ON MARCH 24 ...

In 1603 the crowns of England and Scotland were joined under Scotland’s James VI, who began his reign as James I.

In 1882 German scientist Robert Koch announced in Berlin that he had discovered the bacillus responsible for tuberculosis.

In 1883 long-distance telephone service was inaugurated between Chicago and New York.

In 1924 Greece was proclaimed a republic.

In 1974 Uganda crushed a coup attempt against President

Idi Amin following a machine gun and mortar battle with rebels.

In 1989 the Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and began leaking 11 million gallons of crude.

In 1999 NATO launched airstrikes against Yugoslavia, marking the first time in its 50-year existence that it had ever attacked a sovereign country.

In 2001 three car bombs exploded almost simultaneously in southern Russia, killing 23 people in the worst act of terror to hit Russia outside warring Chechnya in month.

In 2014 a CTA Blue Line train injured more than 30 riders and caused more than $6 million in damage when it derailed and crashed into an escalator at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. (The train operator, Brittney Haywood, 25, admitted to investigators she had “dozed off ” and was later fired.)

In 2015 the co-pilot of a Germanwings Airbus A320 crashed the jetliner into a mountain in France during a flight from Spain to Germany, killing all 150 people aboard; it was later determined that Andreas Lubitz had been suffering from a “depressive illness” and had torn up a note from his doctor saying he was unfit to fly.