June 24 in History
1128 — Portuguese forces led by Afonso Henriques defeat the forces of his mother Teresa of Portugal at the Battle of São Mamede. He becomes the first king of Portugal, Afonso I, in 1139. He secures Portugal’s independence from the Kingdom of León with the Treaty of Zamora on October 5 1143.
1509 — Henry VIII is crowned king of England.
1519 — Lucrezia Borgia, 39, daughter of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo de Borja y Doms) and Roman noblewoman Vannozza Catanei, dies in Ferrara, Italy, 10 days after the birth of her 10th child.
1895 — Jack Dempsey, world heavyweight boxing champion (1919-26), is born in Manassa, Colorado. 1895 — A coup ends the 150-year absolute monarchy in Thailand.
1947 — Private pilot Kenneth Arnold sees a string of nine shiny “unidentified flying objects” over Mount Rainier, the highest of the Cascade Range in the US state of Washington. He claims they were travelling at a minimum of 1 932km/h and looked like saucers skidding across water. The press coins “flying saucer” and “flying disc” as popular terms for UFOs. Several witnesses in other states report the same sightings. 1948 — The Berlin Blockade (June 24 1948-May 12 1949), one of the first major international crises of the Cold War, starts. The Soviets sever land and water connections between the non-Soviet zones and Berlin, and halt all rail and barge traffic in and out of Berlin. The Western Allies answer with a counterblockade, stopping all rail traffic into East Germany from the British and US zones, and organise the Berlin airlift (June 26 1948-September 30 1949) to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin.
1973 — Danie Malan, South African middle-distance athlete, sets a new world record of 2:16.0 in the 1 000m, two days before his 23rd birthday.
1987 — Lionel Messi, Argentinian footballer (fivetime Fifa World Player of the Year) is born in Rosario. 1997 — The US Air Force releases a 231-page report titled “Case Closed: Final Report on the Roswell Crash”, suggesting the alien bodies witnesses reported seeing near Roswell in July 1947 were lifesized anthropomorphic test dummies.
1997 — It is reported that Dennis Hope from Rio Vista, California, is running a lucrative business selling Moon real estate at $15.99 for 1 777 acres plus tax and shipping. He starts his business, the Lunar Embassy Commission, in 1980 and in 2013 claims to have sold “611 million acres of land on the Moon,
325 million on Mars, and a combined 125 million on Venus, Io (Jupiter 1) and Mercury”.
2003 — President Vladimir Putin arrives in London on the first visit by a Russian leader to Britain since Tsar Alexander II in 1874.