Discover what happened in history on November 24 by watching the This Day in History video. On November 24, 1947, writers and directors were charged with not testifying in front of the House Committee on Un-American activities. On November 24, 1963, Dallas night club owner Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on public television. Oswald died from his injuries. On November 24, 1971, the hijacker D.B. Cooper parachuted from a plane with $200,000 of ransom money and was never seen again. Lastly, on November 24, 1859, Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species. He did not use the word evolution, but he said that man and ape shared a common ancestor. He was said to be a heretic, but his theory was scientifically sound.
On July 26, 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, mandating the desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces and ending 170 years of officially sanctioned racial discrimination in the military. Although African Americans had served since the Revolutionary War, they were typically segregated from white troops and often assigned to menial roles. A landmark achievement of both the postwar civil rights movement and Truman’s presidency, the order marked one of the first times a U.S. president used executive authority to advance civil rights. It also helped pave the way for broader desegregation efforts across American society.
On October 29, 1969, Stanford programmer Bill Duvall sent a single-word message—"login"—to UCLA student programmer Charley Kline, 350 miles away. Transmitted between two computers that each filled an entire room, this message marked the first communication between networked computers and is widely regarded as the birth of the internet.