October 24 in History

The Peace of Westphalia, concluded in 1648, was a series of treaties that ended the Thirty Years' War in the Holy Roman Empire and the Eighty Years' War between Spain and the Dutch Republic. It is often treated as the birth of the modern state system, in which independent states recognize one another's territorial authority. That reputation is partly a later construction, but the settlement did reshape the political map and the way European powers justified their relations.

In the spring of 1945, delegates from 50 nations gathered in San Francisco to draft and sign the Charter of the United Nations, creating an international organization meant to prevent another world war. The charter was signed on 26 June and took effect on 24 October, after the required number of states, including the major powers, had ratified it. The UN became the central institution of the postwar international system, and it remains the largest forum in which nearly every country on Earth takes part.