Today In History – This Day In History Funny Events

Theodosius I, also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman emperor from 379 to 395. He won two civil wars and was instrumental in establishing the Nicene Creed as the orthodox doctrine for Nicene Christianity. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule the entire Roman Empire before its administration was permanently split between the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. He ended the Gothic War (376–382), but did so on terms disadvantageous to the empire, with the Goths remaining and politically autonomous within Roman territory, albeit as nominal allies.

Theodosius I makes his adventus, or formal entry, into Constantinople.

Leszek the White was Prince of Sandomierz and High Duke of Poland in the years 1194–1198, 1199, 1206–1210, and 1211–1227. During the early stages of his reign, his uncle Duke Mieszko III the Old and cousin Władysław III Spindleshanks, from the Greater Polish branch of the royal Piast dynasty, contested Leszek's right to be High Duke.

Polish Prince Leszek the White is assassinated at an assembly of Piast dukes at Gąsawa.

Mont Granier (1,933m) is a limestone mountain located between the départements of Savoie and Isère in France. It lies in the Chartreuse Mountains range of the French Prealps between the towns of Chapareillan and Entremont-le-Vieux. Its east face overlooks the valley of Grésivaudan and Combe de Savoie, and the north face overlooks Chambéry. At 900 meters tall, Mont Granier has one of the highest cliffs in France.

In the middle of the night a mass on the north side of Mont Granier suddenly collapsed, in one of the largest historical rockslope failures known in Europe.

The Hundred Years' War was a conflict between the kingdoms of England and France and a civil war in France during the Late Middle Ages. It emerged from feudal disputes over the Duchy of Aquitaine and was triggered by a claim to the French throne made by Edward III of England. The war grew into a broader military, economic, and political struggle involving factions from across Western Europe, fuelled by emerging nationalism on both sides. The periodisation of the war typically charts it as taking place over 116 years. However, it was an intermittent conflict which was frequently interrupted by external factors, such as the Black Death, and several years of truces.

Hundred Years' War: Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges La Charité.

The Battle of Solway Moss took place on Solway Moss near the River Esk on the English side of the Anglo-Scottish border in November 1542 between English and Scottish forces.

Battle of Solway Moss: An English army defeats a much larger Scottish force near the River Esk in Dumfries and Galloway.

Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer and explorer, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He was the first European to reach New Zealand, which he named Staten Landt. He was also the eponym of Tasmania.

Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).

The Texas Ranger Division, also known as the Texas Rangers and nicknamed the Diablos Tejanos, is an investigative law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction in the U.S. state of Texas, based in the capital city Austin. The Texas Rangers have investigated crimes ranging from murder to political corruption, acted in riot control and as detectives, protected the governor of Texas, tracked down fugitives, served as a security force at important state locations, including the Alamo, and functioned as a paramilitary force at the service of both the Republic (1836–1846) and the State of Texas. Today they also conduct cybercrime investigations, cold case reviews, public corruption probes, and provide tactical support in major emergencies.

The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers (which is now the Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety).

The Battle of Lottorf was fought between Denmark, and the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, on November 24, 1850, at Lottorf in Schleswig and was the final battle of the First Schleswig War. The Danish forces under Christian Bauditz won the battle.

Danish troops defeat a Schleswig-Holstein force in the town of Lottorf, Schleswig-Holstein.

Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from a common ancestor is now generally accepted and considered a fundamental scientific concept. In a joint presentation with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history and was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.

Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

The American Civil War was a civil war in the United States between the Union and the Confederacy, which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve African American slavery, which they saw as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North.

American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain: Near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.

Anna Sewell was an English novelist who wrote the 1877 novel Black Beauty, her only published work. It is considered one of the top ten best-selling novels for children, although the author intended it for adults. Sewell died only five months after the publication of Black Beauty, but long enough to see her only novel become a success.

Anna Sewell's animal welfare novel Black Beauty is published.

The Massillon Tigers were an early professional football team from Massillon, Ohio. Playing in the "Ohio League", the team was a rival to the pre-National Football League version of the Canton Bulldogs. The Tigers won Ohio League championships in 1903, 1904, 1905, and 1906, then merged to become "All-Massillons" to win another title in 1907. The team returned as the Tigers in 1915 but, with the reemergence of the Bulldogs, only won one more Ohio League title. Pro football was popularized in Ohio when the amateur Massillon Tigers hired four Pittsburgh pros to play in the season-ending game against Akron. At the same time, pro football declined in the Pittsburgh area, and the emphasis on the pro game moved west from Pennsylvania to Ohio.

A 13-6 victory by the Massillon Tigers over their rivals, the Canton Bulldogs, for the "Ohio League" Championship, leads to accusations that the championship series was fixed and results in the first major scandal in professional American football.

Milwaukee is the most populous city in the state of Wisconsin. Located on the western coast of Lake Michigan, it is the 31st-most populous city in the United States and the fifth-most populous city in the Midwest with a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census. The Milwaukee metropolitan area, with over 1.57 million residents, is the 40th-largest metropolitan area in the nation. It is the county seat of Milwaukee County.

In Milwaukee, nine members of the Milwaukee Police Department are killed by a bomb, the most deaths in a single event in U.S. police history until the September 11 attacks in 2001.

The Irish Republican Army (IRA) is a name used by various resistance organisations in Ireland throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Organisations by this name have been dominantly Catholic and dedicated to anti-imperialism through Irish republicanism, the belief that all of Ireland should be an independent republic free from British colonial rule.

Nine Irish Republican Army members are executed by an Irish Free State firing squad. Among them is author Robert Erskine Childers, who had been arrested for illegally carrying a revolver.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the primary federal law enforcement agency in the United States and also the American domestic intelligence and security service. An agency of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. A leading American counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes. The FBI maintains a list of its top 10 most wanted fugitives.

In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.

The Senegalese Socialist Party was a political party in Senegal. PSS was founded in July 1934 by Lamine Guèye, as a split from the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO). Guèye was the party president, Armand Angrand general secretary and Maître Vidal, Charles Graziani and Amadou Assane Ndoye vice-presidents.

The Senegalese Socialist Party holds its second congress.

Slovakia, officially the (First) Slovak Republic, and from 14 March until 21 July 1939 officially known as the Slovak State, was a partially-recognized clerical fascist client state of Nazi Germany which existed between 14 March 1939 and 4 April 1945 in Central Europe. The Slovak part of Czechoslovakia declared independence with German support one day before the German occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. It controlled most of the territory of present-day Slovakia, without its current southern parts, which were ceded by Czechoslovakia to Hungary in 1938. The puppet state was the first formally independent Slovak state in history. Bratislava was declared the capital city.

World War II: The First Slovak Republic becomes a signatory to the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis powers.

Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act and introduced as An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States, was a policy under which the United States supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, France, the Republic of China, and other Allied nations of the Second World War with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and 1945. The aid was given free of charge on the basis that such help was essential for the defense of the United States.

World War II: The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French Forces.

The Battle of Makin was an engagement of the Pacific campaign of World War II, fought from 20 to 24 November 1943 on Makin Atoll in the Gilbert Islands.

World War II: at the battle of Makin the USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed near Tarawa and sinks, killing 650 men.

The 73d Air Division is an inactive United States Air Force unit. Its last assignment was with Air Defense Command at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, where it was inactivated on 1 April 1966.

World War II: The 73rd Bombardment Wing launches the first attack on Tokyo from the Northern Mariana Islands.

West Berlin was a political enclave which comprised the western part of Berlin from 1948 until 1990, during the Cold War. Although West Berlin was de jure not part of West Germany, lacked any sovereignty, and was under military occupation until German reunification in 1990, the territory was claimed by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The legality of this claim was contested by the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries, although West Berlin de facto aligned itself politically with the FRG from May 1949, was thereafter directly or indirectly represented in its federal institutions, and most of its residents were citizens of the FRG.

The West Berlin branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany forms a separate party, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin.

That Was the Week That Was, informally TWTWTW or TW3, is a satirical television comedy programme that aired on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963. It was devised, produced, and directed by Ned Sherrin and Jack Duncan, and presented by David Frost.

The influential British satirical television programme That Was the Week That Was is first broadcast.

Lee Harvey Oswald was a U.S. Marine veteran who assassinated John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963.

In the first live, televised murder, Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is murdered two days after the assassination, by Jack Ruby, a nightclub operator, in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters. Oswald was being led by two detectives to an armoured car to take him to the nearby county jail.

Mobutu Sese Seko Nkuku Ngbendu wa za Banga, often shortened to Mobutu Sese Seko or Mobutu and also known by his initials MSS, was a Congolese politician and military officer who was the first and only president of Zaire from 1971 to 1997. Previously, Mobutu served as the second president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, from 1965 to 1971. He also served as the fifth chairperson of the Organisation of African Unity from 1967 to 1968. During the Congo Crisis in 1960, Mobutu, then serving as Chief of Staff of the Congolese Army, deposed the nation's democratically elected government of Patrice Lumumba with the support of the U.S. and Belgium. Mobutu installed a government that arranged for Lumumba's execution in 1961, and continued to lead the country's armed forces until he took power directly in a second coup in 1965.

Joseph-Désiré Mobutu seizes power in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and becomes President; he rules the country (which he renames Zaire in 1971) for over 30 years, until being overthrown by rebels in 1997.

TABSO Flight 101 was a scheduled service of the Bulgarian national airline from Sofia, Bulgaria, via Budapest, Hungary, and Prague, Czechoslovakia, to Berlin Schönefeld Airport in East Germany. The service was operated by the airline's 1960s' flagship equipment, the Ilyushin Il-18B airliner. On Thursday 24 November 1966, due to bad weather the aircraft was diverted to Bratislava airport, but when the flight resumed, the aircraft crashed into the surrounding hills shortly after takeoff, with the loss of 82 lives. The crash site is within modern-day Slovakia, and is considered that country's deadliest aviation disaster.

Bulgarian TABSO Flight 101 crashes near Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, killing all 82 people on board.

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo was conceived during Project Mercury and executed after Project Gemini. It was conceived in 1960 as a three-person spacecraft during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal for the 1960s of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in an address to the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961.

Apollo program: The Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to land on the Moon.

Washington is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is often referred to as Washington state to distinguish it from the national capital, both named after George Washington, a U.S. Founding Father and the first U.S. president. Washington borders the Pacific Ocean to the west, Oregon to the south, and Idaho to the east and shares an international border with the Canadian province of British Columbia to the north. Olympia is the state capital, and the most populous city is Seattle.

During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (aka D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money. He has never been found.

The Autobahn is the federal controlled-access highway system in Germany. The official term is Bundesautobahn, which translates as 'federal motorway'. The literal meaning of the word Bundesautobahn is 'Federal Auto(mobile) Track'.

A national speed limit is imposed on the Autobahn in Germany because of the 1973 oil crisis. The speed limit lasts only four months.

Donald Carl Johanson is an American paleoanthropologist. He is best known for discovering the fossil of a female hominin australopithecine known as "Lucy" in the Afar Triangle region of Hadar, Ethiopia.

Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed "Lucy" (after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.

The 1976 Çaldıran–Muradiye earthquake occurred at 14:22 local time on 24 November. The epicenter was located near Çaldıran, 20 km northeast of Muradiye, in the Van Province of eastern Turkey. The earthquake had a magnitude of 7.3 with a maximum intensity of X (Extreme) on the Mercalli intensity scale. The area of severe damage, where over 80% of the buildings were destroyed, covered an area of 2,000 square kilometres. There were between 4,000 and 5,000 casualties.

The Çaldıran-Muradiye earthquake in eastern Turkey kills between 4,000 and 5,000 people.

The 2012 Dhaka garment factory fire broke out on 24 November 2012, in the Tazreen Fashion factory in the Ashulia district on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh. At least 117 people were confirmed dead in the fire, and over 200 were injured, making it the deadliest factory fire in the nation's history. The cause of the fire was not determined. It was initially presumed to be caused by an electrical short circuit, the cause of 80% of factory fires in Bangladesh. A widely criticized government report alleged an act of "sabotage", without identifying who committed it or why. This fire and others similar to it have led to numerous proposed reforms in workers' rights and safety laws in Bangladesh.

A fire at a clothing factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, kills at least 112 people.

Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the northeast, Afghanistan to the east, Pakistan to the southeast, and the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf to the south. With a population of 92.4 million, Iran ranks 17th globally in both geographic size and population and is the sixth-largest country in Asia. Iran is divided into five regions with 31 provinces. Tehran is the nation's capital, largest city, and financial center.

Iran signs an interim agreement with the P5+1 countries, limiting its nuclear program in exchange for reduced sanctions.

The Russian Air Force is a branch of the Russian Aerospace Forces, which was formed on 1 August 2015, with the merging of the Russian Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Defence Forces. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the reborn Russian armed forces began to be created on 7 May 1992 following Boris Yeltsin's creation of the Ministry of Defence. However, the Russian Federation's air force can trace its lineage and traditions back to the Imperial Russian Air Service (1912–1917) and the Soviet Air Forces (1918–1991).

A Russian Air Force Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jet is shot down by the Turkish Air Force over the Syria-Turkey border, killing one of the two pilots; a Russian marine is also killed during a subsequent rescue effort.

The Arish hotel bombing was a terrorist attack on a hotel in the coastal city of Al-Arish, Egypt, on 24 November 2015. A group of militants approached the heavily guarded hotel with a car bomb, but Egyptian security forces opened fire at the vehicle, blowing it up before it could reach the building. One of the two attackers managed to get inside the hotel, where a number of people were injured and killed as a result of gunfire and a subsequent suicide bombing. Authorities reported at least seven dead, including two judges who had been in Al-Arish to supervise the country's second round of parliamentary elections, held the day before. The Islamic State's Wilayat Sinai offshoot claimed responsibility in a statement released later the same day.

A terrorist attack on a hotel in Al-Arish, Egypt, kills at least seven people and injures 12 others.

On 24 November 2015, a bus carrying Tunisian presidential guards exploded, killing 12, on a principal road in Tunis, Tunisia. IS claimed responsibility for the attack. The bomber, who also died in the attack, was identified as Houssem Abdelli.

An explosion on a bus carrying Tunisian Presidential Guard personnel in Tunisia's capital Tunis leaves at least 14 people dead.