June 24 is Swim a Lap Day
International Fairy Day
National Pralines Day
Deaf-Blindness Awareness Week
1374 – A sudden outbreak of St. John’s Dance caused people in the streets of Aachen, Germany, to experience hallucinations and begin to jump and twitch uncontrollably until they collapsed from exhaustion.
From toxipedia.org, “St. John’s Dance was the medieval name for a phenomenon which emerged during the time of the Black Death. It was considered a form of nervous system disorder (apraxia) expressing itself as “dancing rage,” as uncontrolled ecstatic body movements. In the eyes of the church, those suffering from St. John’s Dance were possessed by the devil.”
1497 – Italian explorer John Cabot, sailing in the service of England, landed in North America on what is now Newfoundland, on June 24, 1497. It was the first European exploration of the region since the Vikings.
1509 – Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon were crowned King and Queen of England.
New Jersey, named after the Isle of Jersey, was founded in 1664.
King Philip’s War began when Indians massacred colonists at Swansee, Plymouth colony on June 24, 1675.
The saxophone was patented by Adolphe Sax in Paris, France on June 24, 1846.
1908 – Death of Grover Cleveland (born Stephen Grover Cleveland), twenty-second and twenty-fourth President of the United States. He died at Princeton, New Jersey at age 71 of heart failure.
1922 – The American Professional Football Association took the name of The National Football League.
1948 – Start of the Berlin Blockade: the Soviet Union made overland travel between West Germany and West Berlin impossible.
The first television western, Hopalong Cassidy, was aired on NBC on June 24, 1949. It starred William Boyd.
1982 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that no president could be sued for damages connected with actions taken while serving as President of the United States.
1993 – Yale computer science professor Dr. David Gelernter lost the sight in one eye, the hearing in one ear, and part of his right hand after receiving a mailbomb from the Unabomber.