In 1955, an African-American woman was travelling in a bus in Montogomery, Alabama in the USA when she was asked to vacate her seat in favour of a white man. Back then, seats in buses were reserved for African-Americans at the back and the whites at the front. The woman was at her designated seat but on refusal, she was arrested. What followed goes down in history as the biggest civil rights movement across the world. The woman was Rosa Parks and October 24, 2005, is when she breathed her last after a lifetime of struggle against racial discrimination and segregation.
Parks' protest led to a huge uproar in the African-American community and eventually kickstarted the civil rights movement when the people, led by Martin Luther King, Jr, began boycotting buses in the city of Montgomery. The protest lasted for 381 days and it was in 1956 that Supreme Court ruled that racial segregation in buses was unconstitutional.
Did you know there was a time when people could fly to a destination faster than the speed of sound? The supersonic passenger jet carrier Concorde also had its last flight on October 24, 2003, when a British Airways flight took off from John F Kennedy International Airport in New York and landed in London's Heathrow Airport. The Concorde was jointly created by British and French engineers and had shaken the world, in every sense of the word.
Famed magician and escape artist Harry Houdini also performed for the last time on October 24, 1926, at Garrick Theater in Detroit, USA. Known internationally for his escape from handcuffs, ropes and chains and even from locked boxes and coffins underwater, Houdini was apparently ill during his performance and even ran a fever. But the escape artist did manage to complete his performance.
