Today In History - August 24

79 Mount Vesuvius erupts and buries Pompeii and Herculaneum in hot ashes
410 Rome is overrun by the Visigoths, the fall of Western Roman Empire
1572 King Charles IX orders the massacre of thousands of French Protestants
1662 Act of Uniformity requires the English to accept the Book of Common Prayer
1751 Thomas Colley is executed in England for drowning a supposed witch
1814 The British sack Washington, DC and burn the White House
1853 The first potato chips are prepared: Chef George Crum in Saratoga Springs, NY
1854 The national emigration convention meets in Cleveland
1869 The waffle iron is invented
1891 Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera
1909 Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal
1912 New York City ticker tape parade for Jim Thorpe and the victorious US Olympians
1912 The Territory of Alaska is organized
1912 The US passes the Anti-Gag law: giving federal employees the right to petition the government
1932 The first transcontinental non-stop flight by a woman: Amelia Earhart
1936 The Australian Antarctic Territory is created
1939 Germany and the USSR sign a 10-year non-aggression pact
1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is established
1950 The first US Negro delegate to the UN is appointed: ES Sampson
1950 Operation Magic Carpet: 45,000 Yemenite Jews move to Israel
1954 The Communist Control Act is passed at height of 'McCarthyism'
1954 The International Amateur Athletic Federation recognizes Red China
1956 The first non-stop transcontinental helicopter flight arrived in Washington, DC
1959 Hiram L. Fong is sworn in as first Chinese-American senator: Hawaii
1959 Daniel K. Inouye is sworn in as first Japanese-American Representative: Hawaii
1960 -127°F recorded in Vostok, Antarctica (world record)
1960 60 people die when a bus plunges off a bridge into the Turvo River in Brazil
1961 Former Nazi leader Johannes Vorster becomes South Africa's Minister of Justice
1963 John Pennel becomes the first to pole-vault 17'
1966 The USSR launches Luna 11 for orbit around Moon
1967 The Liberian flag designed
1968 France became the world's 5th thermonuclear power
1970 A bomb kills 1 person at the University of Wisconsin's Army Math Research Center
1972 Gordie Howe and Jean Beliveau are inducted in Hockey Hall of Fame
1976 The Soyuz 21 returns to Earth
1979 The UN's Vienna office begins issuing postage stamps
1981 Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life for (Beatle) Lennon's murder
1984 Pat Bradley set the LPGA record for 9: 28 (in Denver)
1989 Pete Rose is suspended from baseball for life for gambling
1989 The Voyager II flies past Neptune
1990 Iraqi troops surround the US and other embassies in Kuwait City
1991 Gorbachev resigns as the head of the USSR Communist Party
1991 The Ukraine declares its independence from the USSR

1113 Geoffrey Plantagenet
1210 Floris IV, Count of Holland
1420 Albrecht van Eyb
1531 Ercole Bottrigari
1579 John Amner
1591 Robert Herrick
1669 Alessandro Marcello
1683 Meinrad Spiess
1712 Cornelis Douwes
1725 Johann Balthasar Kehl
1733 David Traugott Nicolai
1750 M Laetitia Bonaparte-Ramolino
1759 Wilbur Wilberforce
1772 Willem I Frederik
1787 James Weddell
1808 Benjamin Grubb Humphreys
1808 Thomas Fenwick Drayton
1816 Daniel Gooch
1817 Aleksei K. Tolstoi
1820 Jacopo Tomadini
1821 Emmanuele Muzio
1827 Walter Husted Stevens
1828 George Hume "Maryland" Stuart
1837 Theodore Dubois
1839 Eduard Napravnik
1854 Nikolay Vladimirovich Scherbachov
1856 Felix Mottl
1872 Max Beerbohm
1879 Rentaro Taki
1890 Duke Kahanamoku
1890 Franz Philipp
1891 Alexander Mikhaylovich Dzegelyonok
1891 Germaine Loosveldt
1894 Jean Rhys
1896 Phil Baker
1898 Albert Claude
1898 Malcolm Cowley
1898 Marie J. Hugenholtz
1899 Johan J. Fabricius
1899 Jorge Luis Borges
1899 Ruth Schaumann
1900 Preston Foster
1900 Vasa Prihoda
1902 Fernand Braudel
1904 Rod Redwing
1905 Donald Douglas
1905 Sven Johan Stolpe
1909 Ronnie Grieveson
1910 Bernhard Heiden
1911 Karl A.F. Schiller
1911 Leo Ferre
1912 Durward Kirby
1913 Dorothy Comingore
1915 Alice Sheldon
1915 Wynonie Harris
1922 Rene Levesque
1923 Helena Carter
1924 Louis Teicher
1927 Roger Danneels
1927 William V. Shannon
1929 William Winfield
1932 Richard Graham Meale
1934 Kenny Baker
1934 Roger Donald Dickerson
1936 Kenny Guinn
1936 William J. Coyne
1938 David Freiberg
1938 Mason Williams
1940 Don Cormier, Sr.
1940 Tony Secunda
1941 Ernest Wright, Jr.
1942 Joe Chambers
1942 Karen Keskulla Uhlenbeck
1943 John Cipollina
1944 Gregory Bruce Jarvis
1944 Jim Capaldi
1945 Ken Hensley
1945 Malcolm "Mollie" Duncan
1946 Richard "Dick" N. Richards
1947 Joe Manchin
1949 Anna Lee Fisher
1949 Joe Regalbuto
1949 Stephen Harrison Paulus
1950 Frank Murray
1951 Jimmy Farrar
1951 Orson Scott Card
1955 Jeffrey Daniel
1955 Mike Huckabee
1956 Gerry Cooney
1957 Stephen Fry
1958 Steve Guttenberg
1959 Adrian Kuiper
1959 Michel Valke
1960 Cal Ripken
1960 David Guillory
1960 Franz Vienboeck
1960 Kris Monaghan
1960 Steven W. Lindsey
1961 Cal Ripkin, Jr.
1961 Colin Angus
1961 Mark "Bedders" Bedfored
1962 Craig Kilborn
1962 Mary Ellen Weber
1963 John Bush
1964 Pebbles
1964 Salizhan Sharkirovich Sharipov
1965 Casey Lambert
1965 Marlee Matlin
1965 Reggie Miller
1965 Vince Alcalde
1968 Andreas Kisser
1968 Arnold Galesloot
1968 Benoit Brunet
1968 Tim Salmon
1970 Dan Henderson
1970 Sandra Whyte
1972 Chris Right
1972 Christian Ruud
1972 Ian Moran
1972 Kurt Miller
1972 Lee DeRamus
1973 Andrew Brunette
1973 Barret Oliver
1974 Archie Amerson
1974 Tony McCombs
1976 Bjorn van der Doelen
1976 Nordin Wooter
1978 Melissa McElroy