This Day in History: July 24th

The Kellogg–Briand Pact (or Pact of Paris, officially General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy) went into effect on this day in 1929, effectively ending war as they knew it. Fortunately, war as they didn’t know it was still waiting in the wings. The Kellogg-Briand Pact has been ridiculed as being ineffectual, but, in my opinion, it should’ve been ridiculed for a lot of other reasons.

Mary, Queen of Scots, abdicated on July 24, 1567, leaving her one year old son, James, to run Scotland. James ruled well and wisely except for those weeks when he was teething. Mary lost the throne due to her marriage to Lord Bothwell, who wooed her by kidnapping and possibly raping her, which was the custom in Scotland at the time. An army was raised against her and her new husband, because the Kellogg-Briand pact had yet to be created, conceived of or signed.

Cape Canaveral launched its first rocket on this day in 1950, starting decades of noise complaints from the people who lived next door. The RTV-G-4 Bumper rocket was sub-orbital and its launch was used to determine problems with multi-stage launches. The launch was a complete success and, consequently, they learned nothing.

Alexandre Dumas was born on July 24, 1802 and you’d have to have gone a long way to have seen an uglier baby. He is most known for writing adventure novels, such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. His work in the field of drama was unforgettable and I don’t mean that in a good way.

Peter Sellers died on this day in 1980 and Chief Inspector Dreyfus breathed a sigh of relief. Sellers is most known for the Pink Panther series of movies and for the movie Being There. His final movie was The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu, in which he played a buck-toothed stereotypically evil Chinese mastermind. Critics agree that, if you ignore the offensive racism in the movie and consider when it was made, it was still “just awful”…

July 24^th is the feast day for Christina the Astonishing, so cancel any plans you have to not be astonished. Born in 1150, her first miracle was rising from the dead at age 21, causing the priest giving her funeral rites to lose his place. She claimed to have visited Heaven, Hell and Purgatory and only gave Purgatory two stars on Yelp. She would often jump into furnaces and frozen rivers and emerge from either uninjured. She is, not ironically, the patron saint of people with mental disorders.