On this day: July 24
An aviation pioneer is born, a lost city is rediscovered, a famous comedy duo performs together for the first time, George Brett flips out and Apollo 11 splashes down, all on this day.
1567: Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate her throne and is replaced by her 1-year-old son James VI. She eventually flees to London, seeking the help of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, but is imprisoned for nearly 19 years before being tried and executed. She is pictured here in a 1583 painting with James, but in reality saw him for the last time when he was 10-months-old.
1567: Mary, Queen of Scots, is forced to abdicate her throne and is replaced by her 1-year-old son James VI. She eventually flees to London, seeking the help of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, but is imprisoned for nearly 19 years before being tried and executed. She is pictured here in a 1583 painting with James, but in reality saw him for the last time when he was 10-months-old.
1701: French officer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founds the trading post at Fort Pontchartrain, which later becomes the city of Detroit, Mich.
1802: French novelist Alexandre Dumas ("The Three Musketeers," "The Count of Monte Cristo") is born just outside Paris, France.
1847: After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young leads 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City. The settlement is shown here in 1850.
1862: Martin Van Buren, the eighth president of the United States, dies in Kinderhook, N.Y., at age 79.
1866: Tennessee becomes the first state to be readmitted to the Union as part of Reconstruction following the American Civil War.
1897: Amelia Earhart, who will go on to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and set many other aviation records, is born in Atchison, Kan.
1900: Zelda Fitzgerald, American novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, is born in Montgomery, Ala.
1901: William Sidney Porter, better known by his pen name O. Henry ("The Gift of the Magi") is released from prison after serving three years for embezzlement from a bank.
1911: Yale University historian Hiram Bingham III re-discovers Peru's Machu Picchu, which he terms "the Lost City of the Incas." For the hundreds of years between the downfall of the Inca and the rediscovery of Machu Picchu, only the local peasants knew about the place.
1915: The passenger ship S.S. Eastland capsizes while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew are killed in the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.
1946: Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis make their official debut together at Atlantic City's 500 Club.
1948: Although he is unnamed in the film, Marvin the Martian makes his first appearance in the Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny cartoon "Haredevil Hare."
1950: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station begins operations with the launch of a Bumper rocket. Bumper rockets carried small payloads up to altitudes of almost 400 kilometers, allowing them to measure attributes including air temperature and cosmic ray impacts.
1952: The western "High Noon," starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly, debuts in New York City.
1952: Film director Gus Van Sant ("Good Will Hunting," "Milk") is born in Louisville, Ky.
1959: At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev have a "Kitchen Debate." Both men argue for their country's industrial accomplishments while also agreeing that the United States and the Soviet Union should be more open with each other.
1963: NBA player Karl Malone is born in Summerfield, La. He would go on to play 18 seasons with the Utah Jazz and one with the Los Angeles Lakers before retiring in 2004.
1964: Former major-leaguer Barry Bonds, who played 22 years for the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants, is born in Riverside, Calif. Allegations of steroid use has overshadowed his records, which include the single-season and career home run records.
1969: Apollo 11 splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
1969: Actress and singer Jennifer Lopez is born in the Bronx, N.Y.
1974: The United States Supreme Court, in United States v. Nixon, unanimously rules that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.
1979: A Miami jury convicts Ted Bundy of first-degree murder in the slayings of two Florida State University sorority sisters. The trial judge imposes death sentences for the murder convictions.
1980: The self-named "Quietly Confident Quartet" of Australia wins the men's 4 x 100 meter medley relay at the Moscow Olympics, the only time the United States has not won the event at Olympic level since its inception in 1960. The United States boycotted the Moscow Olympics in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
1980: Actor Peter Sellers ("Being There," "Dr. Strangelove," "The Pink Panther") dies of a massive heart attack at age 54 in London.
1981: Actress Summer Glau ("Firefly," "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles") is born in San Antonio, Texas.
1982: Actress Anna Paquin ("The Piano," "X-Men" trilogy, "True Blood") is born in Winnipeg, Canada.
1983: In what will become known as "The Pine Tar Incident," Kansas City Royal George Brett hits a game-winning two-run home run in Yankees Stadium, but the home run is nullified and the Yankees given the win after umpires rule Brett had too much pine tar on his bat. An angry Brett charges out of the dugout and is immediately ejected. The Royals protest the game and it is later replayed from the point of Brett's home run, ending in a victory for the Royals.
1998: Russell Eugene Weston Jr. bursts into the United States Capitol and opens fire, killing two police officers. He is later ruled to be incompetent to stand trial due to paranoid schizophrenia and remains in a mental institution.
1998: Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan," starring Tom Hanks, Matt Damon, Edward Burns and Tom Sizemore, debuts in theaters. The film would end up being nominated for 11 Academy Awards and win five, including Best Director for Spielberg.
2001: Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as prime minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office.
2002: The U.S. House expels Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, who had been convicted of bribery, racketeering and tax evasion. He would go on to serve a seven-year sentence in prison.
2005: Lance Armstrong wins his seventh consecutive Tour de France and retires afterward. He later un-retired in 2008 and would compete in two more Tour de France competitions, finishing third in 2009 and 23rd place in 2010.
