TODAY in HISTORY
Today is Saturday, June 24, the 175th day of 2017. There are 190 days left in the year.
1374 A sudden outbreak of St. John’s Dance causes people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to hallucinate and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapse from exhaustion. 1497 John Cabot lands in North America at Newfoundland leading the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings. Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon are crowned King and Queen of England. 1571 Miguel López de Legazpi founds Manila, the capital of the Republic of the Philippines. 1597 The first Dutch voyage to the East Indies reaches Banten, Java. 1604 Samuel de Champlain discovers the mouth of the Saint John River, site of Reversing Falls and the present day city of Saint John, New 1717 Brunswick, Canada. The Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Masonic Grand Lodge in the world (now the United Grand Lodge of England), is founded in London. 1793 The first Republican constitution in France is adopted. 1880 First performance of
O Canada, the song that would become the national anthem of Canada, at the Congrès national des Canadiens-Français. 1916 Mary Pickford becomes the first female film star to sign a million-dollar contract. 1938 Pieces of a meteorite, estimated to have weighed 450 metric tonnes when it hit the Earth’s atmosphere and exploded, land near Pennsylvania. 1939 Siam is renamed Thailand by Plaek Phibunsongkhram, the country’s third Prime Minister. 1940 World War II: Operation Collar, the first British Commando raid on occupied France, by No 11 Independent Company. 1947 Kenneth Arnold makes the first widely reported UFO sighting near Mount Rainier, Washington. 1973 The UpStairs Lounge arson attack takes place at a gay bar located on the second floor of the building at 141 Chartres Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 32 people die as a result of fire or smoke inhalation. 1982 British Airways Flight 9 flies into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines. 2002 The Igandu train disaster in Tanzania kills 281, the worst train accident in African history. 2012 Lonesome George, the last known Chelonoidis nigra abingdonii, a subspecies of the Galápagos tortoise, dies.