Oct. 24
Today in history
Today is Oct. 24. On this date in:
1861: The first transcontinental telegraph line was completed and a message was sent from San Francisco to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, DC, spelling the end for the Pony Express.
1901: Annie Edson Taylor, a 63-year-old schoolteacher from Bay City, Michigan, became the first person to survive a barrel ride over Niagara Falls. She designed and built her own barrel, which had cushions and a leather harness and was screwed shut with compressed air.
1929: After the U.S. stock market experienced a significant crash, panic selling rocked the New York Stock Exchange, which led to a drastic fall in stock prices and marked the beginning of the Great Depression. The day is often referred
to as Black Thursday.
1935: “Mulatto,” by Langston Hughes, opened on Broadway. It was the first play written by a Black playwright to become a long-running Broadway hit.
1945: The United Nations was officially established after the U.N. Charter was ratified by the five permanent members of the Security Council – the United States, United Kingdom, France, Soviet Union and China – and the majority of the other signatories.
1973: The United Nations brokered a new ceasefire between Israel and a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria, essentially ending major combat in the Yom Kippur War.
1998: Tropical Storm Mitch intensified into one of the most powerful and deadliest hurricanes ever seen in the Atlantic basin and was particularly devastating to Central America, where more than 11,000 people were killed.
2003: The Concorde supersonic airliner completed its last commercial passenger flight, from New York to London, before being retired from service amid emotional scenes at Heathrow Airport.
2005: Rosa Parks, an important figure in the civil rights movement best known for her refusal to move from her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, died in Detroit at the age of 92.
2007: China launched its first lunar probe, a significant milestone in the country’s burgeoning space program.
2012: Sandy intensified into a powerful hurricane and made landfall near Kingston, Jamaica. The enormous storm eventually caused widespread destruction along the East Coast, particularly in New York and New Jersey, killing more than 200 people.
– USA TODAY Network
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Today in history, October 24
