Today in History, June 24th
On June 24, 1948, the Soviets cut road and rail links to West Berlin, starting the Berlin blockade. Plus Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
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June 24 is best known for 1948, when the Soviet Union cut off road and rail traffic into West Berlin, starting the Berlin blockade, one of the first big standoffs of the Cold War. The date also saw Napoleon invade Russia in 1812 and the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.
The big story: The Soviets blockade West Berlin (1948)
After World War II, the victors split Germany into occupation zones, and they split Berlin into four zones the same way. The former allies wanted very different things. Moscow pushed for heavy reparations and a weak, neutral Germany, while Washington argued that Western Europe could not recover without a strong, reunified Germany. The U.S. halted reparations shipments from its zone in 1946, and the British and Americans then merged their zones, with the French joining later. Four-power talks collapsed on June 22, 1948. Two days later Soviet forces closed the roads and rail lines into West Berlin, leaving its residents worried about food, water and medicine. The U.S. answered within two days by flying supplies in, and the airlift kept the city going. The Soviets lifted the blockade on May 12, 1949. They came off looking like they had tried to starve a city, while the U.S. came away more confident.
More events on June 24
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1374 | People in Aachen, Germany, began dancing uncontrollably until they collapsed, the earliest widely documented outbreak of “dancing plague.” |
| 1497 | John Cabot became the first European known to set foot in North America since the Vikings. |
| 1812 | Napoleon’s Grande Armée, hundreds of thousands strong, invaded Russia after Czar Alexander I rejected Napoleon’s Continental System. |
| 1821 | Simón Bolívar’s forces defeated Spanish royalists at the Battle of Carabobo near Caracas, Venezuela. |
| 1859 | The Battle of Solferino was fought in Lombardy, the last engagement of the second War of Italian Independence. |
| 1932 | A bloodless revolution in Siam (now Thailand) ended the absolute monarchy of King Prajadhipok. |
| 1947 | Kenneth Arnold reported objects moving “like saucers” near Mount Rainier, giving the world the term “flying saucer.” |
| 1970 | The U.S. Senate voted 81–10 to repeal the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which Congress had passed in 1964 after North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked U.S. destroyers. |
| 1973 | An arson fire at the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans’ French Quarter, killed 32 people, the deadliest known attack on a gay club in the U.S. at that time. |
| 2010 | Julia Gillard was sworn in as Australia’s first woman prime minister. |
| 2021 | A 12-story beachfront condominium collapsed in Surfside, Florida, in one of the worst disasters of its kind in U.S. history. Ninety-eight people died. |
| 2022 | In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion. |
Born on June 24
- 1895: Jack Dempsey, world heavyweight boxing champion known as the “Manassa Mauler,” born in Manassa, Colorado.
- 1915: Fred Hoyle, British astronomer and champion of the steady-state theory of the universe, born in Bingley, Yorkshire.
- 1987: Lionel Messi, soccer star who led Argentina to the 2022 World Cup title, born in Rosario, Argentina.
Sources
- Soviets blockade West Berlin, History.com
- This Day in History: June 24, History.com
- On This Day: June 24, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Jack Dempsey, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Fred Hoyle, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Lionel Messi, Encyclopaedia Britannica
