THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― AUGUST 24

August 24 is the 236th day of the year (237th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 129 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday (58 in 400 years each) than on Saturday or Sunday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Tuesday or Thursday (56). 

NATIONAL PEACH PIE DAY 

410 – The Visigoths under king Alaric I begin to pillage Rome. 

455 – The Vandals, led by king Genseric, begin to plunder Rome. Pope Leo I requests Genseric not destroy the ancient city or murder its citizens. He agrees and the gates ofRome are opened. However, the Vandals loot a great amount of treasure. 

1200 – King John I of England, signer of the first Magna Carta, marries Isabella of Angoulême in Bordeaux Cathedral.

1456 – The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed.

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

1690 – Job Charnock of the East India Company establishes a factory in Calcutta (Kolkata), an event formerly considered the founding of the city (in 2003 the Calcutta High Court ruled that the city has no birthday).

1781 – American Revolutionary War: A small force of Pennsylvania militia is ambushed and overwhelmed by an American Indian group, which forces George Rogers Clark to abandon his attempt to attack Detroit. G.R. Clark was the brother of William Clark who would assist in the Lewis and Clark Expedition of the Louisiana Purchase. I am an ancestor of both.

1814 – War of 1812: British troops invade Washington, D.C. and during the Burning of Washington the White House, the Capitol and many other buildings are set ablaze.

1857 – The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in United States history.

1909 – Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.

1914 – World War I: The Battle of Cer (Serbia) ends. The Serb victory over the Austro-Hungarians marked the first Allied victory over the Central Powers in the First World War, and the first aerial dogfight of the war took place during the battle.

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

1937 – Spanish Civil War: the Basque Army surrenders to the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie following the Santoña Agreement.

1941 – Adolf Hitler orders the cessation of Nazi Germany's systematic Aktion T4 euthanasia program of the mentally ill and the handicapped due to protests, although killings continue for the remainder of the war.

1950 – Edith Sampson becomes the first black U.S. delegate to the United Nations.

1954 – The Communist Control Act goes into effect, outlawing the American Communist Party.

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

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 just south of Miami as a Category 5 hurricane with wind speeds of 165 mph. 

2004 – Eighty-nine passengers die after two airliners explode after flying out of Domodedovo International Airport, near Moscow. The explosions are caused by suicide bombers (reportedly female) from the Russian Republic of Chechnya.

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

2010 – In San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 72 illegal immigrants are killed by Los Zetas and eventually found dead by Mexican authorities.

2016 – An earthquake strikes Central Italy with a magnitude of 6.2, with aftershocks felt as far as Rome and Florence.

TODAY'S BIRTHS

1884 – Earl Derr Biggers, American author and playwright (d. 1933)

1895 – Richard Cushing, American cardinal (d. 1970)

1905 – Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 1974)

1926 – Nancy Spero, American painter and academic (d. 2009)

1929 – Yasser Arafat, Egyptian-Palestinian engineer and politician, 1st President of the Palestinian National Authority (d. 2004)

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.