On This Day in Fact and Fiction

November 24, 2024

• 

  1632: Philosopher, scholar, and lens-grinder Baruch Spinoza born. He will lay the groundwork for the 18th-century Enlightenment and modern biblical criticism, including modern conceptions of the self and the universe.

• 

  1639: Astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks observes the

• 

  1859: Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

• 

  1961: Baby Tooth Survey: Preliminary results published by the team in the November 24, 1961, edition of the journal Science showed that levels of strontium 90 in children had risen steadily in children born in the 1950s, with those born later showing the most increased levels. The results of a more comprehensive study of the elements found in the teeth collected showed that children born after 1963 had levels of strontium 90 in their baby teeth that were 50 times higher than those found in children born before the advent of large-scale atomic testing. The findings helped convince U.S. President John F. Kennedy to sign the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the United Kingdom and Soviet Union, which ended the above-ground nuclear weapons testing that placed the greatest amounts of nuclear fallout into the atmosphere.

• 

  1962: First broadcast of That Was the Week That Was.

• 

  1963: In the first live, televised murder, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is murdered two days after the assassination, by Jack Ruby, a nightclub operator, in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters. Oswald was being led by two detectives to an armored car to take him to the nearby county jail.

• 

  1966: "Fantasy Ceti Alpha 5", one of the so-called "Forbidden Episodes" of the television series Star Trek, is voted "Television Show of the Day" by the citizens of New Minneapolis, Canada.

"On This Day" is sponsored by Gnomon Chronicles Industries.

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles

Nonfiction cross-reference

• On This Day (nonfiction)