#TodayInHistory – June 24

June 24 – Some important events on this day.

843 👉🏼 Vikings destroy Nantes
972 👉🏼 Battle of Cedynia, the first documented victory of Polish forces. Mieszko I of Poland decisively defeated Odo I of Lusatia 🇵🇱
1314 👉🏼 Battle of Bannockburn; Scotland regains independence from England
1322 👉🏼 Jews are expelled from France for 3rd time

1374 👉🏼 Sudden outbreak of St. John’s Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion.
✔️ READ THE ARTICLE!

1497 👉🏼 John Cabot claims Eastern Canada for England (believes he has found Asia in Nova Scotia)
1509 👉🏼 Henry VIII is crowned King of England in Westminster Abbey

1527 👉🏼 Physician and alchemist Paracelsus publicly burns standard medical textbooks in Basle as a protest against the current teaching and practice of medicine.
Known as a revolutionary in his time for insisting upon using observations of nature, rather than looking to ancient texts, in open and radical defiance of medical practice of his day, Paracelsus is credited for giving zinc its name by calling it zincum. Modern psychology often also credits him for being the first to note that some diseases are rooted in psychological illness. Often called the ‘Father of toxicology’ he believed in the importance of chemistry to medicine. He published just one major work during his lifetime “Grosse Wundartzney” (Great Surgery Book”) in 1536 but other were printed by associates after his death.

1664 👉🏼 The colony of New Jersey is founded
1793 👉🏼 1st republican constitution in France adopted 🇫🇷
1812 👉🏼 Napoleon Bonaparte’s forces invade Russia crossing the Neman River
1853 👉🏼 US President Franklin Pierce signs the Gadsden Purchase, buying 29,670 square-miles (76,800 square km) from Mexico for $10 million (now southern Arizona and New Mexico)
1901 👉🏼 1st exhibition by Pablo Picasso, 19, opens in Paris 🎨
1922 👉🏼 Adolf Hitler begins a month long prison sentence for paramilitary operations; he rails against the ‘Jewish sell-out’ of Germany to the Bolsheviks
1930 👉🏼 1st radar detection of planes, Anacostia, Washington, D.C.

1948 👉🏼 Soviet Union begins the West Berlin Blockade by stopping access by road, rail and water.
One of the first major crises of the nascent Cold War, the Berlin Blockade tested the resolve of the Western alliance to protect the small non-communist enclave of West Berlin.
When the Soviets blockaded the city in 1948, the Western alliance resolved to break the Soviet operation by airlifting in the supplies that the West Berliners needed.
Pilot Gail Halvorsen of the US Air Force noticed a crowd of children at Berlin airport when he dropped off supplies. When he handed out candy, he was so impressed by their gratitude that he promised to return with more candy. Thus began Operation Little Vittles. More than twenty tons of candy were dropped on Berlin, some of it sent by children all around the United States.
Eventually, the Soviets relented, realizing that the airlift had ended up supplying more than had initially come by rail and land before the blockade.

2010 👉🏼 In the longest match in tennis history, American John Isner defeats Nicolas Mahut of France at Wimbledon after 11 hours, 5 minutes of play over 3 days
2019 👉🏼 Mysterious sickness affects 718 children with 152 deaths around Indian city of Muzaffarpur, previously thought due to lychee fruit but now unknown