Following are some of the major events to have occurred on June 24:
1901 – The first exhibition by the 19-year-old painter Pablo Picasso opened in Paris to critical acclaim.
1908 – Grover Cleveland, twice U.S. president, died.
1916 – The first Battle of the Somme began in World War One.
1948 – The Soviet Union began a blockade of Berlin, stopping all land traffic entering the city from West Germany.
1973 – Eamon de Valera resigned as president of Ireland at the age of 90.
2001 – The Philippines’ Mayon volcano erupted, spitting out flaming ash and boulders “as big as trucks” and causing at least 25,000 people to flee.
2002 – In Tanzania, a passenger train, travelling from Dar es Salaam to the northwestern town of Kigoma, rolled backwards on the track crashing into a cargo train killing 281.
2004 – Iraqi insurgents bloodied five cities with coordinated assaults on local security forces in which over 100 people were killed and more than 320 were wounded.
2007 – Saddam Hussein’s cousin, widely known as “Chemical Ali”, was sentenced to hang for masterminding a genocidal military campaign that used poison gas against Iraq’s Kurds in the 1980s.
2010 – John Isner, Nicolas Mahut play longest match in tennis history.
2012 – Wyoming forest fire starts, eventually displacing thousands from their homes.
