24 August

49 BC – Julius Caesar's general Gaius Scribonius Curio is defeated in the Second Battle of the Bagradas River by the Numidians under Publius Attius Varus and King Juba of Numidia. Curio commits suicide to avoid capture.
79 – Mount Vesuvius erupts. The cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae are buried in volcanic ash (note: this traditional date has been challenged, and many scholars believe that the event occurred on October 24).
410 – The Visigoths under king Alaric I begin to pillage Rome.
455 – The Vandals, led by king Genseric, begin to plunder Rome. Pope Leo I requests Genseric not destroy the ancient city or murder its citizens. He agrees and the gates of Rome are opened. However, the Vandals loot a great amount of treasure.
1185 – Sack of Thessalonica by the Normans.
1200 – King John of England, signee of the first Magna Carta, marries Isabella of Angouleme in Bordeaux Cathedral.
1215 – Pope Innocent III declares Magna Carta invalid.
1349 – Six thousand Jews are killed in Mainz after being blamed for the bubonic plague.
1391 – Jews are massacred in Palma de Mallorca.
1456 – The printing of the Gutenberg Bible is completed.
1482 – The town and castle of Berwick upon Tweed is captured from Scotland by an English army
1561 – Willem of Orange marries duchess Anna of Saxony.
1608 – The first official English representative to India lands in Surat.
1662 – The Act of Uniformity requires England to accept the Book of Common Prayer.
1682 – William Penn receives the area that is now the state of Delaware, and adds it to his colony of Pennsylvania.
1690 – Job Charnock of the East India Company establishes a factory in Calcutta, an event formerly considered the founding of the city (in 2003 the Calcutta High Court ruled that the city has no birthday).
1812 – Peninsula War: A coalition of Spanish, British, and Portuguese forces succeed in lifting the two-and-a-half-year-long Siege of Cádiz.
1814 – British troops invade Washington, D.C. and burn down the White House and several other buildings.
1815 – The modern Constitution of the Netherlands is signed.
1816 – The Treaty of St. Louis is signed in St. Louis, Missouri.
1820 – Constitutionalist insurrection at Oporto, Portugal.
1821 – The Treaty of Córdoba is signed in Córdoba, now in Veracruz, Mexico, concluding the Mexican War of Independence from Spain.
1831 – Charles Darwin is asked to travel on HMS Beagle.
1857 – The Panic of 1857 begins, setting off one of the most severe economic crises in United States history.
1870 – The Wolseley Expedition reaches Manitoba to end the Red River Rebellion.
1875 – Captain Matthew Webb became first person to swim the English Channel
1891 – Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera.
1891 – Tomáš Baťa and Antonín Baťa established T. & A. Bata Shoe Company
1898 – Count Muravyov, Foreign Minister of Russia presents a rescript that convoked the First Hague Peace Conference.
1902 – A statue of Joan of Arc is unveiled in Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier.
1909 – Workers start pouring concrete for the Panama Canal.
1912 – Alaska becomes a United States territory.
1914 – World War I: German troops capture Namur.
1929 – Second day of two-day Hebron massacre during the 1929 Palestine riots: Arab attacks on the Jewish community in Hebron in the British Mandate of Palestine, result in the death of 65-68 Jews and the remaining Jews being forced to leave the city.
1931 – France and the Soviet Union sign a neutrality/no attack treaty.
1931 – Resignation of the United Kingdom's Second Labour Government. Formation of the UK National Government.
1932 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to fly across the United States non-stop (from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey).
1933 – The Crescent Limited train derails in Washington, D.C., after the bridge it is crossing is washed out by the 1933 Chesapeake–Potomac hurricane.
1936 – The Australian Antarctic Territory is created.
1937 – In the Spanish Civil War, the Basque Army surrenders to the Italian Corpo Truppe Volontarie following the Santoña Agreement.
1941 – Adolf Hitler orders the cessation of Nazi Germany's systematic T4 euthanasia program of the mentally ill and the handicapped due to protests, although killings continue for the remainder of the war.
1942 – World War II: The Battle of the Eastern Solomons. Japanese aircraft carrier Ryūjō is sunk and US carrier USS Enterprise heavily damaged.
1944 – World War II: Allied troops begin the attack on Paris.
1949 – The treaty creating NATO goes into effect.
1950 – Edith Sampson becomes the first black U.S. delegate to the United Nations.
1954 – The Communist Control Act goes into effect. The American Communist Party is outlawed.
1954 – Getúlio Dornelles Vargas, president of Brazil, commits suicide and is succeeded by João Café Filho.
1963 – Buddhist crisis: As a result of the Xa Loi Pagoda raids, the US State Department cables the US Embassy in Saigon to encourage Army of the Republic of Vietnam generals to launch a coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem if he did not remove his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu.
1963 – Don Schollander swims the 200-metre freestyle in less than 2 minutes for the first time, in a world record time of 1:58.
1967 – Led by Abbie Hoffman, the Youth International Party temporarily disrupts trading at the NYSE by throwing dollar bills from the viewing gallery, causing trading to cease as brokers scramble to grab them.
1981 – Mark David Chapman is sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon.
1989 – Colombian drug barons declare "total war" on the Colombian government.
1989 – Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose is banned from baseball for gambling by Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti.
1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
1991 – Ukraine declares itself independent from the Soviet Union.
1992 – Hurricane Andrew makes landfall just south of Miami as a Category 5 hurricane.
1994 – Initial accord between Israel and the PLO about partial self-rule of the Palestinians on the West Bank.
1998 – First RFID human implantation tested in the United Kingdom.
2001 – Air Transat Flight 236 runs out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean (en route to Lisbon from Toronto) and makes an emergency landing in the Azores.
2004 – Eighty-nine passengers die after two airliners explode after flying out of Domodedovo International Airport, near Moscow. The explosions are caused by suicide bombers (reportedly female) from the Russian Republic of Chechnya.
2006 – The International Astronomical Union (IAU) redefines the term "planet" such that Pluto is now considered a Dwarf Planet.
2010 – In San Fernando, Tamaulipas, Mexico, 72 illegal immigrants were killed by Los Zetas and eventually found dead by Mexican authorities.

Holidays and observances

Christian Feast Day:
Abban of Ireland
Aurea of Ostia
Bartholomew (Roman Catholic, Anglican)
Ouen
August 24 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Earliest date on which Notting Hill Carnival can fall, while August 31 is the latest; celebrated on the last Monday in August and the day before. (Notting Hill)
International Day Against Intolerance, Discrimination and Violence Based on Musical Preferences, Lifestyle and Dress Code
National Day or Den' Nezalezhnosti, celebrates the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union in 1991.
One of the three Mundus patet, a harvest feast involving the dead. (Roman Empire)