Browse Historical Events by Day: What Happened on October 24th?

1860, October 24 - The Second Opium War ends with the signing of the Convention of Peking. The Beijing Convention consists of three individual treaties that China signs, with Great Britain (October 24), France (October 25), and Russia (November 14). More

The first transcontinental telegraph system is completed by Western Union, making it possible to transmit messages rapidly from coast to coast. This technological advance, pioneered by inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, heralded the end of the Pony Express. More

1901, October 24 - Annie Edson Taylor becomes the first person to successfully take the plunge over Niagara Falls inside an oak barrel. She was a 63-year-old at the time. Seventy one years earlier, on October 17,1829, Sam Patch, had survived jumping down the Horseshoe Falls of the Niagara River, on the Canadian side of the border. More

In the French town of Chalons-sur-Marne,U.S. Army Sgt. Edward F. Younger, a decorated World War I veteran, selects the "Unknown Soldier" to be interred in the planned Tomb at Arlington National Cemetery, by laying a spray of white roses upon one of four caskets. The following day, the Unknown Soldier’s casket departed from the port of Le Havre on board the USS Olympia. On November 11, 1921, the Unknown Soldier was placed on a horse-drawn caisson and carried in a procession through Washington, D.C. and across the Potomac River. A state funeral ceremony was held at Arlington National Cemetery's new Memorial Amphitheater and buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C. More

The United Nations is officially established. The United Nations did not come into existence at the signing of the Charter. In many countries the Charter had to be approved by their congresses or parliaments. It had therefore been provided that the Charter would come into force when the Governments of China, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States and most of other signatory states had ratified it and deposited notification to this effect with the State Department of the United States. On October 24, 1945, this condition was fulfilled. More

The Concord makes its final commercial flight. More