During her imprisonment at Lochleven Castle in Scotland, Mary Queen of Scots is forced to abdicate in favor of her one-year-old son, later crowned King James VI of Scotland. In 1542, while just six days old, Mary ascended to the Scottish throne upon the death of her father, King James V. Her mother sent her […]

On July 24, 1779, a naval expeditionary force commissioned by the Massachusetts General Assembly departs Boothbay, Maine, headed for the Penobscot peninsula, where British forces had recently established a small fort and trading post. The attack, and subsequent three-week-long siege, would end disastrously for the Americans with one of the worst naval defeats in the […]

William Sydney Porter, otherwise known as O. Henry, is released from prison on this day, after serving three years in jail for embezzlement from a bank in Austin, Texas. To escape imprisonment, Porter had fled the authorities and hidden in Honduras, but returned when his wife, still in the U.S., was diagnosed with a terminal […]

On July 24, 1915, the steamer Eastland overturns in the Chicago River, drowning between 800 and 850 of its passengers who were heading to a picnic. The disaster was caused by serious problems with the boat’s design, which were known but never remedied. The Eastland was owned by the St. Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company and made […]

On July 24, 1945, through an interpreter, President Harry S. Truman hints to Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin that the United States has successfully developed a new weapon. In his diary, Truman privately referred to the new weapon, the atomic bomb, as the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. The United States had […]

At 12:51 EDT on July 24, 1969, Apollo 11, the U.S. spacecraft that had taken the first astronauts to the surface of the moon, safely returns to Earth. The American effort to send astronauts to the moon had its origins in a famous appeal President John F. Kennedy made to a special joint session of […]

On July 24, 1982, Sylvester Stallone’s hit Rocky franchise produces its second #1 pop hit when Survivor’s “Eye Of The Tiger” begins a six-week run atop the Billboard pop chart. The first #1 hit from Stallone’s boxing film series was “Gonna Fly Now (Theme from Rocky),” which topped the charts in the summer of 1977, […]

On July 24, 2005, American cyclist Lance Armstrong wins a record-setting seventh consecutive Tour de France and retires from the sport. After Armstrong survived testicular cancer, his rise to cycling greatness inspired cancer patients and fans around the world and significantly boosted his sport’s popularity in the United States. However, in 2012, in a dramatic […]