History of the Day for:
October 24
- 1648: The Treaty of Westphalia was signed. It ended the Thirty Years War, destroyed the Holy Roman Empire and recognized Switzerland as an independent country.
- 1818: Nine-year-old Felix Mendelssohn performed his first public concert in Berlin.
- 1861: West Virginia seceded from Virginia. The first U.S. transcontinental telegram was sent from San Francisco by the Chief Justice of California to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington.
- 1882: Dr. Robert Koch discovered the germ that causes tuberculosis.
- 1901: Anna Taylor became the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and live.
- 1904: The first New York subway opened.
- 1922: The Irish Parliament adopted a constitution for an Irish Free State.
- 1929: New York share prices collapsed as nearly 13 million shares changed hands in panic selling on "Black Thursday."
- 1931: Gangster Al Capone was sentenced to 11 years in jail for tax evasion. The 3,800-foot-long George Washington Bridge connecting New York and New Jersey opened.
- 1939: Nylon stockings were first sold.
- 1940: Under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, the 40-hour work week went into effect.
- 1944: U.S. planes sank the Japanese battleship Musashi in the Battle of Leyte Gulf. A U.S. submarine sank the Japanese Arisan Maru with 1,800 American prisoners onboard, killing all but 10, while a Japanese destroyer rescued Japanese military and civilian personnel.
- 1945: The United Nations Charter, adopted by the San Francisco Conference in June 1945, came into force.
- 1962: In the Cuban missile crisis, the U.S. blockade of Cuba began.
- 1980: Poland's communist authorities granted recognition to the new independent trade union "Solidarity."
- 1991: "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry died at age 70.
- 1998: Launch of Deep Space 1 comet/asteroid mission.
- 2002: Police arrest spree killers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, ending the Beltway sniper attacks in the area around Washington, DC.
- 2003: Concorde makes its last commercial flight.
- 2005: Hurricane Wilma makes landfall in Florida resulting in 35 direct 26 indirect fatalities and causing $20.6B USD in damage.
- 2006: Justice Rutherford of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice struck down the "motive clause", an important part of the Canadian Anti-Terrorism Act.
- 2008: "Bloody Friday" saw many of the world's stock exchanges experienced the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices.