July 24

Events
Up to 1900
1132 Battle of Nocera between Ranulf II of Alife and Roger II of Sicily.
1148 King Louis VII of France lays siege to Damascus during the Second Crusade.
1245 Pope Innocent IV forces King Sancho II of Portugal out, and replaces him with Afonso III of Portugal.
1411 The Battle of Harlaw, one of the bloodiest in Scotland, takes place.
1487 Citizens of Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, strike against a ban on foreign beer.
1534 Jacques Cartier plants a cross on the Gaspe peninsula in present-day Quebec, taking possession of the territory and naming it after Francis I of France.
1567 Mary, Queen of Scots, is deposed and replaced by her 1-year-old son King King James VI.
1701 Detroit, Michigan is founded.
1783 The Kingdom of Georgia and the Russian Empire sign the Treaty of Georgievsk.
1814 War of 1812: General Phineas Riall advances toward Niagara to halt Jacob Brown's American invaders.
1823 Chile abolishes Slavery.
1823 The Naval Battle of Lake Maracaibo takes place.
1832 Benjamin Bonneville leads the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains by using Wyoming's South Pass.
1847 After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City.
1864 American Civil War: Battle of Kernstown - Confederate General Jubal Early defeats Union troops led by General George Crook in an effort to keep Yankees out of the Shenandoah Valley.
1866 Reconstruction: Tennessee becomes the first U.S. state to be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War.
1901 1950
1901 O. Henry is released from prison in Austin, Texas after serving three years for embezzlement from a bank.
1910 James MacGillivray publishes the first account of Paul Bunyan in the Detroit News.
1911 Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Machu Picchu "the Lost City of the Incas".
1915 Passenger ship Eastland capsizes in central Chicago, with the loss of 845 lives.
1922 The draft of the British Mandate for Palestine is officially confirmed by the Council of the League of Nations.
1923 The Treaty of Lausanne, settling the boundaries of modern Turkey, is signed in Switzerland by Greece, Bulgaria and other countries that fought in World War I.
1924 Archaeologist Themistoklis Sofoulis becomes Prime Minister of Greece.
1927 The Menin Gate war memorial is unveiled at Ypres.
1929 The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy, goes into effect (it was first signed in Paris on August 27, 1928 by most leading world powers).
1931 A fire at a home for aged people in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania kills 48 people.
1935 The dust bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109 degF (44 degC) in Chicago and 104 degF (40 degC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
1937 Alabama drops rape charges against the so-called "Scottsboro Boys."
1938 The first successful climb of the Eiger North Face is made.
1943 World War II: Operation Gomorrah begins: British and Canadian aeroplanes bomb Hamburg by night, those of the Americans by day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of explosives will have killed more than 30,000 people and destroyed 280,000 buildings.
1950 Bumper 8 becomes the first aircraft to be launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1951 2000
1956 At New York City's Copacabana Club, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis perform their last comedy show together which started on July 25, 1946, almost exactly ten years earlier.
1959 At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, US vice-president Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev have a "kitchen debate."
1965 Vietnam War: Four F-4C Phantoms escorting a bombing raid at Kang Chi are the targets of anti-aircraft missiles in the first such attack against American planes in the war. One is shot down and the other three sustain damage.
1966 Michael Petkey makes the first BASE jump from El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, along with Brian Schubert. They both end up with broken bones.
1967 During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declares to a crowd of over 100,000 in Montreal: Vive le Quebec libre! (Long live free Quebec!). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians.
1969 Apollo program: Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
1974 Watergate scandal: The United States Supreme Court unanimously rule that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.
1974 Konstantinos Karamanlis arrives in Greece, following the collapse of the military junta.
1977 End of the four-day long Libyan-Egyptian War.
1983 George Brett, batting for the Kansas City Royals against the New York Yankees, has a game-winning home run nullified in the "Pine Tar Incident".
1990 Iraqi forces start massing on the Kuwaiti border, preparing for the invasion on August 2.
1998 Russel Eugene Weston Jr. bursts into the United States Capitol and opens fire killing two police officers. He is later ruled to be incompetent to stand trial.
From 2001
2001 Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, and became the only monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office. He becomes Prime Minister under the name Simeon Saksburggotsky.
2001 The Taiwan Solidarity Union is established.
2002 James Traficant is expelled from the United States House of Representatives on a vote of 420 to 1.
2002 Alfred Moisiu becomes President of Albania.
2005 Lance Armstrong wins the Tour de France for seventh consecutive year. After being revealed to have taken illegal drugs to improve his performance during his career, all of his Tour de France titles are removed from the record in 2012.
2010 Love Parade disaster: At a stampede at a music festival in Duisburg, Germany, 19 people are crushed to death. 2 later die in hospital, as a result of their injuries.
2010 Over 80,000 people record their lives for the YouTube documentary A Life in a Day.
2012 President of Ghana John Atta Mills dies aged 68. His Vice President John Dramani Mahama is sworn in as President later the same day.
2013 A passenger train carrying over 218 people crashes just outside Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, northwest Spain, killing at least 80 people and injuring at least 130. It was travelling from Madrid to Ferrol on the Galician coast when it crashed. It occurred a day before the regional July 25 holiday in Galicia.
2014 Air Algerie Flight 5017 crashes in Mali on a flight between Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and Algiers, Algeria.
2014 Reuven Rivlin becomes the 10th President of Israel, succeeding Shimon Peres.
2015 Barack Obama makes the first visit by a US president to Kenya.
2016 The International Olympic Committee decides against banning the entire Russian team from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, after its track-and-field athletes had already been banned following a doping scandal.
2019 Boris Johnson becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, taking over from Theresa May. One of his first actions is a massive change of the jobs in the cabinet.
Births
Up to 1900
923 Suzaku, Emperor of Japan (d. 952)
1468 Catherine of Saxony, Archduchess of Austria (d. 1524)
1574 Thomas Platter the Younger, Swiss physician (d. 1629)
1720 Louisa Ulrika of Prussia, Prussian princess and Queen of Sweden (d. 1782)
1725 John Newton, cleric and hymnist (d. 1807)
1737 Alexander Dalrymple, Scottish geographer (d. 1808)
1740 Juan Ignacio Molina, Chilean naturalist (d. 1829)
1757 Vladimir Borovikovski, Russian painter (d. 1825)
1759 King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia (d. 1824)
1783 Simon Bolivar, South American liberator (d. 1830)
1783 Frederic de Lafresnaye, French ornithologist (d. 1861)
1786 Joseph Nicollet, mathematician and explorer (d. 1843)
1798 John Adams Dix, American general, senator and Governor of New York (d. 1879)
1802 Alexandre Dumas, pere, French writer (d. 1870)
1803 Adolphe Charles Adam, French composer (d. 1956)
1817 Adolphe, Grand Duke of Luxembourg (d. 1905)
1823 Arthur I. Boreman, Governor of West Virginia (d. 1896)
1826 Ivan Bloch, Polish banker (d. 1902)
1828 Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Russian writer (d. 1889)
1832 John J. Bagley, 16th Governor of Michigan (d. 1881)
1841 Francisco da Veiga Beirao, Portuguese politician (d. 1916)
1847 Margarete Steiff, German seamstress, known for Steiff stuffed toys (d. 1909)
1851 Friedrich Schottky, German mathematician (d. 1935)
1853 William Gillette, actor and writer (d. 1937)
1857 Henrik Pontoppidan, Danish writer (d. 1943)
1857 Juan Vicente Gomez, Venezuelan officer, politician and dictator (d. 1935)
1858 Wolfgang Kapp, Prussian civil servant and journalist (d. 1922)
1860 Alphonse Mucha, Czech artist (d. 1939)
1860 Princess Charlotte of Prussia (d. 1919)
1864 Frank Wedekind, German writer (d. 1918)
1867 Vicente Acosta, El Salvadorean poet (d. 1908)
1874 Oswald Chambers, Scottish Baptist evangelist and teacher (d. 1917)
1878 Lord Dunsany, writer (d. 1957)
1880 Ernest Bloch, Swiss composer (d. 1959)
1883 Katia Mann, wife of Thomas Mann (d. 1980)
1883 Nelle Wilson Reagan, mother of Ronald Reagan (d. 1962)
1884 Maria Caserini, Italian actress (d. 1969)
1886 Jun'ichiro Tanizaki, Japanese writer (d. 1965)
1888 Arthur Richardson, Australian cricketer and coach (d. 1973)
1895 Robert Graves, English writer (d. 1985)
1896 Hermann Kasack, writer (d. 1966)
1897 Amelia Earhart, American aviator (d. 1937) (disappeared)
1899 Chief Dan George, Native American actor (d. 1981)
1899 Bernice Madigan, American supercentenarian (d. 2015)
1900 Zelda Fitzgerald, American artist (d. 1948)
1901 1950
1908 Cootie Williams, trumpeter (d. 1985)
1914 Frances Oldham Kelsey, Canadian physician (d. 2015)
1914 Edwin Mirvish, retailer and impresario (d. 2007)
1916 John D. MacDonald, novelist (d. 1986)
1917 Robert Farnon, conductor, composer and arranger (d. 2005)
1918 Ruggiero Ricci, American violinist (d. 2012)
1920 Bella Abzug, American politician and activist (d. 1998)
1920 Constance Dowling, American actress (d. 1969)
1921 Giuseppe Di Stefano, Italian tenor (d. 2008)
1923 Warren E. Hearnes, 46th Governor of Missouri (d. 2009)
1925 Adele Addison, American soprano
1926 Hans Gunter Winkler, German equestrian jumper (d. 2018)
1929 Peter Yates, British movie director (d. 2011)
1930 Keshubhai Patel, Indian politician, former Chief Minister of Gujarat
1931 Ermanno Olmi, Italian director (d. 2018)
1933 John Aniston, Greek-American actor
1933 Doug Sanders, American golfer
1934 Rudy Collins, American drummer (Dizzy Gillespie Quintet)
1935 Pat Oliphant, Australian political cartoonist
1936 Ruth Buzzi, comedienne
1936 Dan Inosanto, American martial artist and actor
1937 Manoj Kumar, Indian actor, director, producer and screenwriter
1939 Walt Bellamy, American basketball player (d. 2013)
1940 Stanley Hauerwas, Christian theologian
1942 Chris Sarandon, American actor
1944 Jan-Carl Raspe, German Red Army Faction militant (d. 1977)
1945 Azim Premji, Indian businessman
1947 Robert Hays, actor
1947 Peter Serkin, American pianist
1949 Michael Richards, American actor and comedian
1949 Joan Enric Vives Sicilia, Catalan bishop and co-Prince of Andorra
1951 1975
1951 Lynda Carter, American actress
1951 Chris Smith, British politician
1952 Carsten Jensen, Danish writer
1952 Gus Van Sant, American movie director
1953 Claire McCaskill, American politician, United States Senator for Missouri
1956 Charlie Crist, American politician, 44th Governor of Florida, 2007 2011
1956 Pat Finn, American game show host and producer
1957 Pam Tillis, American country music singer
1958 Konrad Graber, Swiss politician
1958 Jim Leighton, Scottish footballer
1960 Catherine Destivelle, Algerian-born French rock climber and mountaineer
1963 Karl Malone, American basketball player
1964 Pedro Passos Coelho, former Prime Minister of Portugal
1964 Barry Bonds, American Major League Baseball player
1964 Banana Yoshimoto, Japanese writer
1965 Andrew Gaze, Australian basketball player and broadcaster
1965 Kadeem Hardison, actor
1966 Martin Keown, English footballer
1966 Hilarion, Russian writer and theologian
1968 Kristin Chenoweth, American actress and singer
1968 Laura Leighton, American actress
1969 Rick Fox, American basketball player
1969 Jennifer Lopez, American actress, dancer, fashion designer and singer
1970 Julia Bradbury, English journalist and presenter
1971 Dino Baggio, Italian footballer
1971 John Partridge, English actor, singer and dancer
1974 Eugene Mirman, Russian-American actor, comedian and writer
1974 Boogie2988, American Internet personality (Francis)
1975 Tracey Crouch, English politician
1975 Eric Szmanda, American actor
From 1976
1976 Rashida Tlaib, American politician
1977 Danny Dyer, British actor
1977 Mehdi Mahdavikia, Iranian footballer
1978 Andy Irons, American surfer (d. 2010)
1979 Rose Byrne, Australian actress
1979 Ryan Humphrey, American basketball player
1981 Gauge, actress
1981 Summer Glau, American actress
1982 Elisabeth Moss, American actress
1982 Anna Paquin, Canadian-born actress
1983 Daniele De Rossi, Italian footballer
1985 Lukas Rosol, Czech tennis player
1986 Andrei Lutai, Russian figure skater
1986 Vugar Gashimov, Azerbaijani chess player (d. 2014)
1986 Natalie Tran, Australian actress and writer
1987 Mara Wilson, American actress
1987 Jovan Belcher, American football player (d. 2012)
1989 Kim Tae-Hwan, South Korean footballer
1989 Felix Loch, German luger
1990 Daveigh Chase, American actress
1990 Jay McGuiness, English singer (The Wanted)
1991 Lin Yue, Chinese diver
1991 Emily Bett Rickards, Canadian actress
1992 Mitch Grassi, American singer
1992 Mikael Kingsbury, Canadian skier
1998 Bindi Irwin, daughter of Steve Irwin
Deaths
Up to 1900
811 Gao Yang, Chinese chancellor (b. 740)
1115 Matilda, Countess of Tuscany (b. 1046)
1129 Shirakawa, Emperor of Japan (b. 1053)
1568 Carlos, Prince of Asturias, son of Philip II of Spain (b. 1545)
1594 John Boste, English martyr and saint (b. 1544)
1739 Benedetto Marcello, Italian composer (b. 1686)
1768 Nathaniel Lardner, English theologian (b. 1684)
1862 Martin Van Buren, 8th President of the United States (b. 1782)
1883 Matthew Webb, British swimmer (b. 1848)
1891 Hermann Raster, German-American journalist and politician (b. 1827)
1901 - 1950
1906 Ferdinand von Saar, Austrian writer, dramatist and poet (b. 1833)
1908 Vicente Acosta, El Salvadorean poet (b. 1867)
1910 Arkhip Kuindzhi, Russian painter (b. 1841)
1920 Ludwig Ganghofer, German writer (b. 1855)
1922 Saint George Ashe, British rower (b. 1871)
1927 Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Japanese writer (b. 1892)
1951 2000
1957 Sacha Guitry, French actor and director (b. 1885)
1960 Hans Albers, German actor and singer (b. 1891)
1962 Wilfrid Noyce, English mountaineer (b. 1917)
1965 Constance Bennett, American actress (b. 1904)
1969 Witold Gombrowicz, Polish novelist and dramatist (b. 1904)
1970 Beatrice Roberts, American actress (b. 1901)
1973 Konstantinos Dovas, Greek general and Prime Minister (b. 1898)
1974 James Chadwick, British physicist (b. 1891)
1976 Julius Dopfner, German cardinal (b. 1913)
1980 Peter Sellers, British actor (b. 1925)
1980 Uttam Kumar, Indian actor, director and producer (b. 1926)
1985 Ezechiele Ramini, Italian missionary and martyr (b. 1953)
1986 Fritz Albert Lipmann, American biochemist (b. 1899)
1991 Isaac Bashevis Singer, writer, received Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978 (b. 1902)
1992 Arletty, French singer and actress (b. 1898)
1995 Marjorie Cameron, American writer, painter, actress and occultist (b. 1922)
1996 Mohammed Farah Aidid, Somali warlord
1997 William J. Brennan, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (b. 1906)
1997 Saw Maung, Burmese dictator (b. 1928)
From 2001
2005 Richard Doll, British epidemiologist (b. 1912)
2008 Norman Dello Joio, American composer (b. 1913)
2010 Alex Higgins, Northern Irish snooker player (b. 1949)
2010 Theo Albrecht, German businessman (Aldi Nord) (b. 1922)
2011 Virgilio Noe, Italian cardinal (b. 1922)
2011 Dan Peek, American singer (b. 1951)
2012 Larry Hoppen, American singer-songwriter and musician (b. 1951)
2012 John Atta Mills, President of Ghana (b. 1944)
2012 Sherman Hemsley, American actor (b. 1938)
2012 Chad Everett, American actor (b. 1936)
2013 Fred Dretske, American philosopher (b. 1932)
2013 Steve Berrios, American drummer (b. 1945)
2013 Virginia E. Johnson, American sexologist (b. 1925)
2014 Yoo Chae-yeong, South Korean singer (b. 1973)
2014 Jaan Arder, Estonian singer (b. 1952)
2014 Dale Schlueter, American basketball player (b. 1945)
2015 Peg Lynch, American comedy writer and actress (b. 1916)
2016 Marni Nixon, American singer and actress (b. 1930)
2017 Michiko Inukai, Japanese writer (b. 1921)
2017 Yash Pal, Indian scientist and educator (b. 1926)
2017 Udupi Ramachandra Rao, Indian space scientist (b. 1932)
2017 Niculae Nedeff, Romanian handball player and coach (b. 1928)
2018 Mary Ellis, British World War II aviator (b. 1917)
2018 Walter Hirrlinger, German politician (b. 1926)
2018 Tony Cloninger, American baseball player (b. 1940)
2019 Claes Andersson, Finnish psychiatrist, writer and politician (b. 1937)
2019 Margaret Fulton, Scottish-born Australian chef and cookbook writer (b. 1924)
2019 Cathy Inglese, American college basketball coach (b. 1958)
Holidays and observances
Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela - Simon Bolivar Day
Utah - Pioneer Day (1847)
Vanuatu - Children's Day
Venezuela - Birth of the Libertador (Simon Bolivar Day)
Ancient Latvia - Jekaupa Diena held
Days of the year