August 24

79 – Mount Vesuvius erupts and in 2 days buries the cities of Herculaneum, Oplontis, Stabiae,  aaaand Pompeii.

410 – The Visigoths under King Alaric I sack Rome.

1215 – A little over 2 months after being signed by him, King John of England persuades Pope Innocent III to issue a bull declaring Magna Carta invalid.

1682 – William Penn receives the area that is now the state of Delaware, and adds it to his colony of Pennsylvania.

1781 – Militia reinforcements for General George Rogers Clark, under the command of Archibald Lochry, are ambushed and overwhelmed near present day Aurora, Indiana by a Mohawk force under the command of Joseph ‘Thayendanegea’ Brant, which forces Clark to abandon his attempt to attack British held Detroit.

1814 – British troops invade Washington D.C. and set fire to the White House, the Capitol, and many other buildings.

1816 – The first Treaty of St. Louis between the U.S. and the Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi tribes is signed in, *drum roll*  St. Louis, Missouri

1841 – Captain John Ordronaux, reputedly the most successful American privateer of the War of 1812, dies in  Cartagena, Colombia

1857 – The financial Panic of 1857 caused by the declining international economy and over-expansion of the domestic economy, begins in the U.S and due to the invention of the telegraph spread rapidly throughout the nation.

1909 – Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.

1932 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop, from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey.

1933 – Southern Railways, Crescent Limited train derails in Washington, D.C., after the Anacostia River bridge it is crossing was washed out by a hurricane hitting the area earlier in the day.

1942 – The Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō is sunk and the U.S. carrier USS Enterprise is heavily damaged in The Battle of the Eastern Solomons.

1945 – British Prime Minister Attlee informs Parliament that Britain is in “a very serious financial position” due to the abrupt ending of Lend-Lease by President Truman

1949 – The treaty creating NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,  goes into effect.

1951 – United Air Lines Flight 615, a Douglas DC-6, crashes near Decoto, California, killing all 50 passengers and crew aboard.

1954 – The Communist Control Act goes into effect, outlawing the American Communist Party as a “Communist-action” organization.

1970 – Vietnam War protesters bomb Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

1981 – Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon.

1989 – Colombian drug cartels declare “total war” on the Colombian government.

1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

1991 – Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union.

1992 – Hurricane Andrew makes landfall in Homestead, Florida as a Category 5 hurricane

1995 – Microsoft Windows 95 is released to the public in North America.

2006 – The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term “planet” such that Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet.

2012 – Anders Behring Breivik, perpetrator of the 2011 Norway attacks, killing 77 people, is sentenced to 21 years of preventive detention.