August 24 – Some important events on this day.
49 BC 👉🏼 Julius Caesar’s general Gaius Scribonius Curio is defeated in the Second Battle of the Bagradas River by the Numidians under Publius Attius Varus and King Juba of Numidia. Curio commits suicide to avoid capture.
79 👉🏼 Mt Vesuvius erupts, buries Roman Pompeii and Herculaneum, 15,000 die
410 👉🏼 Rome overrun by Visigoths under Alaric I for the first time in nearly 800 years, seen as the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
The fall and collapse of the Roman Empire was a long process, but few events shocked people at the time as the sack of Rome, the first such event in almost 1000 years. St. Jerome who was in Bethlehem at the time wrote “the city which had taken the whole world was itself taken.”
The Visigoth barbarians were responsible, led by their leader Alaric I. The Western Roman Empire was already in a state of disarray, having split from the East fifteen before. After sacking and looting the capital, Alaric looted and pillaged several other towns and cities before dying only months after taking Rome.
1349 👉🏼 6,000 Jews, blamed for the Plague, are killed in Mainz
1456 👉🏼 The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed
1516 👉🏼 Battle of Marj Dabiq: Ottoman forces decisively beat the Mamluk Sultanate
1572 👉🏼 St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of Protestants by Roman Catholics begins in Paris and later spreads to the French provinces
1662 👉🏼 Act of Uniformity requires English to accept Book of Common Prayer
1814 👉🏼 British forces capture Washington, D.C. and destroy many landmarks (War of 1812)
1847 👉🏼 Charlotte Brontë finishes manuscript of “Jane Eyre”
1853 👉🏼 1st potato chips prepared by chef George Crum at Moon’s Lake House, near Saratoga Springs, New York (popular legend says he invented though earlier recipes exist). ✔️ READ THE ARTICLE!
1893 👉🏼 Tornado destroys coast of Savannah & Charleston, about 1000 die
1968 👉🏼 France becomes the world’s fifth thermonuclear power with a detonation on Mururoa Atoll in the South Pacific
1991 👉🏼 Ukraine declares independence from USSR
2008 👉🏼 Summer Olympics in Beijing becomes the most watched event on TV ever – nearly 5 billion, 70% of world’s population
2016 👉🏼 Astronomers announce discovery of earth-like planet named Proxima b orbiting star Proxima Centauri
2016 👉🏼 6.2-magnitude earthquake strikes central Italy killing 268, injuring 400
2019 👉🏼 US adventurer Victor Vescovo is the first person to visit the deepest point of every ocean when he reaches Molloy Hole, in the Arctic