July 24

2008-07-24 08:35

Today is Thursday, July 24, the 206th day of 2008. There are 160 day left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1567 - Barely more than one year old, the son of Mary of Scotland is crowned James VI when his mother, defeated by rebel Scottish lords, abdicates the throne. He becomes King James I of England when his cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, dies.

1704 - British capture Gibraltar during War of Spanish Succession.

1799 - France's Napoleon Bonaparte defeats Turks at Aboukir in Egypt.

1847 - Brigham Young and the first Mormons arrive at Great Salt Lake in present-day Utah.

1911 - Yale University professor Hiram Bingham discovers Inca city Machu Picchu in Peru.

1922 - League of Nations Council approves mandates for Palestine and Egypt.

1923 - Greece gives up Smyrna, eastern Thrace and two islands to Turkey under the Treaty of Lausanne, which settles the borders of modern-day Turkey. The countries agree to exchange their minority populations.

1929 - US President Herbert Hoover proclaims the Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy.

1937 - The US state of Alabama drops charges against five black men accused of raping two white women in the Scottsboro case.

1942 - British bombers devastate German cities of Frankfurt and Mannheim in World War 2.

1946 - United States makes first underwater test of an atomic bomb off atoll of Bikini in Pacific Ocean.

1969 - The US Apollo 11 astronauts, the first men to walk on Moon, splash down safely in the Pacific Ocean.

1973 - Four men from the Japanese Red Army, a militant group dedicated to a worldwide communist revolution, hijack a Japan Airlines plane. They release the 137 occupants, then blow it up and are arrested in Libya.

1974 - Konstantinos Karamanlis returns from exile and is sworn in as prime minister of Greece after the junta relinquishes control.

1976 - US spacecraft Viking 1 lands on Mars and starts tests to determine whether life exists on the planet.

1977 - Egypt's President Anwar Sadat orders his troops to observe immediate cease-fire in fighting with Libya.

1981 - Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation endorse separate cease-fire agreements to end fighting along the Lebanese-Israeli border.

1992 - The Mexican government accuses the United States of excessive interference in antidrug efforts and declines aid earmarked to combat narcotics.

1993 - Russia says it will invalidate billions of old rubles to combat inflation.

1994 - Rwandan refugees trickle into Zaire - now Congo - after the border is opened, to escape filthy, crowded camps where death from cholera and dehydration abound.

1996 - In Colombo, Sri Lanka, two bombs rip through separate cars of a commuter train, killing 63 people in an attack blamed on Tamil Tiger separatist rebels.

1997 - After 290 years of union, the British government offers Scots the power to legislate, to tax and to speak for themselves in the European Union.

2000 - In Sierra Leone, dozens of rebels, including children, surrender to UN forces in the eastern city of Kenema and turn over their weapons.

2001 - Tamil Tiger separatist rebels attack Sri Lanka's international airport and an adjoining Air Force base; 20 people are killed and a dozen military and commercial planes are destroyed.

2002 - Nine coal miners in southwestern Pennsylvania are rescued after more than three days trapped in a 1.2-metre-tall chamber 75m below the surface.

2003 - The joint US Congressional Committee on Intelligence releases a report of more than 800 pages on its 10-month-long inquiry into intelligence failures leading up to the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks.

2004 - Iraq's interim leader says that diplomatic relations between Syria and Baghdad likely will be restored soon, after years of hostility and recent tension over foreign fighters sneaking into Iraq along their shared border.

2006 - Hundreds of Taliban fighters attack a western Afghan government building with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns, killing three police officers and wounding seven in one of the militia's boldest strikes in the long-quiet region.

2007 - Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor return home after secretive talks lead to their release by Libya after 8 1/2 years in prison - much of it under sentence of death - for widely rejected charges of infecting children with HIV.

Today's Birthdays:
Simon Bolivar, leader of South American independence (1783-1830); Alexandre Dumas, French writer (1802-1870); Ernst Bloch, Swiss-born composer (1880-1959); Tanizaki Jun'ichiro, Japanese writer (1886-1965); Amelia Earhart, U.S. aviation pioneer (1898-1937); Cootie Williams, U.S. jazz musician (1908-1985); Bella Abzug, U.S. lawyer, politician and activist (1920-1998); Gus Van Sant, U.S. director (1952--); Jennifer Lopez, U.S. actress/singer (1968--).

Thought For Today:
My feeling is that there is nothing in life but refraining from hurting others, and comforting those that are sad - Olive Schreiner, South African author and feminist (1855-1920).

Sapa-AP

- SAPA