View Historical Events by Day: What Happened on July 24 in History?

Abdication of Mary, Queen of Scots. After failing to quash a rebellion of Scottish peers, Mary was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle and forced to abdicate in favor of her one-year-old son. Her abdication was forced as a consequence of having taken as her third husband the man who allegedly murdered her second husband. More

Pioneer Day. Completing a treacherous thousand-mile exodus, an ill and exhausted Brigham Young and fellow members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints arrived in Utah’s Great Salt Lake Valley. The Mormon, as they were commonly known, pioneers viewed their arrival as the founding of a Mormon homeland. hence Pioneer Day. More

American archeologist Hiram Bingham reaches the ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru. Although widely credited with being the first westerner to reach the site, other reports indicate other Europeans had seen it before Bingham, but he was the one who revealed it to the world at large. Local Peruvians, including the expedition's guide, Melchor Arteaga knew of the site. Nine years before Bingham's expedition, Agustin Lizárraga, a local farmer searching for new land for agriculture with some family members came upon Machu Pichu and carved an inscription on a wall in the Temple of the Three Windows that said: "Agustín Lizárraga, July 14th 1902". More

The excursion boat S.S. Eastland, known as the "Speed Queen of the Great Lakes rolles over into the Chicago river at the wharf's edge. More than 2,500 passengers and crew members were on board that day – and 844 people lost their lives, including 22 entire families. More

Operation Gomorrah begins. 791 British bombers took off under cover of darkness toward Hamburg, Germany. The air fleet was composed of British Lancaster, Stirling, Wellington, and Halifax bombers flying in six waves. Each wave had between 100 to 120 aircraft hoping to concentrate as much destruction as possible. More

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev accompanied Vice President Richard Nixon on a tour of the American National Exhibit, a fair sponsored by the United States to show the Soviet people how Americans lived. At the exhibit, with a team of journalists and photographers trailing them, the two leaders had a series of impromptu exchanges about the merits and flaws of their respective economies and political systems. One exchange took place during a visit to the model American kitchen featured in the exhibit which gave birth to the "Kitchen Debate" name. More