TODAY IN CRIME: August 24

The Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre by François Dubois

1572 Roman Catholic mobs killed 70,000 French Protestants, or Huguenots, in the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in Paris.

1751 Hertfordshire authorities executed Thomas Colley for drowning a supposed witch.

1814 The British invaded Washington, D.C., and set fire to the White House and the Capitol during the War of 1812.

1954 At the height of McCarthyism, U.S. President Eisenhower signed the Communist Control Act, virtually outlawing the Communist Party in the U.S.

1970 A bomb planted by antiwar extremists exploded at the University of Wisconsin's Army Math Research Center in Madison, killing researcher Robert Fassnacht.

1981 Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Dennis Edwards sentenced Mark David Chapman to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of rock musician John Lennon.

1989 MLB Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti banned former player and Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose for gambling on his own team.

1990 A judge in Reno, NV dismissed a case against the band Judas Priest, ruling it was not responsible for the suicides of two youths after they had listened to the band's music.

2001 U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly was randomly picked to take over the Microsoft antitrust case. She was tasked with determining the extent of Microsoft’s monopolistic business practices and ended up accepting most of the settlement proposed by the Department of Justice.

2001 In 2001 In McAllen, TX, Bridgestone/Firestone agreed to settle out of court and pay a reported $7.5 million to the Rodriguez family of south Texas. Several members suffered injuries in a rollover accident in their Ford Explorer five months before Firestone announced the recall of 6.5 million tires.

2004 Chechnyan suicide bombers detonated explosive devices aboard two airliners departing Domodedovo International Airport, near Moscow, killing 89 passengers. An investigation revealed lax security and bribes allowed the two bombers, both female, to board the planes.

2007 A Florida judge sentenced convicted sex offender John Evander Couey to death for kidnapping 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, raping her, and burying her alive. Couey died in prison of natural causes before he could be executed.

2007 A federal judge sentenced James Ford Seale, a former Ku Klux Klansman, to three life terms for his role in the 1964 abduction and murder of two black teenagers in Mississippi. Seale and his cohorts suspected the young men were civil rights activists.

2007 The NFL suspended Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick for his involvement in dogfighting.

2012 A California jury found Samsung guilty of patent infringement and awarded over $1 billion (U.S.) in damages to Apple. The same day, a South Korean court found both Apple and Samsung guilty of patent infringement.

2013 A gang battle involving flame throwers killed 30 people in Palmasola prison, a maximum-security facility in Bolivia.

2018 Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler sent a cease-and-desist letter to President Trump demanding he stop using the band's songs at rallies.

2019 Responding to intense media scrutiny, Britain's Prince Andrew released a statement denying any knowledge of his friend Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement in the sexual trafficking of underage girls.