August 24th
Month:
Day:
- 79
Mount Vesuvius erupts (historically thought to have occurred on this day until 2018 estimates suggested October) View Post →
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- 410
Rome is overrun by Visigoths under Alaric I for the first time in nearly 800 years, marking the fall of the Western Roman Empire
- 1853
The first potato chips are prepared by chef George Crum at Moon's Lake House, near Saratoga Springs, New York
- 1857
The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in U.S. history
- 1869
Cornelius Swarthout receives a patent for the waffle iron
- 1891
Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera
- 1893
A tornado destroys the coast of Savannah and Charleston, resulting in approximately 1000 deaths
- 1932
Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly non-stop across the U.S. The trip from Los Angeles, CA to Newark, NJ, takes about 19 hours
- 1981
Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life for the murder of John Lennon
- 1989
Pete Rose is suspended from baseball for life due to gambling
- 1992
Hurricane Andrew hits South Florida, causing 44 deaths and $25 billion in damage
- 1995
Microsoft releases Windows 95 to the public in North America
- 2001
Air Transat Flight 236 runs out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean (en route to Lisbon from Toronto) and makes an emergency landing in the Azores
- 2006
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term planet, reclassifying Pluto as a Dwarf Planet
- 2011
Steve Jobs resigns as CEO of Apple Inc., due to his illness. He is succeeded by Tim Cook
- 2015
Physicist Stephen Hawking presents a new theory on black holes at a lecture at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm
- 2021
The UN warns that Madagascar is on the brink of the world's first climate change famine, with people suffering catastrophic levels of hunger after four years without rain
- 2022
British-Belgian teen Mack Rutherford becomes the youngest person to fly solo around the world, landing in Sofia, Bulgaria, after a five-month journey across 52 countries
