This is a list of selected April 24 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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Easter Proclamation -
The original Library of Congress building, Washington, D.C. -
Woolworth Building -
US burned helicopter participating in the Operation Eagle Claw -
Thutmose III -
North flank of Kinder Scout
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Republic Day in The Gambia (1970) | refimprove section |
| 1479 BC – Thutmose III became the sixth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt, with his aunt and stepmother Hatshepsut as coregent. | Refimprove section |
| 1547 – Schmalkaldic War: Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, led Imperial troops to a decisive victory in the Battle of Mühlberg over the Lutheran Schmalkaldic League of Protestant princes. | refimprove |
| 1877 – Unable to resolve a series of disputes over the Balkans in the aftermath of the 1876 Bulgarian April Uprising, Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire, starting the Russo-Turkish War. | refimprove section |
| 1967 – The Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 1 crashed in Siberia during its return to Earth, killing cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, the first human to die during a spaceflight. | refimprove section |
| 1990 – Gruinard Island in Scotland, the site of biological warfare testing by British scientists, was declared free of anthrax after 48 years of quarantine. | unreferenced section |
| Barbra Streisand |b|1942 | refimprove section |
Eligible
- 1704 – John Campbell released the first issue of The Boston News-Letter, the first continuously published newspaper in British North America.
- 1800 – The Library of Congress (building pictured), the de facto national library of the United States, was established as part of an act of Congress providing for the transfer of the nation's capital from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.
- 1866 – German composer Max Bruch conducted the premiere of his first violin concerto, which later became his most famous work.
- 1904 – Realizing that the Russification of Lithuania was not working, the Russian Empire lifted the 40-year-old ban on publications written in Lithuanian language using the Latin alphabet.
- 1913 – The Woolworth Building in New York City officially opened; at the time, it was the tallest building in the world, with a height of 792 ft (241 m).
- 1915 – The Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire began with the arrest and deportation of hundreds of prominent Armenians in Constantinople.
- 1918 – First World War: The Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux began, which contained the first instance of tanks fighting against each other.
- 1922 – The first portion of the Imperial Wireless Chain, a strategic international wireless telegraphy communications network created to link the countries of the British Empire, opened.
- 1932 – An estimated 400 ramblers committed a wilful mass trespass of Kinder Scout (pictured) in the Peak District to highlight the denial of access to areas of open country in England.
- 1933 – Nazi Germany began its persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses by shutting down the Watch Tower Society office in Magdeburg.
- 1944 – World War II: The British Special Boat Service executed a successful raid to destroy an Axis radio station on the Greek island of Santorini.
- 1965 – Cold War: The Dominican Civil War broke out due to tensions following a military coup against the democratically elected government of President Juan Bosch two years earlier.
- 1980 – Eight U.S. servicemen died in Operation Eagle Claw, a failed attempt to rescue the captives in the Iran hostage crisis.
- 2011 – Secret documents relating to detainees at the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camp were released on WikiLeaks and several independent news organizations.
- 2013 – A building in the Savar Upazila of Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed, killing 1,134 people, making it the deadliest accidental structural failure in modern history.
- Born/died this day: | Xu Guangqi |b|1562| Vincent de Paul |b|1581| Axel von Fersen the Elder |d|1794| Anthony Trollope |b|1815| Robert Howard Hodgkin |b|1877| Benjamin Lee Whorf |b|1897| Mimi Smith! |b|1906| James Wood Bush |d|1906| G. Stanley Hall |d|1924| Bridget Riley |b|1931| Richard M. Daley |b|1942| Laurentia Tan |b|1979| Kelly Clarkson |b|1982| Sigrid Agren |b|1991| Caspar Lee |b|1994| Sathya Sai Baba |d|2011
April 24: Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (1915); Administrative Professionals Day in various countries (2024)
- 1837 – A fire broke out in Surat, India, which went on to destroy about 75% of the city.
- 1914 – The Franck–Hertz experiment, the first electrical measurement to clearly demonstrate quantum mechanics, was presented to the German Physical Society.
- 1916 – Irish republicans led by Patrick Pearse began the Easter Rising against British rule in Ireland, and proclaimed the Irish Republic an independent state.
- 1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope (pictured) was launched aboard STS-31 by Space Shuttle Discovery.
- 1993 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army detonated a truck bomb in London's financial district in Bishopsgate, killing one person, injuring forty-four others, and causing damage that cost £350 million to repair.
- Mellitus (d. 624)
- Kumar Dharmasena (b. 1971)
- Estée Lauder (d. 2004)
- Nancy Dorian (d. 2024)