February 24th Anniversaries

Santo Domingo.- The ephemeris of the 24th of February, are marked by important historical events and international celebrations that left their mark on world history.

• World Bartender Day.

Saint's Day: Saints, Modesto, Edilberto, Lucio, Sergio and Protextato. Saint Primitiva and Modesta

National: February 24th Anniversaries

• 1495. Cristóbal Colón returns from an expedition to La Vega Real, during which he establishes another fortress, with the name of Concepción del Guaricano, seat of the cacique Guarionex, whose submission he obtained.
• - Four caravels from Hispaniola arrive in Spain with a cargo of 400 Indian slaves. 
• 1513. By royal order it is ordered that the sons of caciques who show good disposition be taught in the art of grammar and other sciences.
• 1805. The Haitian Emperor Jean Jacque I (Dessalines) seizes Matas de Farfán.
• 1824. The Governor of the Department of Santo Domingo, Haitian general Gerónimo Maximiliano Borgellá, plants a royal palm in the Plaza de Armas -today Parque Colón- as a symbol of freedom.
• 1844. The main members of La Trinitaria meet clandestinely at the home of Francisco del Rosario Sánchez, to definitively agree on the plans and set an immediate date for independence.
• 1953. The dictator Rafael Trujillo attends the UN General Assembly, accompanied by a large entourage to counteract the hostility that the exiles would mount upon his arrival at the headquarters of the world organization.
• 1962. The President of the Council of State, Rafael F. Bonnelly, participates in a sugarcane cutting day in the Boca Chica sugar mill, to prevent the cane burned by criminal hands from being lost.
• 1979. The Secretary of the Armed Forces, Lieutenant General Rafael Adriano Valdez Hilario, affirmed that the time is not right to reveal the site where the body of Colonel Francisco Caamaño Deñó and his guerrilla comrades was buried in 1973.
• 1988. Amid tensions over protests that paralyze cities in the Cibao and the South, President Joaquín Balaguer asks for the resignation of his cabinet in a surprise speech delivered at midnight.
• 1993. Representatives of the PRD and PLD parties meet for the first time to discuss the formation of a convergence group on political issues of interest to the country and with the express purpose of avoiding electoral fraud in the 1994 elections.
• 2006. President Leonel Fernández signs the so-called “decreto Puente”, which seeks to regulate and make transparent the contracting of goods, services, tenders and state concessions, which would be valid until Congress approves the bill that regulates these activities.
• 2020. The Plenary of the JCE rejects through its resolution 18-2020, the presidential candidacy of Ramfis Domínguez Trujillo, grandson of the executed dictator Rafael Trujillo, presented by the National Party Voluntad Ciudadana, for not presenting the document of his resignation from US nationality.
• -Health authorities are keeping 27 people under epidemiological surveillance to rule out that they are infected with coronavirus, because they arrived from the city of Canton, China, the country where the disease that has claimed the lives of almost 2,663 thousand people originated.

International: February 24th Anniversaries

• 1525. Charles V defeats the French king Francis I in Pavia, and takes him prisoner.
• 1582. Through the papal Bull "Inter Gravissimas", the calendar is reformed in the month of October of the same year.
• 1839. Uruguay declares war on Argentina.      
• 1848. In France, revolutionaries storm the Tuileries Palace in Paris.
• 1883. The Government of Chile dismisses the Delegates of the Holy See.
• 1895. The War of Independence against Spain begins in Cuba.
• 1903. The United States acquires the Guantánamo naval base in Cuba.
• 1945. Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Pasha is assassinated after announcing the declaration of war against Germany.
• 1962. In New York, the false rumor that Cuban President Fidel Castro had taken refuge in the Honduran embassy circulates insistently.
• 1991. The U.S. begins its ground offensive against Iraq for the invasion of Kuwait, with the largest attack recorded since World War II.
• 1994. The Government of Nicaragua and the "recontras" leaders agree to disarm the rebels.
• 1996. Cuban fighter jets shoot down two small planes belonging to the group of exiles based in the United States, Hermanos al Rescate, killing four crew members.
• 1999. The creation of a cloned sheep from an adult animal cell alarms ethics experts in the face of the scientific prospects of recreating life, including human life.
• 2000. As a result of a hunger strike, Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo, 42 years old, dies in the Hermanos Almejeira Hospital, who was part of 75 dissidents arrested in 2003, and sentenced to 25 years in prison.  
• 2006. US President George W. Bush claims to be willing to defy Congress and a good part of his own party, to defend the decision to entrust an Arab company with the operation of six large ports, invoking commercial freedom and dismissing objections for security reasons.
• 2008. The Cuban National Assembly ratifies General Raúl Castro as President of the Republic, after Commander Fidel Castro announced that he would not accept another term as ruler, in a letter published in the Granma newspaper.
• 2013. Pope Benedict XVI prays his last Angelus in St. Peter's Square, with the presence of some 200,000 faithful, pilgrims and tourists, who wanted to say goodbye to the resigning German pontiff.
• 2014. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni signs a law that punishes homosexual acts "with aggravating circumstances" with life imprisonment, sexual orientation classified as a crime.
• -The most veteran congressman in the United States, Democrat John Dingell of Michigan, 87 years old, announces that he will not run again after having served for more than 58 years in the House of Representatives of the country.
• 2020. The Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, makes a dramatic call to the world to "prepare for a potential pandemic", with the probability that what is today an epidemic of Covid-19, caused by the Wuhan coronavirus, will become something bigger. 
• - Dies at the age of 101, in NewPort, Virginia, the American physicist and space scientist Katherine Johnson, who calculated the trajectories of rockets and the orbits of the Earth for the first NASA space missions.  
• 2022. At least 57 Ukrainians died and another 169 were injured during the first day of the Russian attack against Ukraine, although it is not specified whether the affected are civilians and/or soldiers.
• -As a result of the start of Russia's military operation in Ukraine, the price of a barrel of Brent crude oil exceeds $100 for the first time in more than seven years, intensifying fears of a large-scale conflict in eastern Europe.

Births: February 24th Anniversaries

• 1500: Charles of Habsburg, Spanish king and emperor of Germany.
• 1885: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Polish writer, photographer, philosopher, and painter.
• 1950: George Thorogood, American musician.
• 1961: Erna Solberg, Norwegian politician, sociologist, political scientist, stateswoman, and economist, Prime Minister of Norway between 2013 and 2021.
• 2000: José Hernán Palazzo, Argentine racing driver.

Deaths: February 24th Anniversaries

• 1588: Johann Weyer, Dutch physician and demonologist.
• 1894: Canuto Berea Rodríguez, Spanish orchestra conductor, violinist, and composer.
• 2001: Claude Elwood Shannon, American electrical engineer and mathematician.
• 2006: Carlos Martínez Sotomayor, Chilean lawyer, diplomat, and politician.
• 2014: Harold Ramis, American actor, screenwriter, and film director.
• 2021: Philippe Jaccottet, Swiss French-speaking poet and translator.