Here’s our next instalment of things that happened in ..24 years of yore.

Notable Events in 1824

8 January. After much controversy, Michael Faraday (below) is finally elected as a member of the Royal Society.

8 January. Birth of Wilkie Collins, British novelist (d.1889)

21 January. Birth of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson, American Confederate general (d.1863)

10 February. Simón Bolívar is proclaimed dictator of Peru.

4 March. Founding of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI)in Britain.

19 April. Lord Byron, the British poet, dies at the age of 36 in the Greek city of Missolonghi, where he had taken ill while making plans to liberate the Greeks from Ottoman rule.

7 May. Premiere of Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna.

16 June. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) is established in Great Britain.

4 September. Birth of Anton Bruckner, Austrian composer (d.1896)

10 October. The Edinburgh Town Council founds the Edinburgh Fire Engine Establishment, the first municipal fire brigade in Britain (and probably the world). [Pictured below an 1824 Edinburgh Fire Engine.]

21 October. Joseph Aspdin patents Portland cement.

Unknown Date. The Colorado potato beetle is first described, by Thomas Say.