an 800 plus-page report on its 10-month-long inquiry into intelligence failures leading up to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
2012: President John Mills of Ghana dies before he can complete his first term in office; Vice-President John Mahama is sworn in hours later, underscoring the country’s reputation as one of the most stable democracies in West Africa.
2017: Polish President Andrzej Duda vetoes two laws to put Polish courts under political control.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Simon Bolivar, leader of South American independence (1783-1830); Alexandre Dumas, French writer (1802-1870); Ernst Bloch, Swiss-born composer (1880-1959); Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, Japanese writer (1886-1965); Amelia Earhart, US aviation pioneer (1898-1937); Bella Abzug, US lawyer, politician and activist (1920-1998); Jennifer Lopez, US actress-singer (1968- )
– AP/ Jamaica Observer
