July 24
Mary, Queen of Scots, deposed
1567: A romantic and tragic figure to her supporters, a scheming adulteress if not murderess to her political enemies, Mary, Queen of Scots, was formally deposed this day after rebellious Scottish nobles deserted her army at Carberry Hill and forced her to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son James. She was then confined in a series of prisons in England for the next 18 years of her life by her cousin Elizabeth I. Despite the fact that Mary was the sovereign queen of another country, she was tried and condemned by an English court and executed in 1587 at Fotheringhay Castle, in a chilling scene redeemed by the great personal dignity with which Mary met her fate.
1974: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Richard M. Nixon had to provide transcripts of Watergate tapes to special prosecutor Leon Jaworski.
1959: Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and U.S. Vice President Richard M. Nixon engaged in the “kitchen debate” at an American exhibition in Moscow.
1944: Soviet forces liberated the Majdanek concentration camp on the outskirts of the city of Lublin, Poland.
1923: The Treaty of Lausanne, the final treaty concluding World War I, was signed at Lausanne, Switzerland.
1917: Mata Hari went on trial before a military court; she was subsequently sentenced to death and shot by a firing squad.
1911: Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu in a remote part of the Peruvian Andes.
1847: Brigham Young and his fellow Mormons arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah.
1783: Catherine II (the Great) of Russia and Erekle II of Kartalinia-Kakhetia (eastern Georgia) concluded the Treaty of Georgievsk.
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