History of the Day for:
March 24
- 1765: Britain enacted the Quartering Act, requiring colonists to provide temporary housing to British soldiers.
- 1882: German scientist Robert Koch announced he had discovered the bacillus responsible for tuberculosis.
- 1934: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the U.S. bill granting independence to the Philippines in 1945.
- 1944: In occupied Rome, the Nazis executed more than 300 civilians in reprisal for an attack by Italian partisans the day before that killed 32 German soldiers.
- 1944: World War II: In an event later dramatized in the movie The Great Escape, 76 prisoners begin breaking out of Stalag Luft III.
- 1958: Elvis Presley is officially inducted into the U.S.Army.
- 1949: Walter Huston and son John became the first father-and-son team to win Oscars in one year. Walter took the best supporting actor award and John earned best director for "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."
- 1955: The Tennessee Williams play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" opened on Broadway.
- 1958: Rock-and-roll singer Elvis Presley was inducted into the Army in Memphis, Tenn.
- 1960: A U.S. appeals court ruled that D.H. Lawrence's novel "Lady Chatterly's Lover" was not obscene and could be sent through the mail.
- 1965: NASA spacecraft Ranger 9, equipped to convert its signals into a form suitable for showing on domestic television, brings images of the Moon into ordinary homes before crash landing.
- 1976: The president of Argentina, Isabel Peron, was deposed by her country's military.
- 1980: El Salvador's Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero was assassinated as he celebrated Mass.
- 1988: Former national security aides Oliver L. North and John M. Poindexter and businessmen Richard V. Secord and Albert Hakim pleaded not guilty to Iran-Contra charges.
- 1989: The Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, causing America's largest oil spill.
- 1998: Jonesboro massacre: two students, ages 11 and 13, fire upon teachers and students at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas; five people are killed and ten are wounded.
- 1998: A tornado sweeps through Dantan in India killing 250 people and injuring 3000 others.
- 1999: Kosovo War: NATO commences air bombardment against Yugoslavia, marking the first time NATO has attacked a sovereign country.
- 1999: Mont Blanc Tunnel Fire: 39 people die when a Belgian transport truck carrying flour and margarine catches fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel.
- 2003: The Arab League votes 21-1 in favor of a resolution demanding the immediate and unconditional removal of U.S. and British soldiers from Iraq.
- 2006: Long-term protests in Belarus are broken by police.
- 2008: Bhutan officially becomes a democracy, with its first ever general election.