1558: Mary, Queen of Scots marries the 14-year-old French dauphin, the future Francis II, in a theatrical wedding at Notre Dame in Paris. The pair had been engaged for ten years and had grown up together. In Edinburgh, the great bombard Mons Meg is fired in celebration of the marriage. The following year Francis’s father, Henry II, is mortally wounded in a jousting accident and the young married couple are crowned king and queen of France. Eighteen months later the sickly Francis dies of an ear infection and Mary returns to Scotland.
1567: Mary Queen of Scots is forced to abdicate; her 1-year-old son becomes King James VI of Scots.
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1832: Benjamin Bonneville leads the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains by Wyoming’s South Pass
1858: Republican senatorial candidate Abraham Lincolnformally challenges Democrat Stephen A. Douglas to a series of political debates; the result would be seven face-to-face encounters.
On July 24, 1911, American archeologist Hiram Bingham gets his first look at the ruins of Machu Picchu, an ancient Inca settlement in Peru that is now one of the world’s top tourist destinations.
Tucked away in the rocky countryside northwest of Cuzco, Machu Picchu is believed to have been a summer retreat for Inca leaders, whose civilization was virtually wiped out by Spanish invaders in the 16th century. For hundreds of years afterwards, its existence was a secret known only to the peasants living in the region. That all changed in the summer of 1911, when Bingham arrived with a small team of explorers to search for the famous “lost” cities of the Incas
1917: Beginning of Mata Hari’s trial
Dutch-born dancer and courtesan Mata Hari, whose name became a synonym for the seductive female spy, went on trial this day in 1917, accused of spying for Germany, and was subsequently found guilty and shot by a firing squad.
1923: The Treaty of Lausanne is signed between Turkey and the countries that formed the Allied Powers in the First World War
Under the treaty, Turkey had to give up all the territorial claims made by the Ottoman Empire and agree to new borders.
1937: The state of Alabama drops charges against four of the nine young black men accused of raping two white women in the “Scottsboro Case.”
1959: During a visit to Moscow, Vice President Richard Nixon engages in his famous “Kitchen Debate” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
1969: The Apollo 11 astronauts — two of whom had been the first men to set foot on the moon — splash down safely in the Pacific.
1974: Nixon ‘must hand over Watergate tapes’
The US Supreme Court orders President Nixon to surrender tape recordings of White House conversations about the Watergate affair.
1977: The 4-day-long Libyan-Egyptian War comes to an end. The border war began with thousands of Libyans marching towards Egypt’s borders.
2005: American cyclist Lance Armstrong became the first rider to win the Tour de France seven times; however, he was later stripped of all his titles after an investigation revealed that he was the key figure in a wide-ranging doping conspiracy while he compiled his Tour victories.
2009: Ogbonna Onovo appointed Inspector General of the Nigerian Police becoming the first from the South East to hold that position.
2013: Santiago de Compostela derailment. A high-speed train traveling from Madrid to Ferrol derailed on a curve killing 79 people and injuring over 100.
1923 The Treaty of Lausanne is signed between Turkey and the countries that formed the Allied Powers in the First World War. Under the treaty, Turkey had to give up all the territorial claims made by the Ottoman Empire and agree to new borders.
BIRTHS ON THIS DAY: July 24
Clarion Chukwura, 60 years
Clarion Nneka Oluwatoyin Folashade Chukwurah was born on 24 July 1964. She studied Acting and Speech at the Department of Dramatic Arts of Obafemi Awolowo University. She began her career in acting in the year 1980 but became popular when she featured in a soap opera titled “Mirror in the Sun”. She was the first Nigerian to win the Best Actress category at the 1982 FESPACO film festival in Burkina Faso. She is recognized as a United Nations Peace Ambassador for her charity work across Africa.
Jennifer Lopez, 55 years
American actress and singer Jennifer Lopez—who was one of the highest-paid Latina actresses in the history of Hollywood and later found crossover success in the music industry with a series of pop albums—was born on July 24, 1969. She started as a dancer on television’s “In Living Color” before branching out into acting and music. Known familiarly as J. Lo”, she has recorded pop-dance songs in English and Spanish, selling over 70 million records worldwide.
In 2001 she became the first (and so far only) woman to have a number-one album (J. Lo) and film (The Wedding Planner) released in the same week.
She has been an intermittent judge on American Idol starting 2011. In 2019, she co-headlined the Super Bowl halftime show with Shakira to wide acclaim and the largest viewership of the event.
Zelda Fitzgerald (24 July 1900 – 10 March 1948)
Zelda Fitzgerald was an American novelist, painter, playwright, and socialite. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, to a wealthy Southern family, she became locally famous for her beauty and high spirits best known for personifying the carefree ideals of the 1920s flapper. In 1920, she married writer F. Scott Fitzgerald after the popular success of his debut novel, This Side of Paradise. She died at 47.
