April 24
| 858 | St. Nicholas I begins his reign as Catholic Pope. | |
| 1519 | Envoys of Montezuma II attend the first Easter mass in Central America. | |
| 1547 | Charles V's troops defeat the Protestant League of Schmalkalden at the battle of Muhlburg. | |
| 1558 | Mary, Queen of Scotland, marries the French dauphin, Francis. | |
| 1792 | Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle composes "La Marseilles". It will become France's national anthem. | |
| 1800 | The Library of Congress is established in Washington, D.C. with a $5,000 allocation. | |
| 1805 | U.S. Marines attack and capture the town of Derna in Tripoli from the Barbary pirates. | |
| 1833 | A patent is granted for first soda fountain. | |
| 1877 | Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire. | |
| 1884 | Otto von Bismarck cables Cape Town, South Africa that it is now a German colony. | |
| 1898 | Spain declares war on United States, rejecting an ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba. | |
| 1915 | Turks of the Ottoman Empire begin massacring the Armenian minority in their country. | |
| 1916 | Irish nationalists launch the Easter Uprising against British occupation. | |
| 1944 | The first B-29 arrives in China, over the Hump of the Himalayas. | |
| 1948 | The Berlin airlift begins to relieve surrounded city. | |
| 1953 | Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. | |
| 1961 | President John Kennedy accepts "sole responsibility" for the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. | |
| 1968 | Leftist students take over Columbia University in protest over the Vietnam War. | |
| 1980 | A rescue attempt of the U.S. hostages held in Iran fails when a plane collides with a helicopter in the Iranian desert. | |
| 1981 | The IBM Personal Computer is introduced. | |
| 1989 | Thousands of Chinese students strike in Beijing for more democratic reforms. | |
| Born on April 24 | ||
| 1620 | John Graunt, statistician, founder of demography. | |
| 1743 | Edmund Cartwright, English parson who invented the power loom. | |
| 1766 | Robert Bailey Thomas, founder of the Farmer's Almanac. | |
| 1769 | Arthur Wellesley, general during the Napoleonic Wars, Duke of Wellington. | |
| 1815 | Anthony Trollope, British novelist. | |
| 1856 | Henri Philippe Pétain, French Marshall, WWI hero, Nazi collaborator. | |
| 1900 | Elizabeth Goudge, English author. | |
| 1904 | Willem de Kooning, abstract impressionist painter. | |
| 1905 | Robert Penn Warren, novelist, America's first poet laureate. | |
| 1906 | William Joyce, 'Lord Haw-Haw,' British traitor, Nazi propagandist. | |
