August 24 facts for kids

August 24 is the 236th day of the year (237th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar; 129 days remain until the end of the year.

August 24th is a day filled with many interesting events throughout history, from ancient times to modern days. It's a day when important leaders were born, big changes happened in countries, and new discoveries were made. Let's explore some of the most notable moments that have taken place on this date!

Historical Events

Ancient and Medieval Times

• 367 – Gratian, who was only eight years old, was named co-Augustus by his father, Roman Emperor Valentinian I. This meant he would share power as emperor.
• 394 – The very last known message written in Egyptian hieroglyphs was created. It's called the Graffito of Esmet-Akhom.
• 410 – The Visigoths, led by King Alaric I, began to take over and plunder Rome.
• 1185 – The city of Thessalonica was captured by the Normans.
• 1200 – King John of England, famous for signing the first Magna Carta, married Isabella of Angoulême in France.
• 1215 – Pope Innocent III announced that the Magna Carta was not valid.
• 1349 – A tragic event occurred in Mainz where many people died during the time of the bubonic plague.
• 1482 – The town and castle of Berwick-upon-Tweed were taken from Scotland by an English army.
• 1516 – The Ottoman Empire, under Selim I, defeated the Mamluk Sultanate and took control of what is now Syria at the Battle of Marj Dabiq.

Significant Moments: 1600s to 1900s

• 1608 – The first official English representative arrived in Surat, India.
• 1643 – A Dutch fleet started a new colony in the old ruins of Valdivia in southern Chile.
• 1662 – The 1662 Book of Common Prayer became the official way of worship for the Church of England. This led to many ministers leaving their churches.
• 1682 – William Penn received the land that is now the state of Delaware. He added it to his colony of Pennsylvania.
• 1690 – Job Charnock of the East India Company set up a trading post in Calcutta. For a long time, this was thought to be the founding date of the city.
• 1743 – The Swedish army surrendered to the Russians in Helsinki, ending the war known as The War of the Hats.
• 1781 – During the American Revolutionary War, a small group of Pennsylvania soldiers was attacked by an American Indian group. This forced George Rogers Clark to stop his plan to attack Detroit.
• 1789 – The first naval battle of the Svensksund began in the Gulf of Finland.
• 1812 – During the Peninsular War, Spanish, British, and Portuguese forces successfully ended the long Siege of Cádiz.
• 1814 – British troops captured Washington, D.C. They set fire to the Presidential Mansion, the Capitol, and many other public buildings.
• 1815 – The modern Constitution of the Netherlands was signed.
• 1821 – The Treaty of Córdoba was signed in Mexico, officially ending the Mexican War of Independence from Spain.
• 1857 – The Panic of 1857 started, leading to a major economic crisis in the United States.
• 1870 – The Wolseley expedition arrived in Manitoba, bringing an end to the Red River Rebellion.
• 1898 – Count Muravyov, Russia's Foreign Minister, suggested a meeting that led to the First Hague Peace Conference.

The 20th and 21st Centuries

• 1909 – Workers began pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.
• 1911 – Manuel de Arriaga was elected as the first President of Portugal.
• 1914 – World War I: German troops captured Namur.
• 1914 – World War I: The Battle of Cer ended. It was the first victory for the Allied forces in the war.
• 1929 – The second day of the 1929 Hebron massacre took place during the 1929 Palestine riots. This resulted in the deaths of many Jewish people in Hebron, and the remaining Jewish residents had to leave the city.
• 1932 – Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the United States without stopping. She flew from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey.
• 1936 – The Australian Antarctic Territory was created.
• 1938 – A Japanese warplane shot down the Kweilin, a Chinese civilian airplane. This was the first time a civilian airliner was recorded as being shot down.
• 1942 – World War II: The Battle of the Eastern Solomons took place. The Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō was sunk.
• 1944 – World War II: Allied troops began their attack on Paris.
• 1949 – The treaty that created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization officially began.
• 1950 – Edith Sampson became the first black U.S. delegate to the United Nations.
• 1954 – The Communist Control Act became law, making the American Communist Party illegal.
• 1954 – Vice president João Café Filho became president of Brazil.
• 1963 – During the Buddhist crisis in Vietnam, the US State Department sent a message to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. It encouraged generals to plan a coup against President Ngô Đình Diệm if he didn't remove his brother.
• 1967 – Led by Abbie Hoffman, the Youth International Party briefly stopped trading at the New York Stock Exchange by throwing dollar bills from a viewing area.
• 1970 – Vietnam War protesters bombed Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
• 1981 – Mark David Chapman was sentenced to prison for murdering John Lennon.
• 1989 – Tadeusz Mazowiecki was chosen as the first non-communist prime minister in Central and Eastern Europe.
• 1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
• 1991 – Ukraine declared itself independent from the Soviet Union.
• 1992 – Hurricane Andrew hit Homestead, Florida as a very strong Category 5 hurricane, causing a lot of damage.
• 1995 – Microsoft Windows 95 was released to the public in North America.
• 1998 – The first test of a radio-frequency identification (RFID) human implant happened in the United Kingdom.
• 2001 – Air Transat Flight 236 lost all engine power over the Atlantic Ocean. The pilots had to make an emergency landing in the Azores.
• 2006 – The International Astronomical Union (IAU) changed the definition of "planet". Because of this, Pluto is now considered a dwarf planet.
• 2008 – Sixty-five passengers died when Iran Aseman Airlines Flight 6895 crashed during an emergency landing in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.
• 2010 – Henan Airlines Flight 8387 crashed in Yichun, China, killing 44 people.
• 2012 – Anders Behring Breivik, who was responsible for the 2011 Norway attacks, was sentenced to 21 years of preventive detention.
• 2014 – A magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area. It was the largest in that area since 1989.
• 2016 – An earthquake hit Central Italy with a magnitude of 6.2. About 300 people died.
• 2016 – Proxima Centauri b, the closest planet outside our solar system to Earth, was discovered.
• 2017 – Taiwan successfully launched its observation satellite Formosat-5 into space.
• 2020 – Erin O’Toole was elected leader of the Conservative Party of Canada.
• 2023 – Japan officially began releasing treated water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean.

Famous Birthdays

Born Before 1900

• 1198 – Alexander II of Scotland, a Scottish king.
• 1358 – John I of Castile, a Spanish king.
• 1552 – Lavinia Fontana, an Italian painter and teacher.
• 1556 – Sophia Brahe, a Danish gardener and astronomer.
• 1591 – Robert Herrick, an English poet.
• 1759 – William Wilberforce, an English politician known for his work against slavery.
• 1772 – William I of the Netherlands, the first King of the Netherlands.
• 1824 – Antonio Stoppani, an Italian geologist and scholar.
• 1852 – Agnes Marshall, an English chef and inventor.
• 1862 – Zonia Baber, an American geographer and geologist.
• 1865 – Ferdinand I of Romania, a Romanian king.
• 1872 – Max Beerbohm, an English writer and caricaturist.
• 1887 – Harry Hooper, an American baseball player.
• 1890 – Duke Kahanamoku, an American swimmer and surfer, known for popularizing surfing.
• 1890 – Jean Rhys, a Dominican-English novelist.
• 1899 – Jorge Luis Borges, a famous Argentine writer.
• 1899 – Albert Claude, a Belgian biologist who won a Nobel Prize.

Born in the 1900s and 2000s

• 1905 – Siaka Stevens, the first President of Sierra Leone.
• 1915 – James Tiptree Jr., an American science fiction author.
• 1922 – René Lévesque, a Canadian journalist and politician, who became Premier of Quebec.
• 1922 – Howard Zinn, an American historian and activist.
• 1927 – Harry Markowitz, an American economist who won a Nobel Prize.
• 1934 – Kenny Baker, an English actor famous for playing R2-D2 in Star Wars.
• 1936 – A. S. Byatt, an English novelist and poet.
• 1945 – Vince McMahon, an American wrestling promoter who co-founded WWE.
• 1947 – Paulo Coelho, a Brazilian author known for The Alchemist.
• 1947 – Stephen Fry, an English actor, writer, and comedian.
• 1948 – Jean Michel Jarre, a French musician and composer.
• 1948 – Sauli Niinistö, the current President of Finland.
• 1951 – Orson Scott Card, an American science fiction author.
• 1957 – Stephen Fry, a well-known English actor, journalist, and producer.
• 1958 – Steve Guttenberg, an American actor.
• 1960 – Cal Ripken Jr., an American baseball player known for his long playing streak.
• 1961 – Jared Harris, an English actor.
• 1963 – Hideo Kojima, a famous Japanese video game designer.
• 1965 – Marlee Matlin, an American actress.
• 1965 – Reggie Miller, an American basketball player.
• 1968 – Andreas Kisser, a Brazilian guitarist from the band Sepultura.
• 1973 – Dave Chappelle, an American comedian and actor.
• 1973 – Inge de Bruijn, a Dutch swimmer who won Olympic medals.
• 1977 – John Green, an American author and vlogger.
• 1981 – Chad Michael Murray, an American actor.
• 1988 – Rupert Grint, an English actor famous for playing Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films.
• 1997 – Alan Walker, a British-Norwegian DJ and record producer.
• 1998 – Sofia Richie, an American model and social media personality.

Notable Deaths

Died Before 1900

• 842 – Emperor Saga, a Japanese emperor.
• 1103 – Magnus Barefoot, a Norwegian king.
• 1217 – Eustace the Monk, a French pirate.
• 1313 – Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor.
• 1540 – Parmigianino, an Italian painter.
• 1572 – Gaspard II de Coligny, a French admiral.
• 1595 – Thomas Digges, an English mathematician and astronomer.
• 1617 – Rose of Lima, a Peruvian saint.
• 1680 – Ferdinand Bol, a Dutch painter.
• 1770 – Thomas Chatterton, an English poet.
• 1832 – Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, a French physicist and engineer.
• 1888 – Rudolf Clausius, a German physicist and mathematician.

Died in the 1900s and 2000s

• 1940 – Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, a Polish-German inventor who created the Nipkow disk, important for early television.
• 1943 – Simone Weil, a French philosopher and activist.
• 1954 – Getúlio Vargas, a Brazilian lawyer and politician who served as President of Brazil.
• 1956 – Kenji Mizoguchi, a Japanese film director.
• 1967 – Henry J. Kaiser, an American businessman who founded Kaiser Shipyards.
• 1978 – Louis Prima, an American singer and trumpet player.
• 1979 – Hanna Reitsch, a German pilot.
• 1980 – Yootha Joyce, an English actress.
• 1990 – Sergei Dovlatov, a Russian-American journalist and author.
• 1998 – E. G. Marshall, an American actor.
• 2001 – Jane Greer, an American actress.
• 2004 – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a Swiss-American psychiatrist known for her work on grief.
• 2010 – Satoshi Kon, a Japanese director and screenwriter.
• 2013 – Julie Harris, an American actress.
• 2014 – Richard Attenborough, a famous English actor, director, and producer.
• 2015 – Justin Wilson, an English racing driver.
• 2016 – Walter Scheel, a German politician who served as President of Germany.
• 2021 – Charlie Watts, an English musician, best known as the drummer for The Rolling Stones.
• 2023 – Windham Rotunda, an American professional wrestler.

Holidays and Observances

• Christian feast day:
  • Abbán of Ireland
  • Aurea of Ostia
  • Bartholomew the Apostle (Roman Catholic, Anglican)
  • Jeanne-Antide Thouret
  • Maria Micaela Desmaisieres
  • Massa Candida (Martyrs of Utica)
  • Owen (Audoin)
  • August 24 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
• Flag Day (Liberia)
• Independence Day or Den' Nezalezhnosti, celebrates the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union in 1991.
• International Strange Music Day
• National Waffle Day (United States)
• Nostalgia Night (Uruguay)
• Willka Raymi (Cusco, Peru)

See also

A friendly robot waving.

In Spanish: 24 de agosto para niños