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Today in History, January 24th

On January 24, 1848, James Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill, starting the California Gold Rush. Plus Caligula's murder and Churchill's death.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published January 24, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

January 24 is best known for 1848, when James Marshall found gold at John Sutter’s sawmill in California, setting off the California Gold Rush. The date also marks the assassination of the Roman emperor Caligula in 41 CE and the death of Winston Churchill in 1965.

The big story: Gold is found at Sutter’s Mill (1848)

John Sutter, a Swiss immigrant, had built a small empire in the Sacramento Valley on a Mexican land grant of nearly 50,000 acres. In January 1848 he hired a carpenter named James Marshall to build a sawmill on the South Fork of the American River, at Coloma. On January 24, while checking the newly dug channel that fed the mill’s waterwheel, Marshall spotted shiny flakes. Tests confirmed they were gold. Sutter wanted the news kept quiet. It did not stay quiet. About 80,000 “forty-niners” reached the goldfields within a year, and by 1853 the number had grown to roughly 250,000, from the eastern U.S., China, Europe, and South America. The rush helped speed California to statehood in 1850. It did not make Sutter rich. Gold seekers overran his land, killed his livestock, and trampled his fields, and by 1852 he was nearly broke. He spent his last years asking the government for compensation that never came.

More events on January 24

Year	What happened
41 CE	Roman emperor Caligula was murdered at the Palatine Games by officers of the Praetorian Guard. His uncle Claudius succeeded him.
1908	The first installment of Robert Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys was published in England, launching the Boy Scout movement.
1935	The Krueger brewery delivered 2,000 cans of beer to drinkers in Richmond, Virginia, the debut of canned beer.
1943	Surrounded at Stalingrad, German general Friedrich Paulus asked Hitler for permission to surrender. Hitler refused, and Paulus gave up a week later anyway.
1956	Look magazine published the confessions of the two men acquitted of the murder of Emmett Till. They were reportedly paid $4,000.
1965	Winston Churchill, Britain’s prime minister during World War II, died in London at 90.
1972	Farmers on Guam found Shoichi Yokoi, a Japanese sergeant who had hidden in the jungle since U.S. forces retook the island in 1944.
1986	NASA’s Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Uranus, the first spacecraft to visit the planet.
2006	Disney announced it would buy the animation studio Pixar for $7.4 billion.
2011	A bombing in the international arrivals area of Moscow’s Domodedovo International Airport killed 35 people and injured 173.

Born on January 24

76 CE: Hadrian, Roman emperor who built the wall across northern Britain.
1712: Frederick the Great, king of Prussia, born in Berlin.
1862: Edith Wharton, novelist and Pulitzer Prize winner for The Age of Innocence, born in New York City.
1925: Maria Tallchief, ballerina of Osage heritage, born in Fairfax, Oklahoma.