On This Day

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Important events of history that took place in India and elsewhere on today’s date.

24 March

🇮🇳 In India

1776 Muthuswami Dikshitar, South Indian poet, singer and veena player, and a legendary composer of Indian classical music, who is considered one of the musical trinity of Carnatic music, was born in Thiruvarur, Tamil Nadu.

1977 Morarji Desai became the Prime Minister of India, the first Prime Minister not to belong to Indian National Congress.

🌎 Elsewhere

1882 Robert Koch, German scientist regarded as the father of modern bacteriology and won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1905, discovered the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis.

1882 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet and educator, died at Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.

1905 Jules Gabriel Verne, French novelist, poet, and playwright, died at Amiens, France.

1949 Laurence Olivier's Hamlet became the first British film to win an Oscar.

1965 Millions watch NASA spacecraft Ranger 9 crash into the Moon. The US space probe broadcast live pictures back to Earth, enabling TV viewers to follow its approach to the Moon and its controlled crash.

1989 In one of worst oil spills in recent history, the tanker, Exxon Valdez, ran aground and released 240,000 barrels of oil into Prince William Sound, an inlet of the Gulf of Alaska. The mishap resulted in one of the most devastating environmental disasters, killing up to 250,000 seabirds and other wildlife.

1992 Punch, Britain's oldest satirical magazine, closed down after suffering crippling losses.

2008 Bhutan officially becomes a democracy, with its first ever general election.

⭐ Significance

World Tuberculosis Day is designed to build public awareness about the global epidemic of tuberculosis (TB) and efforts to eliminate the disease.

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