This Day in History: Aug. 24

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This Day in History: August 24

Take a look at all of the important historical events that took place on August 24.

On this day, Aug. 24 ...

1989: Major League Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti bans Pete Rose from baseball for life for gambling.

Also on this day:

• A.D. 79: Long-dormant Mount Vesuvius erupts, burying the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum in volcanic ash; an estimated 20,000 people die.
• 1814: The British set fire to the White House and the Capitol when they invade Washington, D.C., during the War of 1812.
• 1932: Amelia Earhart embarks on a 19-hour flight from Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., making her the first woman to fly solo, non-stop, from coast to coast.
• 1949: The North Atlantic Treaty comes into force.
• 1954: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Communist Control Act, outlawing the Communist Party in the United States.
• 1968: France becomes the world's fifth thermonuclear power as it explodes a hydrogen bomb in the South Pacific.
• 1981: Mark David Chapman is sentenced in New York to 20 years to life in prison for murdering John Lennon. (Chapman remains imprisoned.)
• 1989: The Voyager 2 space probe flies by Neptune, sending back striking photographs.
• 2006: The International Astronomical Union declares that Pluto was no longer a full-fledged planet, demoting it to the status of a “dwarf planet.”

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. (EFE)

• 1991: Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as the general secretary of the Communist Party after a failed coup attempt against him.
• 2007: The NFL indefinitely suspends Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick without pay after he acknowledges in court papers that he had bankrolled gambling on dogfighting and helped kill some dogs.
• 2017: The State Department reports that at least 16 Americans working at the U.S. Embassy in Havana became ill in a mysterious health attack.

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• 2018: Robin Leach, host of the 1980s TV show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” dies in Las Vegas at age 76.