March 24

Events
Up to 1900
1401 - Turko-Mongol Emperor Timur sacks Damascus.
1603 - King James VI of Scotland becomes James VI and I as the crowns of the Kingdom of Scotland, the Kingdom of England, and the Kingdom of Ireland are joined following the death of Elizabeth I.
1603 - Tokugawa Ieyasu is granted the title of shogun.
1663 - The Province of Carolina is granted by charter to eight Lords Proprietor in reward for their assistance in restoring Charles II of England, Ireland and Scotland to the throne.
1720 - Count Frederick of Hesse-Kassel (Frederick I of Sweden) is elected King of Sweden.
1765 - American Revolutionary War: The United Kingdom of Great Britain passes the Quartering Act that requires the 13 colonies on the east coast of North America to house British troops.
1829 - Roman Catholics are allowed to serve in the British Parliament.
1837 - African Canadian men are given the right to vote.
1878 - The British frigate HMS Eurydice sinks, killing over 300 people.
1882 - Robert Koch announces the discovery of mycobacterium tuberculosis, responsible for causing tuberculosis.
1896 - Alexander Stepanovich Popov makes the first radio signal transmission in history.
1900 - Mayor of New York City Robert Anderson Van Wyck breaks new ground for new underground "Rapid Transit Railroad" that would link Manhattan and Brooklyn.
1901 2000
1902 - The Flag of New Zealand is adopted.
1922 - Irish War of Independence: In Belfast, Northern Irish policemen break into the home of a Catholic family, shooting all eight males inside.
1923 - Greece becomes a Republic.
1923 - A magnitude 7.3 earthquake in China kills 5,000 people.
1927 - Nanjing Incident: Foreign warships bombard Nanjing, China, in defense of foreign citizens within the city.
1934 - The United States Congress allows the Philippines to become a self-governing Commonwealth.
1944 - World War II: German troops kill 335 Italian citizens in Rome.
1958 - Elvis Presley is drafted into the US Army.
1962 - Pak Chong Hui is chosen by the military as President of South Korea.
1965 - Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery, in Alabama, ends.
1972 - Northern Ireland is placed under direct rule from London.
1973 - Kenyan athlete Kip Keino defeats Jim Ryun at the first-ever professional track meet in Los Angeles, California.
1976 - Jorge Rafael Videla takes power in Argentina, starting a 7-year military dictatorship in which many people disappear and are tortured and killed.
1980 - El Salvadorean archbishop Oscar Romero is killed.
1989 - Exxon Valdez oil spill: The Exxon Valdez oil tanker runs aground on Prince William Sound in Alaska, causing a massive oil spill. Until the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, it was the worst oil spill in US history.
1993 - The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 is discovered.
1998 - A cyclone in Bangladesh kills over 250 people.
1998 - A tornado in Dantan, India, kills 250 people and injures 300.
1998 - Jonesboro massacre: Mitchell Johnson (aged 11) and Andrew Golden (aged 13), fire on teachers and students at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas, killing 5 people and injuring 10.
1999 - NATO bomb-attacks on cities in Serbia.
1999 - A fire that started in a lorry spreads in the Mont Blanc tunnel, killing 39 people.
From 2001
2002 - Academy Awards: The Best Actor and Best Actress awards are given to Denzel Washington and Halle Berry, making it the first time that both these awards were won by African American actors at the same time.
2004 - Cyclone Catarina forms off Brazil in the South Atlantic.
2005 - Anti-government protests in Kyrgyzstan lead to the resignation of the President, Askar Akayev.
2007 - The Montenegro national football team plays its first match, a 2-1 win over the Hungary national football team.
2008 - Bhutan's first-ever general election takes place.
2010 - South Talpatty Island, disputed between India and Bangladesh, disappears due to rising sea levels.
2011 - 2011 Burma earthquake: 68 people are killed as a magnitude 7 earthquake strikes Burma.
2014 - Leaders from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States agree to suspend Russia from the G8, and announce that the planned G8 summit to be held in Sochi is no longer taking place. This is after events in Crimea.
2015 - Germanwings Flight 9525, travelling from Barcelona, Spain to Dusseldorf, Germany, crashes in the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board. The co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, is later found to have crashed the plane deliberately.
2016 - Results show that voters in New Zealand, by a majority, have voted to keep the country's existing flag in a referendum.
2016 - Former Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is found guilty of war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague; he is sentenced to 40 years in jail.
Births
Up to 1800
1494 - Georg Agricola, German scientist (d. 1555)
1657 - Arai Hakuseki, Japanese writer and politician (d. 1725)
1693 - John Harrison, English inventor and clockmaker (d. 1776)
1725 - Samuel Ashe, 9th Governor of North Carolina (d. 1813)
1725 - Thomas Cushing, American member of the Continental Congress (d. 1788)
1755 - Rufus King, American politician (d. 1827)
1756 - Francesca Lebrun, German soprano and composer (d. 1791)
1760 - Jesse Franklin, 20th Governor of North Carolina (d. 1823)
1762 - Marcos Portugal, Portuguese composer (d. 1830)
1775 - Muthuswami Dikshitar, South Indian poet and composer (d. 1835)
1782 - Orest Kiprensky, Russian painter (d. 1836)
1782 - William Owsley, 16th Governor of Kentucky (d. 1862)
1801 1900
1808 - Maria Malibran, Spanish-French singer (d. 1836)
1809 - Mariano Jose de Larra, Spanish journalist and writer (d. 1837)
1809 - Joseph Liouville, French mathematician (d. 1882)
1820 - A. E. Becquerel, French physicist (d. 1891)
1828 - Horace Gray, American jurist (d. 1902)
1829 - Ignacio Zaragoza, Mexican general (d. 1862)
1834 - William Morris, English writer and designer (d. 1896)
1843 - Princess Maria Annunciata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (d. 1871)
1848 - Honore Beaugrand, Canadian politician, 18th Mayor of Montreal (d. 1906)
1851 - Jim Hogg, 21st Governor of Texas (d. 1906)
1855 - Andrew W. Mellon, 49th United States Secretary of the Treasury (d. 1937)
1863 - William Sherman Jennings, 18th Governor of Florida (d. 1920)
1869 - Emile Fabre, French playwright (d. 1955)
1874 - Harry Houdini, Hungarian-born magician (d. 1926)
1874 - Luigi Einaudi, 2nd President of Italy (d. 1961)
1878 - Alexey Novikov-Priboy, Russian writer (d. 1944)
1879 - Neyzen Tevfik, Turkish poet, satirist and performer (d. 1953)
1884 - Peter Debye, Dutch chemist (d. 1966)
1884 - Eugene Tisserant, French cardinal (d. 1972)
1886 - Edward Weston, American photographer (d. 1958)
1887 - Fatty Arbuckle, American actor (d. 1933)
1889 - Albert Hill, British athlete (d. 1969)
1890 - Agnes Macphail, Canadian politician (d. 1954)
1891 - Sergey Ivanovich Vavilov, Soviet physicist (d. 1951)
1892 - Marston Morse, American mathematician (d. 1977)
1893 - Walter Baade, German astronomer (d. 1960)
1896 - Franz Blucher, German politician (d. 1959)
1896 - George Sisler, American baseball player (d. 1973)
1897 - Wilhelm Reich, Austrian-born psychotherapist (d. 1957)
1901 1950
1901 - Ub Iwerks, American animator (d. 1971)
1902 - Thomas E. Dewey, American politician, 1948 Presidential candidate (d. 1971)
1903 - Adolf Butenandt, German chemist (d. 1995)
1903 - Malcolm Muggeridge, British author and scholar (d. 1990)
1906 - Klavdiya Shulzhenko, Soviet singer (d. 1984)
1907 - Paul Sauve, Canadian politician, 17th Premier of Quebec (d. 1960)
1909 - Clyde Barrow, American outlaw (Bonnie and Clyde) (d. 1934)
1910 - Richard Conte, American actor (d. 1975)
1911 - Joseph Barbera, American cartoonist (d. 2006)
1912 - Dorothy Height, American activist (d. 2010)
1917 - John Kendrew, British molecular biologist (d. 1997)
1919 - Lawrence Ferlinghetti, American author and publisher
1921 - Vasily Smyslov, Russian chess player (d. 2010)
1923 - Murray Hamilton, American actor (d. 1986)
1924 - Norman Fell, American actor (d. 1998)
1926 - Dario Fo, Italian writer and playwright, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (d. 2016)
1926 - Desmond Connell, former cardinal-Archbishop of Dublin (d. 2017)
1927 - John Woodland Hastings, American photo biologist (d. 2014)
1927 - Martin Walser, German writer
1930 - David Dacko, President of the Central African Republic (d. 2003)
1930 - Steve McQueen, American actor (d. 1980)
1931 - Hanno Drechsler, German politician (d. 2003)
1933 - Shigeo Yaegashi, Japanese footballer (d. 2011)
1935 - Peret, Spanish singer-songwriter and guitarist (d. 2014)
1935 - Mary Berry, British cookery writer and television presenter
1937 - Lynn Borden, American actress (d. 2015)
1938 - Jean-Pierre Coffe, French radio and television presenter, food critic and author (d. 2016)
1938 - David Irving, British historian
1942 - Stephen Yardley, British actor
1944 - Vojislav Kostunica, former Prime Minister of Serbia
1945 - Robert Bakker, American paleontologist
1945 - Curtis Hanson, American movie director (d. 2016)
1946 - Klaus Dinger, German musician (d. 2008)
1947 - Archie Gemmill, Scottish footballer
1947 - Christine Gregoire, American politician, Governor of Washington
1947 - Alan Sugar, British businessman
1948 - Jerzy Kukuczka, Polish mountaineer (d. 1989)
1949 - Ruud Krol, Dutch footballer
1949 - Ranil Wickremesinghe, 13th Prime Minister of Sri Lanka
1949 - Ali Akbar Salehi, Iranian academic and politician
1951 1975
1951 - Tommy Hilfiger, American fashion designer
1951 - Pat Bradley, American golfer
1951 - Dougie Thomson, British bassist
1953 - Anita L. Allen, American lawyer, philosopher and academic
1953 - Louie Anderson, American comedian, actor and game show host
1954 - Robert Carradine, American actor
1955 - Doug Jarvis, Canadian ice hockey player
1955 - Pat Price, Canadian ice hockey player
1956 - Steve Ballmer, American entrepreneur, President of Microsoft
1957 - Mike Weir, Scottish politician
1958 - Roland Koch, German politician
1960 - Nena, German singer
1960 - Kelly LeBrock, American model and actress
1960 - Yasser Seirawan, Syrian-American chess player
1960 - Grayson Perry, English artist
1961 - Yanis Varoufakis, Greek economist and politician
1963 - Vadym Tyshchenko, Ukrainian footballer (d. 2015)
1968 - Minarti Timur, Indonesian badminton player
1969 - Luis Oliveira, Brazilian-Belgian footballer
1970 - Lara Flynn Boyle, American actress
1970 - Sharon Corr, Irish musician
1970 - Judith Draxler, Austrian swimmer
1972 - Christophe Dugarry, French footballer
1973 - Philippe Boucher, Canadian ice hockey player
1973 - Steve Corica, Australian footballer
1973 - Jacek Bak, Polish footballer
1973 - Jim Parsons, American actor
1974 - Alyson Hannigan, American actress
1975 - Krisdayanti, Indonesian singer and actress
1975 - Thomas Johansson, Swedish tennis player
From 1976
1976 - Angellica Bell, English television presenter
1976 - Peyton Manning, American football player
1977 - Jessica Chastain, American actress
1978 - Tomas Ujfalusi, Czech footballer
1979 - Graeme Swann, English cricketer
1982 - Corey Hart, American baseball player
1983 - Alexei Eremenko, Russian-Finnish footballer
1983 - T. J. Ford, American basketball player
1984 - Benoit Assou-Ekotto, Cameroonian-French footballer
1984 - Adrian D'Souza, Indian field hockey player
1985 - Haruka Ayase, Japanese actress
1985 - Sayako Hirano, Japanese table tennis player
1986 - Nathalia Dill, Brazilian actress
1987 - Ramires, Brazilian footballer
1987 - Shakib Al Hasan, Bangladeshi cricketer
1989 - Pascal Berger, Swiss ice hockey player
1990 - Keisha Castle-Hughes, Australian-New Zealand actress
1990 - Libby Clegg, Scottish runner
1998 - Isabel Suckling, English singer
Deaths
Up to 1900
1284 - King Hugh III of Cyprus (b. 1235)
1381 - Catherine of Vadstena, Swedish saint (b. 1332)
1455 - Pope Nicholas V (b. 1394)
1563 - Hosokawa Harumoto, Japanese military leader (b. 1514)
1603 - Queen Elizabeth I of England (b. 1533)
1653 - Samuel Scheidt, German composer (b. 1587)
1773 - Philip Dormer Stanhope, English statesman (b. 1694)
1776 - John Harrison, English inventor and clockmaker (b. 1693)
1844 - Bertel Thorvaldsen, Danish sculptor (b. 1770)
1860 - Ii Naosuke, Japanese politician (b. 1815)
1881 - Achille Ernest Oscar Joseph Delesse, French geologist and mineralogist (b. 1817)
1882 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American writer (b. 1807)
1887 - Ivan Kramskoi, Russian painter and art critic (b. 1837)
1888 - Vsevolod Garshin, Russian writer (b. 1855)
1901 2000
1905 - Jules Verne, French writer (b. 1828)
1909 - John Millington Synge, Irish playwright (b. 1871)
1915 - Margaret Lindsay Huggins, Irish astronomer (b. 1848)
1915 - Karol Olszewski, Polish scientist (b. 1846)
1916 - Enrique Granados, Spanish composer (b. 1867)
1926 - Phan Chu Trinh, Vietnamese nationalist (b. 1872)
1939 - Gwyn Nicholls, Welsh rugby player (b. 1874)
1940 - Edouard Branly, French inventor and physicist (b. 1844)
1946 - Alexander Alekhine, Russian chess player (b. 1892)
1948 - Sigrid Hjerten, Swedish painter (b. 1885)
1950 - James Rudolph Garfield, American politician (b. 1865)
1953 - Mary of Teck, Queen Consort of George V of the United Kingdom (b. 1867)
1962 - Auguste Piccard, Swiss physicist and explorer (b. 1884)
1971 - Arne Jacobsen, Danish architect and designer (b. 1902)
1976 - Bernard Montgomery, British field marshal (b. 1887)
1980 - Oscar Romero, El Salvadorean archbishop (b. 1917)
1984 - Sam Jaffe, American actor (b. 1891)
1991 - Sir John Kerr, 18th Governor General of Australia (b. 1914)
1993 - Albert Allen, Australian pianist, composer, actor and director (b. 1905)
1995 - Joseph Needham, British academic (b. 1900)
1999 - Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, German women's activist (b. 1902)
From 2001
2002 - Cesar Milstein, Argentine scientist (b. 1927)
2008 - Richard Widmark, American actor (b. 1914)
2009 - George Kell, American baseball player and sportscaster (b. 1922)
2010 - Robert Culp, American actor (b. 1930)
2012 - Jocky Wilson, Scottish darts player (b. 1950)
2014 - Paulo Schroeber, Brazilian guitarist (b. 1973)
2014 - Robert F. Coleman, American mathematician (b. 1954)
2014 - Rodney Wilkes, Trinidadian weightlifter (b. 1925)
2015 - Yehuda Avner, Israeli diplomat (b. 1928)
2015 - Deaths in the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash:
Oleg Bryjak, Kazakh-German opera singer (b. 1960)
Maria Radner, German opera singer (b. 1981)
Andreas Lubitz, German co-pilot (b. 1987)
2015 - Moncef Ben Salem, Tunisian politician (b. 1953)
2015 - Richard Butson, Canadian explorer and physician (b. 1922)
2016 - Johan Cruyff, Dutch footballer (b. 1947)
2016 - Garry Shandling, American actor and comedian (b. 1949)
2016 - Roger Cicero, German jazz singer and musician (b. 1970)
2016 - Maggie Blye, American actress (b. 1942)
2016 - Marie-Claire Kirkland, Canadian politician and judge (b. 1924)
2016 - Esther Herlitz, Israeli diplomat and politician (b. 1921)
2016 - Earl Hamner, Jr., American television writer and producer (b. 1923)
2016 - Tibor R. Machan, Hungarian-American philosopher and journalist (b. 1939)
2016 - Leonard L. Northrup Jr., American engineer (b. 1918)
2017 - Hubert Hammerer, Austrian sports shooter (b. 1924)
2017 - Leo Peelen, Dutch track cyclist (b. 1968)
2017 - Jean Rouverol, American actress (b. 1916)
2017 - Peter Shotton, English musician and businessman (b. 1941)
2017 - Avo Uvezian, Lebanese-American jazz pianist, songwriter and cigar manufacturer (b. 1926)
2020 - William Dufris, American voice actor and audiobook narrator (b. 1958)
Observances
World Tuberculosis Day
Day of Remembrance for Truth and Justice (Argentina)
Days of the year