| 24 August 79 | Roman Empire [natural disasters] | Mount Vesuvius, in southern Italy, erupts, accompanied by violent earthquakes; Herculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae are buried in ash and their citizens are overcome by poisonous gases. |
| 24 August 79 | Roman Empire [births and deaths] | Pliny the Elder, Roman writer on natural history and other subjects, is killed in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, near Stabiae, in Italy (56). |
| 24 August 1103 | Norway, Ireland [political events] | King Magnus III Barelegs of Norway is defeated and killed at Moycoba while invading Ulster, Ireland; he is succeeded by his sons, Eysten I, Olaf IV, and Sigurd I. |
| 24 August 1227 | Mongol Empire, Central Asia [political events] | When the Mongol leader Genghis Khan dies, leaving behind an army numbering about 129,000, he is succeeded as great khan by his son Ogedai. A subordinate khanate is created for Ogedai's brother Chaghadai in Turkestan. |
| 24 August 1294 | England, Holy Roman Empire, France [treaties] | In the Treaty of Nuremberg, King Edward I of England and the Holy Roman Emperor Adolf I of Nassau make an alliance against France. |
| 24 August 1516 | Ottoman Empire, Mameluke Sultanate, Syria, Palestine, Egypt [wars] | Ottoman armies under Sultan Selim I rout the fractious army of the Mameluke sultan of Egypt, Kansu-al-Guari, at Marj Dabik near Aleppo, Syria, killing Kansu. The Ottomans go on to conquer Syria and Palestine before the end of the year. |
| 24 August 1535–23 June 1537 | Spain, South America [exploration] | The Spanish conquistador Pedro de Mendoza leads an expedition, commissioned by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, to La Plata (modern Argentina/Uruguay/Paraguay) in search of more Inca wealth. He founds temporary settlements on the sites of Buenos Aires, and then Asunción, but dies a failure on the return voyage (23 June 1537). |
| 24 August 1654 | France, Spain, Spanish Netherlands [wars] | A turning point in the Franco-Spanish war occurs when French forces under Marshal Henri de Turenne storm three lines of trenches and expel the Spanish army besieging Arras. Louis II de Bourbon, Prince of Condé, retreats to Cambrai in the Spanish Netherlands. |
| 24–25 August 1875 | UK, France [swimming and diving] | The English swimmer Matthew Webb, a captain in the British Merchant Navy, becomes the first person to swim the English Channel. He takes 21 hours and 45 minutes to cross from Dover, England, to Calais, France. |
| 24 August 1899 | Argentina [births and deaths] | Jorge Luis Borges, Argentine poet, short-story writer, and essayist who establishes the modernist Ultraist movement in South America, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina (–1986). |
| 24 August 1929 | [births and deaths] | Yassir Arafat, Palestinian nationalist politician and president of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from 1969, born in Jerusalem, in the British mandate of Palestine. |
| 24 August 1931 | United Kingdom [political events] | Ramsay MacDonald offers his resignation as Britain's prime minister after the Labour cabinet splits over policies for reducing unemployment, but the following day remains in office to lead a coalition. The Labour Party subsequently expels MacDonald, Philip Snowden, and J H Thomas, who serve with him. |
| 24 August 1940 | Australia, UK [medicine] | Australian pathologist Howard Florey and German-born British biochemist Ernst Chain develop penicillin, in Oxford, England, for general clinical use as an antibiotic, announcing their results in The Lancet. |
| 24 August 1992 | USA [natural disasters] | Hurricane Andrew strikes the coast of south Florida, killing 38 people and leaving about 250,000 people without homes and causing $30 billion of property damage. Insurance claims make this the most expensive natural disaster in US history. |
| 24 August 2006 | [space exploration] | The International Astronomical Union downgrades the status of Pluto from a ‘classical’ to a ‘dwarf’ planet, leaving Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune as full planets in the Solar System. |
