A closer look at the key events on March 24 in history:

In 1999, NATO attacks a sovereign country

For the first time in its history, the military alliance, without a UN mandate, launched an Air campaign, Operation Allied Force, on Yugoslavia on March 24, during the Kosovo War. It suspended its operation on June 10 of that year.

NATO air raids over Belgrade, Yugoslavia, overnight 27 May 1999. EPA/Dejan_Tasic

In 1989, the Exxon Valdez Alaskan oil spill happens

Some 41 million liters of oil was spilled into Prince William Sound, Alaska after the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground, causing the largest oil spill in US history up to that time. It polluted 2,092 kilometers of shoreline and exterminated much native wildlife, including salmon, herring, sea otters, bald eagles, and killer whales.

A clean-up worker uses high pressure, high temperature water to wash crude oil off the rocky shore of Block Island, Sunday, April 17, 1989. AP Photo/John Gaps III

In 1965, NASA spacecraft Ranger 9 crashes into the Moon

The controlled crash was broadcasted by the Ranger 9 probe, which sent live pictures back to Earth, enabling millions of TV viewers to follow its approach to the Moon.

In 1896, the world’s first radio message is transmitted

The Russian physicist Aleksander Popov transmitted radio signals 250 meters between campus buildings in St. Petersburg University. He transmitted the words “Heinrich Hertz”.

Alexander Popov. Public Domain

In 1882, the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis is discovered 

The German scientist, Robert Koch, who is considered the father of modern bacteriology, presented his findings to the Berlin Society of Physiology and won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1905.

Robert Kock. ZEISS Microscopsy

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