This Day In History

August 24th

79 AD Mount Vesuvius erupts in southern Italy near Pompeii and half the citizens escape toward sea, but over 2,000 were buried under 7 feet of lava, ash and pumice and preserved perfectly in sudden death.
410 AD  In the latter declining years of the Western Roman Empire, the Visigoths under King Alaric invade and sack Rome
1572  On the feast day of St. Bartholomew, Charles IX under the influence of his mother Catherine de Medici, ordered the massacre of Protestant Huguenots throughout France, killing over 50,000.
1814  General Robert Ross' British forces capture Washington, DC.  They set the Capitol, White House, and other government buildings on fire in revenge for the burning of Canadian government buildings by US troops.
1862  The CSS Alabama was commissioned at sea off Portugal's Azore Islands and manned by an international crew, and has an impressive career as a Confederate raider, sinking or capturing over 60 US merchant ships.
1932  Taking off from Los Angeles, California, Amelia Earhart was the first woman to begin the first transcontinental nonstop flight.
1954  US President Dwight D. Eisenhower outlaws the Communist Party in the United States
1968  France becomes the 5th country to explode a nuclear bomb
1991  After a failed coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, he resigns anyway as general secretary of the Communist Party and the control of the government shifts to the democracy-minded and popularly elected President of the Russian Republic Boris Yeltsin.

1958  Actor Steve Guttenberg
1960  Baseball Star Cal Ripken, Jr
1965  Actress Marlee Matlin

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