#TodayInHistory – November 24

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November 24 – Some important events on this day.

380 👉🏼 Theodosius I makes his adventus, or first formal entry, into Constantinople
1434 👉🏼 River Thames in London freezes over
1639 👉🏼 1st observation of transit of Venus by Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree – helped establish size of the Solar System
1642 👉🏼 Dutch explorer Abel Tasman discovers Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania)
1759 👉🏼 Destructive eruption of Vesuvius
1859 👉🏼 English naturalist Charles Darwin publishes “On the Origin of Species” radically changing the view of evolution and laying the foundation for evolutionary biology
1874 👉🏼 American inventor Joseph Glidden patents barbed wire
1940 👉🏼 The Blitz: Luftwaffe bombs Bristol city centre, killing 200 people in the first German raid on the city
1950 👉🏼 UN troops begin an assault intending to end Korean War by Christmas
1954 👉🏼 France sends 20,000 soldiers to Algeria

1968 👉🏼 In Tham Piew Cave, Laos, a single rocket fired by a United States fighter plane made contact with the cave killing 374 men, women, and children.
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1971 👉🏼 American “Dan Cooper” hijacks plane, extorts $200,000 ransom before jumping out of plane over Washington State, never seen again

1979 👉🏼 US admits troops in Vietnam were exposed to the toxic Agent Orange.
During the Vietnam War the US Air Force engaged in a program of herbicidal warfare known as ‘Operation Ranch Hand’. For ten years the Air Force sprayed forests in South Vietnam, affecting some 5 million acres of forest, or some 20% of all the forests in South Vietnam.
There were several chemicals used, but the most famous was Agent Orange (There were also Agents Green, Pink, Purple, Blue and White). The idea behind using the chemicals was to destroy foliage acting as a potential cover for the Viet Cong insurgents, who used trails through the forest for supply lines and camps.
The impacts on the Vietnamese people and ecosystem were devastating. It is estimated by the Vietnamese Red Cross (although these figures are disputed) that as many as 3 million Vietnamese suffered illness due to the chemicals, and around 1 million people are disabled as a result of it. Many children were born with deformities as a result of prenatal exposure to Agent Orange.