Category: Today

November 29

1114 – A large earthquake damages areas the Crusaders in the Middle East rule, hitting the cities of Antioch, Mamistra, Marash and Edessa, with over 40,000 people killed.

1729 – Natchez Indians massacre 138 French men, 35 women, and 56 children at Fort Rosalie, near the site of modern day Natchez, Mississippi.

1776 – During the American Revolutionary War, a 500 man, but poorly supplied, American force besieging Fort Cumberland, near the present day border between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, is repulsed when British Marine reinforcements arrive

1777 – San Jose, California, is founded as Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe by José Joaquín Moraga.

1783 – An  earthquake later calculated at measuring magnitude 5.3 on the Richter scale, strikes New Jersey, to date the most powerful quake in the state.

1847 – Missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 15 others are killed at their mission near present day Walla Walla Washington, by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians, causing the Cayuse War east of the Cascade mountain range.

1864 – Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington massacre at least 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants near Sand Creek in Colorado Territory.

1872 – The Modoc War in northeastern California and southeastern Oregon  begins with the Battle of Lost River between a small force of U.S. troops under Captain James Jackson, and Modoc warriors under Kintpuash, known as Captain Jack.

1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrates his phonograph for the first time.

1890 –The US Army and Navy academy’s foot ball teams play their first game with Navy beating Army 24-0 at West Point.

1902 – The Pittsburgh Stars defeat the Philadelphia Athletics, at Pittsburg 11–0 to win the first championship associated with an American national professional football league.

1910 The first US patent for inventing a traffic lights system is issued to Ernest Sirrine.

1929 – Admiral Richard Byrd leads the first expedition to fly over the South Pole.

1942 – During World War II, the US Office of Price Administration begins the rationing of coffee a 10 pound a year

1947 – The United Nations General Assembly approves a plan for the partition of Palestine.

1953 – American Airlines begins the 1st regular commercial New York to Los Angeles air service

1963 – President Johnson establishes the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy.

1972 – Atari releases Pong, the first commercially successful video game.

1999 – Kazuo Sakamaki, a former ensign in the Imperial Japanese Navy, the skipper of midget submarine H-19 which attempted to attack Pearl Harbor, and the first official U.S. prisoner of war in World War II, dies, age 81, in Tokyo.

2009 – 4 police officers are shot and killed in a gunfight inside a coffee shop in Lakewood, Washington by Maurice Clemmons, who escapes wounded and is shot and killed 2 days later by police in Seattle.

2013 – LAM Mozambique Airlines Flight 470, an Embraer 190, is crashed in the Bwabata National Park, Namibia, by the pilot in a mass murder-suicide, killing all 33 passengers and crew on board.

November 28

1520 – After 38 days, the naval expedition under the command of Ferdinand Magellan completes the first passage through the Strait of Magellan and enters the Pacific Ocean.

1785 – The first Treaty of Hopewell is signed, where the U.S. acknowledges Cherokee lands in what is now eastern Tennessee.

1794 – Former Continental Army Inspector Major General, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben dies, age 64 at his estate in Oneida County – later Steuben – New York.

1798 – Trade between the United States and modern day Uruguay begins when John Leamy’s frigate John arrives in Montevideo.

1811 – Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, premieres at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.

1821 – The nation of Panama separates from Spain and joins Gran Colombia.

1843 – The Kingdom of Hawaii is officially recognized by the United Kingdom and France as an independent nation.

1895 – The first American automobile road race takes place over the 54 miles from Chicago to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours.

1908 – An explosion in the Pittsburg Buffalo Company’s mine in Marianna, Pennsylvania, kills 154 men, leaving only 1 survivor.

1912 – Taking advantage of the turmoil caused by the First Balkan War, Albania, which was not one of the belligerents, declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire.

1914 – Closed in July due to the outbreak of war in Europe, the New York Stock Exchange reopens for bond trading.

1925 – The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee on clear channel radio station WSM.

1942 – In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 492 people

1943 – During World War II, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Premier Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran, to discuss war strategy.

1958 – The U.S. makes the first successful flight of the SM-65 Atlas, the first operational intercontinental U.S. ballistic missile.

1964 –National Security Council members agree to recommend that President Johnson adopt a plan for a two stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam.

1965 – In response to President Johnson’s call for “more flags” in Vietnam, Philippine President-elect Ferdinand Marcos announces he will send troops to help fight in South Vietnam.

1967 – The first pulsar, PSR B1919+21, is discovered in the constellation of Vulpecula by astronomers Jocelyn Burnell and Antony Hewish at the  Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in Cambridge, England.

1971 – Wasfi al-Tal, Prime Minister of Jordan, is assassinated by the Black September unit of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

1994 – Jeffrey Dahmer completes his life imprisonment term for multiple murders by being murdered himself by another inmate.

2016 – A chartered Avro RJ85 plane carrying 77 people, including the Chapecoense football team, crashes near Medellín, Colombia.

2020 – David Prowse, English weight-lifting champion, and the actor who portrayed Darth Vader in the original trilogy, dies, age 85, in London.

November 27

1095 – In support of the Byzantine Empire’s request for military assistance, Pope Urban II declares the First Crusade to recover the Holy Land from moslem rule, at the Council of Clermont.

1727 – The foundation stone to the Jerusalem Church in Berlin is laid.

1839 – The American Statistical Association is founded in Boston

1868 – Lieutenant Colonel George Custer leads an attack on Cheyenne living on reservation land along the Washita river

1895 – At the Swedish–Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he dies.

1896 – Also sprach Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss, is first performed in Frankfurt Germany

1901 – The U.S. Army War College is established.

1924 – In New York City, the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is held.

1934 –  Mortally wounded in a gun fight with 4 F.B.I. agents in Barrington, Illinois, near Chicago, Gangster George ‘Baby Face’ Nelson, age 25, escapes after killing 1 and mortally wounding another of the agents and finally dies in a safehouse in Wilmette. His body is dumped in a cemetery in Skokie by his wife and his accomplice John Chase

1945 – The Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe is founded to a send CARE Packages of food relief to Europe after World War II.

1965 – Pentagon advisors tell President Johnson that if planned operations are to succeed, the number of American troops in Vietnam has to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000.

1973 – By terms of the 25th amendment, the Senate votes 92–3 to confirm Michigan Representative Gerald Ford’s nomination as Vice President of the United States.

1978 – In San Francisco, city mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White, opening the way for the President of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Dianne Feinstein to be appointed as Mayor and starting her ascent to higher political offices.

1989 – The Medellín Cartel places a bomb aboard Avianca Flight 203, a Boeing 727, which explodes in mid air over Soacha, Colombia, killing all 107 passengers and crew on board and 3 people on the ground.

1991 – The United Nations Security Council adopts Security Council Resolution 721, leading the way to the establishment of peacekeeping operations in the states of the former Yugoslavia.

2001 – A hydrogen atmosphere is discovered on the extrasolar planet Osiris of the star HD 209458 in the constellation of Pegasus, by the Hubble Space Telescope, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet.

2015 – A man enters a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, shooting and killing 2 and wounding 6 and later wounds 4 responding Colorado Springs Police Officers with 1 officer later dying, before surrendering.

2020 – Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, is assassinated while traveling to his vacation villa in the city of Absard near Tehran.

November 26

1476 – Vlad III Țepeș, known as ‘The Impaler’, defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Báthory and becomes the ruler of Wallachia for the third time.

1778 – Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui in the Hawaiian islands.

1789 – A national Thanksgiving Day is observed in the United States as proclaimed by President Washington at the request of Congress.

1863 – President Lincoln proclaims November 26 as a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated annually on the final Thursday of November. Since 1941, it has been on the 4th Thursday.

1917 – The Manchester Guardian publishes the 1916 secret Sykes-Picot Agreement between the United Kingdom and France with Italian and Russian agreement on their plans on how to partition the Ottoman empire as it collapsed during World War I.

1922 – Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun

1926 – John Moses Browning dies, age 71, of heart failure while at his work bench in his son’s design shop at Fabrique Nationale in Herstal, Belgium.

1941 – On the same day that Japan’s 1st Air Fleet, under the command of Admiral Chūichi Nagumo departs Hitokappu Bay, enroute to Hawaii, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull delivers a note to the Japanese envoy Saburō Kurusu in Washington D.C., demanding that Japan withdraw from China and French Indochina, in return for which the U.S. would lift economic sanctions.

1942 – Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premieres in New York City.

1943 – While flight leader, launched off the USS Enterprise on the first night fighter mission to engage Japanese bombers attacking the carrier task force, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander Edward O’Hare, earlier recipient of the Medal of Honor, is shot down in action and lost at sea.

1950 – During the Korean War, troops from the People’s Republic of China launch a massive counterattack in North Korea against South Korean and United Nations forces along the Ch’ongch’on River and around the Chosin Reservoir

1968 – U.S. Air Force helicopter pilot 1st Lieutenant James P. Fleming rescues an Army Special Forces CCC MACV-SOG unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire near near Đức Cơ and is awarded the Medal of Honor in May 1970 for his actions in combat.

1990 – During a night flying weapons test, at Fort Campbell Kentucky, U.S Army Lieutenant Colonel Richard Vincent and Chief Warrant 3 Richard Walsh, assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company USASOC, are killed when their OH-6 helicopter crashes .

2000 – George W. Bush is certified the winner of Florida’s electoral votes of the 2000 Presidential election by Florida Secretary of State, Katherine Harris.

2003 – The Concorde airliner makes its final flight over Bristol, England.

2011  The Mars Science Laboratory launches to Mars with the Curiosity Rover aboard.

2021 – The World Health Organization identifies the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant.

November 25

1177 – Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Raynald of Châtillon defeat Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard.

1491 – The siege of Granada, the last moor stronghold in Spain, ends with Boabdil, the sultan of Granada, and Ferdinand and Isabella, the King and Queen of Castile, León, Aragon and Sicily, signing a treaty of an immediate truce and a surrender of Granada, taking effect on January 2nd, 1492, completing the nearly 800 year long Reconquista and freeing up resources for other activity, perchance exploration of a shorter route to China.

1758 – During the French and Indian War, British forces capture Fort Duquesne located at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, from French control. Later, Fort Pitt will be built nearby and grow into modern Pittsburgh.

1783 – The last British troops leave New York City 3 months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris ending the American War of Independence

1863 –At Missionary Ridge in Tennessee, Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant break the siege of Chattanooga by Confederate troops under General Braxton Bragg.

1876 –  In retaliation for the U.S. Cavalry’s defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, U.S troops attack  and overwhelm the village of Cheyenne Chief Dull Knife at the headwaters of the Powder River in Wyoming.

1915 – Albert Einstein presents the field equations of general relativity to the Prussian Academy of Sciences.

1926 – A outbreak of tornados across the Southern states in the U.S. results in the deadliest storm total in November at the time, killing 76 people and injuring more than 400.

1950 – The Great Appalachian Blizzard of 1950 strikes across 22 states, killing 353 people and injuring more than 160.

1963 – In a state funeral, President John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

1986 –  U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

1999 – Cuban born, 6 year old, Elian Gonzalez is rescued by fishermen while floating in an inner tube off the Florida coast.

2016 – Fidel Castro dies, age 90.

 

November 24

1221 – The forces of Genghis Khan defeats those of Jalal ad-Din Mingburnu, Shah of the Khwarazm Empire at the Battle of the Indus, completing the Mongol conquest of Central Asia.

1642 – Dutch explorer Abel Tasman discovers an island he calls Van Diemen’s Land n honor of the Governor of the Dutch East Indies, which is later renamed Tasmania.

1832 – The South Carolina legislature passes the Ordinance of Nullification, declaring that the Federal import tax Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 that helped New England states but less Southern states, null and void in the state, beginning a political crisis between the state and the federal government that would not be resolved until March of the next year.

1835 – The Texas Provincial Government authorizes the creation of a horse-mounted police force called the Texas Rangers

1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

1877 – Anna Sewell’s novel Black Beauty is published.

1917 – In Milwaukee, 9 members of the Milwaukee Police Department are killed when a bomb – suspected to have been planted by the Galleanist  faction of anarchists – is found at a church and explodes after being taken to the police office, the most deaths in a single event in U.S. police history until the September 11 attacks in 2001.

1943 – Off Tarawa Atoll, the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed by the IJN submarine I-175 and sinks, killing 650 service men, among them PO3 Doris ‘Dorie’ Miller, who was awarded the Navy Cross for actions during the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor and which Ford Class carrier CVN-81 will be named after.

1944 – The 73rd Bombardment Wing launches the first B-29 bombing attack on Tokyo from the Northern Mariana Islands.

1963 – On live TV, Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is murdered by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters.

1969 – The Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to land on the Moon.

1971 – During an airline hijacking, a man calling himself Dan Cooper (aka D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money.

1989 – After a week of mass protests against the Communist regime known as the Velvet Revolution, Miloš Jakeš and the entire Politburo of the Czechoslovak Communist Party resign from office, bringing an end to Communist rule in Czechoslovakia.

2016 – The government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia People’s Army  – FARC – sign a revised peace deal, ending the country’s more than 50 year long civil war.

November 23

534 BC – Thespis of Icaria becomes the first actor on record to portray a character on stage, and later has the things relating to the acting arts named after him – Thespian. 

1248 –  Troops under King Ferdinand III of Castile conquer Seville during the Reconquista of Spain.

1644 – John Milton publishes Areopagitica, a pamphlet decrying censorship in England

1876 – Tammany Hall leader, William “Boss” Tweed arrives in New York City, under arrest for bribery, contract kickbacks and embezzlement, after being extradited from Spain.

1914 – The last U.S. forces withdraw from Veracruz, Mexico occupied 6 months earlier in response to the Tampico Affair, an incident when U.S. sailors were detained by Mexican forces of General Huerta during the Mexican Revolution.

1924 – Edwin Hubble’s discovery that the Andromeda nebula is actually another “island galaxy” far outside of our own was first published in The New York Times.

1943 – Despite heavy casualties, the battles for the Tarawa and Makin atolls end in U.S. victories against the forces of Imperial Japan.

1963 – The BBC broadcasts the first episode of Doctor Who

1976 – French free diver Jacques Mayol is the first man to reach a depth of 100 meters undersea without breathing equipment.

1981 – President Reagan signs National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the CIA authority to recruit and support anti-Communist ‘Contra’ rebels in Nicaragua.

1992 – The first smartphone, the IBM Simon, is introduced at the COMDEX, a computer expo trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada.

2015 – Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft becomes the first rocket to successfully fly to space and then return to Earth for a controlled, vertical landing.

 

November 22

1497 – Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope during his first voyage from Europe to reach India

1574 – Spanish navigator Juan Fernández discovers islands off the coast of Chile that, for reasons lost to historians, are now known as the Juan Fernández Islands.

1718 –Edward “Blackbeard” Teach aboard Adventure is killed in battle off the coast of North Carolina by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard commanding HMAV Jane.

1842 – Mount St. Helens in then British Oregon Country, erupts, covering area as far as Vancouver and the Dalles with ash

1858 – Denver Colorado, is founded.

1913 – Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the last Shogun of Imperial Japan, who was deposed by Emperor Meiji, dies in Tokyo.

1935 – Pan American Airways China Clipper, a Martin M-130 Ocean Transport flying boat, inaugurates the first commercial transpacific air service, connecting Alameda, California with Manila.

1942 – General Friedrich Paulus sends Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the German 6th Army at Stalingrad is surrounded by Soviet Forces.

1943 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek meet in Cairo, Egypt, to discuss ways to defeat Japan.

1955 – The Soviet Union detonates it’s first thermonuclear bomb, RDS-37, a 1.6 megaton two stage bomb designed by Andrei Sakharov over Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan

1963 – In Dallas, Texas, President Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor Connally is seriously wounded by rifle fire. Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald is captured and charged with the murder of both the President and police officer J. D. Tippit. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as President

1975 – Juan Carlos is declared King of Spain following the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco.

1977 – British Airways inaugurates a regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service.

1988 – The prototype B-2 Spirit bomber is presented to public viewing in Palmdale, California

1995 – Toy Story is released as the first feature length film created completely using CGI – computer generated imagery.

2003 – Shortly after takeoff from Baghdad International Airport, a DHL Express Airbus A300 cargo plane is struck on the left wing by a surface-to-air missile and forced to land.

2019 – Walmart expands it grocery delivery and pickup service into southwest Missouri.

2022 – A shooting at a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia leaves 7 workers dead, including the shooter, and 4 others injured.

November 21

164 BC – Judas Maccabeus, son of Mattathias, restores the Temple in Jerusalem after retaking the city, and relighting the lamps, keeps them burning from a 1 day supply of oil that lasts 8 days.  This is commemorated by the festival of Hanukkah.

1676 – The Danish astronomer Ole Rømer presents the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.

1783 – In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes make the first untethered hot air balloon flight.

1789 – North Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution and is admitted as the 12th U.S. state.

1877 – Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph

1902 – The Philadelphia Football Athletics defeats the Kanaweola Athletic Club of Elmira, New York, 39–0, at Elmira, in the first professional American football night game.

1905 – Albert Einstein publishes 4 papers in the German science journal Annalen der Physik., one of which; Ist die Trägheit eines Körpers von seinem Energieinhalt abhängig? – “Does the Inertia of an object Depend Upon Its Energy Content?” – leads to the mass/energy equivalence formula, E = mc²

1922 – Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia takes the oath of office, becoming the first female Senator.

1943 – During World War II, continuing operations in the Gilbert Islands, a company sized element of U.S. Marines offload from the submarine USS Nautilus to assault Abemama Atoll, 94 miles southeast of Tarawa.

1944 – On combat patrol in the Taiwan Strait during World War II, the crew of the American submarine SS-315, USS Sealion becomes the only one to sink a battleship when they torpedo the IJN Kongō. 

1945 – Members of the the United Auto Workers begin labor strikes at 92 General Motors plants in 50 cities.

1953 – The Natural History Museum in London announces that the “Piltdown Man” skull is a hoax.

1963 – Robert Stroud the ‘Birdman of Alcatraz’ dies, completing his life sentence in solitary confinement for murder at the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri

1964 – The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, connecting Staten Island and Brooklyn, opens to traffic. At the time it is the world’s longest bridge span.

1969 – The first permanent ARPANET link is established between UCLA and the Stanford Research Institute .

1970 – In Operation Ivory Coast, a joint U.S. Air Force and Army team raids the Sơn Tây prisoner of war camp 23 miles west of Hanoi in North Vietnam, in an attempt to free American prisoners of war believed to be held there. The failure to detect the removal of the prisoners prior to the raid leads to a major reorganization of the U.S. intelligence community.

1979 – The United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, is attacked by a mob and set on fire, killing 2 U.S. service members, Marine Security Guard Corporal Steven Crowley, and Army Chief Warrant Officer Bryan Ellis

1980 – A fire breaks out at the MGM Grand Hotel in Paradise, Nevada killing 87 people and injuring more than 650.

1985 – U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard is arrested for spying after being caught giving Israel classified information on Arab nations

1992 – A major tornado outbreak, the largest tornado ever to occur in the US during November, spawns over 100 tornadoes through the southeast and midwest over a period of 3 days, causing 26 deaths and over $300 million in damage,

1995 – The Dayton Agreement is initialed at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, at Dayton, Ohio, ending 3 1/2 years of war between Bosnia and Herzegovina of the former Yugoslavia.

2002 – NATO invites Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members.

2019 – Tesla introduces the SUV Cybertruck.

2021 – A man driving an SUV plows through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing 6 people and injuring 62.  A little less than a year later, he is convicted at trial and sentenced to 6 terms of life imprisonment without parole, to be served consecutively.

 

 

November 20

1776 – During the Revolutionary War, British forces land at the Hudson River Palisades in New Jersey and then attack Fort Lee. The Continental Army starts to retreat across New Jersey.

1789 – New Jersey becomes the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.

1805 – Beethoven’s opera, Fidelio, opens in Vienna.

1820 – An 80 ton sperm whale attacks and sinks the whaling ship Essex of Nantucket off the western coast of South America, inspiring Herman Melville’s story of Moby Dick.

1862 – The Confederate armies of Mississippi and Kentucky merge as the Army of Tennessee, under command of General Braxton Bragg.

1902 – George Lefevre and Henri Desgrange create the Tour de France bicycle race

1903 – The day before his 43rd birthday, Tom Horn, convicted of murder, is executed by hanging in Cheyenne, Wyoming

1910 – Francisco I. Madero issues the Plan de San Luis Potosí, denouncing Mexican President Porfirio Díaz, calling for a revolution to overthrow the government of Mexico, effectively starting the Mexican Revolution.

1923 – The Rentenmark replaces the Papiermark as the official currency of Germany at the exchange rate of one Rentenmark to One Trillion Papiermark.

1931 – AT&T begins commercial teletype service.

1940 – During World War II, Hungary becomes a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, joining the Axis powers.

1942 – During World War II, the 1522 mile long Alaska Highway opens for military traffic from Dawson Creek, British Columbia to Fairbanks, Alaska.

1943 – During World War II,  the U.S. stages Operation Galvanic, invading the Gilbert Island chain with the 2nd Division of the U.S. Marine Corps assaulting Tarawa Atoll’s Betio Island and the U.S. Army’s 27th Division assaulting Makin Atoll’s Butaritari Island.

1945 – Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg.

1953 – Scott Crossfield piloting the Douglas Skyrocket, breaks Mach 2 – 1,300 miles per hour – at the High Speed Flight Research Station, Muroc, California.

1958 –American puppeteers Jim and Jane Henson establish Muppets, Inc.

1962 – In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, President Kennedy ends the quarantine of the island and the diplomatic crisis with the Soviets.

1968 – 78 miners are killed in an explosion at the Consolidated Coal Company’s No. 9 mine in Farmington, West Virginia

1974 – The U.S. Department of Justice files an antitrust suit against AT&T Corporation. This suit later leads to the breakup of AT&T and the Bell System.

1977 – Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel, meeting with Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and speaking before the Knesset

1980 – A misplaced Texaco exploratory oil probe drills into the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, causing Lake Peigneur in Louisiana to flow down into the mine, filling it while swallowing the drilling platform, 11 barges holding supplies for the drilling operation, a tugboat, and 65 acres of the surrounding terrain.

1985 – Microsoft Windows 1.0 is released.

1993 – The Senate Ethics Committee issues censures of Senators for their “dealings” with executive Charles Keating during the Savings and Loan crisis which collapsed that part of the financial system

1998 – The first module component, Zarya, for the International Space Station is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome

2008 – Due to the Sub-Prime Mortgage crisis building up since September causing failures in the US financial system, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level since 1997, falling 43% over the past year to less than 8000 points.

2014 –President Obama defers the threat of deportation for nearly 5 million illegal aliens in the US

2022 – Joe Biden turns 80 years old, the first octogenarian to serve as President

November 19

636 – The moslem Rashidun Caliphate defeats the Sasanian Empire, the last non-moslem empire of Persia, at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah in modern day Iraq.

1493 – Christopher Columbus lands and claims the island he names San Juan Bautista – modern Puerto Rico.

1794 – The United States delegation headed by John Jay, and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign a 10 year treaty which attempts to resolve some of the economic, trade and territory occupation problems left over from the Paris Treaty of 1783 which ended the Revolutionary War.

1863 – President Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication ceremony for the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

1912 – During the First Balkan War, the Serbian Army defeats in detail the Ottoman Army in Monastir Vilayet near the modern town of Bitola, causing a collapse of the 5 century long rule of Macedonia by the Ottoman Empire

1916 – Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures.

1942 – Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch Operation Uranus, a counterattack on Nazi forces at Stalingrad.

1950 – US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes Supreme Commander of NATO-Europe.

1955 – National Review publishes its first issue.

1969 – The Apollo 12 Lunar Excursion Module Intrepid lands on the moon at Oceanus Procellarum – Ocean of Storms – and astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.

1979 –  Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran.

1985 – President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time at a summit in Geneva.

1996 – United Express Flight 5925, a Beechcraft 1900, and a private Beechcraft King Air collide on the runway at Quincy Regional Airport in Quincy, Illinois, killing all 14 passengers and crew aboard both craft.

1998 – The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against President Clinton.

2017 – Charles Manson dies in prison, completing his life sentence for multiple murders.

2022 – A man shoots and kills 5 people and wounds 19 more at a nightclub in Colorado Springs before being physically subdued, and later sentenced to 5 consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 2,211 years

November 18

326 – The old St. Peter’s Basilica on Vatican Hill in Rome is consecrated.

1095 – The Council of Clermont begins, leading to the First Crusade to the Holy Land.

1626 – The new St Peter’s Basilica is consecrated.

1872 – Susan B. Anthony and 14 other women are arrested in New York for voting illegally in the United States presidential election of 1872.

1883 – American and Canadian railroads institute 5 standard continental time zones, ending ‘local time’.

1901 – The Hay–Pauncefote Treaty is signed by Britain and the United States nullifying the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty and withdrawing British objections to an American controlled Panama Canal.

1903 – The Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by Panama and the United States, giving the United States exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.

1909 – Due to 2 Americans, being included with 500 Nicaraguan revolutionaries and executed by order of President José Santos Zelaya, the U.S. sends 2 warships, USS Des Moines (CL-17) and USS Tacoma (CL-20) with 700 U.S. Marines aboard, along with other vessels to follow later, to stage an invasion and occupation of the country.

1928 – The animated short Steamboat Willie, noted as the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks debuts;  and this date is considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey’s birthday.

1961 – United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.

1963 – DTMF – Dual Tone Multi Frequency – “Touch Tone” telephone dialing goes into service.

1978 – In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones leads his Peoples Temple to a mass murder–suicide that claims 918 lives.

1993 – In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is approved by the House of Representatives.

1999 – At Texas A&M University, the ‘Aggie Bonfire’, a long standing annual tradition as part of the college rivalry with the University of Texas at Austin, collapses during construction, killing 12 students and injuring 27 others.

2002 – Under pwers of UN Security Council Resolution 1441, UN WMD weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix arrive in Iraq.

2003 – The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rules in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health that the state’s ban on homosexual marriage is unconstitutional.

2013 – NASA launches the MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) probe on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, to Mars.

2020 – The Utah monolith, built sometime in 2016 in northern San Juan County, is discovered by state biologists of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources while carrying out an aerial survey of bighorn sheep

 

November 17

1558 – Queen Mary I of England dies and is succeeded by her half sister Elizabeth I of England.

1800 –Congress holds its first session in Washington, D.C.

1820 – Commanding his sloop Hero, 21 year old Captain Nathaniel Palmer becomes the first American to see Antarctica.

1831 – The nations of Ecuador and Venezuela are separated from Gran Colombia.

1856 – On the Sonoita River in present day southern Arizona, the U. S. Army establishes Fort Buchanan in order to help control the new lands acquired in the Gadsden Purchase.

1858 – The city of Denver, Colorado is founded.

1863 – During the Civil War, Confederate forces led by General James Longstreet place Knoxville, Tennessee under siege.

1869 – The Suez Canal, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, is opened for sea traffic.

1896 – The Western Pennsylvania Hockey League, which later became the first ice hockey league to openly trade and hire players, begins play at Pittsburgh’s Schenley Park Casino.

1903 – The Russian  (Communist) Social Democratic Labor Party splits into two groups: The Bolsheviks “majority” and Mensheviks “minority”.

1910 – Piloting a damaged and improperly repaired Wright Model B aircraft, Ralph Johnstone becomes the first American to die in a plane crash.

1947 – American scientists John Bardeen and Walter Brattain while working under William Shockley at Bell Labs, construct the first working transistor

1950 – Lhamo Dondrub is named Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama.

1962 – President Kennedy dedicates Washington Dulles International Airport, serving the Washington, D.C., region.

1970 – Lieutenant William Calley goes on trial for the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam.

1973 – In Orlando, Florida, President Nixon announces to a group of Associated Press managing editors “I am not a crook.”

1986 – The flight crew of Japan Airlines Flight 1628, a Boeing 747 cargo jet, report sighting multiple UFOs following the aircraft while flying over Alaska.

1993 – The House of Representatives passes a resolution to establish the North American Free Trade Agreement.

2003 – Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger takes office as the governor of California on the recall of governor Gray Davis.

2013 – A late season tornado outbreak strikes the Midwest with Illinois and Indiana the most affected states. Over 70  tornadoes touch down in an 11 hour time period, killing 8 people, injuring over 190 more and causing over $1.6 billion in damage.

2019 – The first known case of COVID-19 is traced to a 55 year old man who had visited a market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China.

 

November 16

1532 – Having hidden several artillery pieces in houses that had been evacuated by the Inca, Francisco Pizarro and his men ambush and take Inca Emperor Atahualpa hostage at Cajamarca, Peru.

1776 –  Refusing to abandon the garrison, American Colonel Robert Magaw is finally forced to surrender Fort Washington, on the north end of Manhattan Island, to British and Hessian forces under Lieutenant General William Howe.

1822 – Missouri trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over a route that will become known as the Santa Fe Trail.

1871 – The National Rifle Association receives its charter from New York State.

1904 – English engineer John Ambrose Fleming receives a patent for the thermionic valve vacuum tube.

1907 – Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory join to form Oklahoma, which is admitted as the 46th U.S. state.

1914 – The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opens.

1938 – LSD is first synthesized by Albert Hofmann at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland.

1940 – In occupied Poland, Nazis close off the Warsaw Ghetto stopping anyone from entering or leaving.

1958 – National Airlines Flight 967, a Douglas DC-7. explodes in mid-air over the Gulf of Mexico, killing all 42 passengers and crew aboard.

1965 – The Soviet Union launches the Venera 3 space probe toward Venus,  the first spacecraft to reach the surface of another planet.

1973 – President Nixon signs the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, authorizing the construction of the Alaska Pipeline.

1974 – A interstellar radio message, developed by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, carrying basic information about humanity and Earth is transmitted from the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico towards the globular cluster Messier 13.

2002 – The first cases of the 2002–2004 SARS corona virus outbreak are traced to Foshan, Guangdong Province, China.

2009 – NASA launches Shuttle Atlantis on mission STS-129 to the International Space Station.

2022 – NASA launches Artemis 1 on the first flight of the Space Launch System, the start of the program’s future missions to the moon.

 

November 15

1532 – Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto meet Inca Empire leader Atahualpa outside Cajamarca, and arrange a meeting on the city plaza the following day.

1777 – The 2nd Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation and sends them to the states for ratification.

1806 –  While on mission to explore the south and western sections of the Louisiana Purchase, Lieutenant Zebulon Pike espies a distant mountain peak while near the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains, later named for him.

1849 – Boilers of the steamboat Louisiana explode as she pulls from the dock in New Orleans, killing more than 150 people.

1864 – Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins his ‘March to the Sea’, leaving Atlanta to attack towards Savannah.

1889 – Brazil is declared a republic by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca as Emperor Pedro II is deposed in a military coup.

1920 – The first assembly of the League of Nations is held in Geneva, one of its first acts being to establish Danzig, Prussia, (now Gdansk Poland) as a Free City under its protection.

1926 – The NBC radio network opens with 24 stations.

1938 – Nazi Germany bans Jewish children from public schools in the aftermath of Kristallnacht.

1939 – President Roosevelt lays the cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial.

1942 – The Naval Battle of Guadalcanal ends in a decisive Allied victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy with the sinking of a Japanese battleship, destroyer and 4 transports.

1943 – SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies are to be put “on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps”.

1949 – Nathuram Godse and Narayan Apte are executed by hanging at Ambala Central Jail, Haryana state, India, for the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.

1965 – Craig Breedlove drives his General Electric J79 turbojet engine powered Spirit of America – Sonic 1 car at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to a land speed record of 600.601 mph which stands for nearly 4 years before being exceeded.

1966 – Gemini 12 completes the program’s final mission, splashing down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.

1967 – The only fatality of the North American X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams loses control of his aircraft which is destroyed midair over the Mojave Desert.

1969 – At a depth of 200 feet, the Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the U.S. submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea with no casualties reported, but heavy damage to the Soviet boat.

1971 – Intel releases the world’s first commercial single chip microprocessor, the 4004.

1979 – American Airlines Flight 444, a Boeing 727 flying from Chicago to  Washington National Airport makes an emergency landing at Dulles International Airport after a bomb sent by Unabomber Ted Kazinski partially detonates in the cargo hold, damaging the plane and causing 12 passengers to be treated for smoke inhalation.

1985 – A research assistant and the intended recipient, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan are injured when a package from the Unabomber explodes.

1987 – Continental Airlines Flight 1713, a Douglas DC-9, crashes during takeoff from Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado, killing 28 of the 82 passengers and crew aboard.

2001 – Microsoft launches the Xbox game console.

2013 – Sony releases the PlayStation 4 game console.

2022 – The world population reached 8 billion.

November 14

332 BC – Having defeated Darius III at Issus the year before, and conquered Egypt, Alexander the Great is crowned Pharaoh.

1680 – German astronomer Gottfried Kirch, while working at Coberg, discovers the Great Comet of 1680, the first comet to be discovered by telescope.

1776 – Editors of the London newspaper The St. James Chronicle name Benjamin Franklin as one of the leaders of the “rebellion in North America”.

1851 –  Herman Melville’s novel, Moby Dick, is published in the U.S.

1889 – American journalist Nellie Bly begins a successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days, completing the trip in 72 days.

1910 – Eugene Ely performs the first takeoff from a ship, flying a Curtiss Pusher off the deck of the USS Birmingham in Hampton Roads, Virginia

1922 – The British Broadcasting Company begins radio service in the United Kingdom.

1957 – The “Apalachin meeting” at the estate of Joseph “Joe the Barber” Barbara, in Apalachin, New York of over 100 leaders of organized crime in the U.S. is raided by local police, suspicious of all the expensive cars suddenly arriving in the small town, who arrest over 60 high level Mafia members.

1965 – Led by Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore, the 1st Battalion of the 7th Cavalry Regiment engages the 33rd Regiment of the Peoples Army of Vietnam in the Ia Drang valley of South Vietnam, the first major engagement between regular American and North Vietnamese forces.

1967 – The Congress of Colombia, in commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the death of Policarpa Salavarrieta, declares the day as “Day of the Colombian Woman”.

1969 – NASA launches Apollo 12, the second crewed mission to the surface of the Moon.

1970 – Southern Airways Flight 932, a Douglas DC-9, crashes on landing approach in the mountains near Huntington, West Virginia, killing 75 passengers and crew aboard which includes almost all of the Marshall University football team.

1971 – NASA probe Mariner 9 enters orbit around Mars.

1979 – President Carter issues Executive Order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States in response to the hostage crisis.

1990 – After German reunification, the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland sign a treaty confirming the Oder–Neisse river line as the border between Germany and Poland.

1991 – American and British authorities announce indictments and issue arrest warrants against 2 Libyan intelligence officials,  Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah,  in connection with the downing of the Pan Am Flight 103.

2001 – Backed by U.S. forces, the Afghan Northern Alliance takes over the capital Kabul from the Taliban.

2003 – Using the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory at San Diego, and confirmed by observations at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, the Tenagra IV telescope in Nogales, Arizona, and the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, astronomers discover 90377 Sedna, a dwarf planet approximately 600 miles in diameter, in the outermost reaches of the Solar System and the most distant trans-Neptunian object yet found, at 8 billion miles at its closest approach to the sun in its orbit

2017 – After earlier murdering his wife in their home, a man kills 5 people and injures 18 others during a shooting spree across Rancho Tehama, California, before committing suicide after a police officer rams his car

2019 – A student at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, goes on a rampage, shooting 6 other students, killing 3, before committing suicide.

November 13

1775 – During the American invasion of Quebec during the Revolutionary War,  forces under Gen. Richard Montgomery occupy Montreal without firing a shot.

1851 – The Denny Party of pioneers lands at Alki Point, before moving to the other side of Elliott Bay to what would become Seattle.

1918 – Just days after the Armistice, Allied troops occupy Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

1922 – In the case of Zucht v. King, the Supreme Court upholds mandatory vaccinations for public school students.

1927 – The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicle tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City.

1940 – Walt Disney’s animated musical film Fantasia is released at New York’s Broadway Theatre

1942 – During World War II, in battle between U.S. and Japanese ships off Savo island in the Solomons, the Japanese lose 1 battleship and 2 destroyers sunk with the U.S. losing 2 cruisers and 4 destroyers sunk

1947 – Russian soldier Mikhail Kalashnikov submits his perfected prototype assault rifle, designated Автомáт Калáшникова Oбразец 1947 –
Avtomat Kalashnikova Obrazets 1947 – for adoption by Soviet armed forces.

1950 – General Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, President of Venezuela, is assassinated in Caracas.

1956 – In the case of Browder v. Gayle, the Supreme Court declares Alabama laws requiring segregated buses unconstitutional, thus ending the Montgomery bus boycott.

1982 – The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.

1985 – The volcano Nevado del Ruiz erupts and melts a glacier, causing a volcanic lahar mudslide, burying the town of Armero, Colombia, killing approximately 23,000 people.

1995 – A group called the Islamic Movement for Change detonates a truck bomb outside of a US operated Saudi Arabian National Guard training center in Riyadh, killing 5 Americans, 2 Indians. and injuring 60 more.

2001 – President Bush signs an executive order allowing military tribunals against foreigners suspected of connections to terrorist acts or planned acts on the United States.

2013 – The 78 story 4 World Trade Center officially opens, replacing a 9 story building damaged during the 9/11 attack and later razed.

2015 – Islamic State terrorists carry out a series of coordinated attacks in Paris, including suicide bombings, mass shootings at several restaurants and the Batalclan theater and a hostage crisis, killing 130 people and wounding over 400 more.

November 12

1330 – Near Posada, in modern Romania, the much smaller 7000 man army of Wallachian Warlord Basarab, ambushes and defeats the 30,000 man Hungarian army  of King Charles I, maintaining the independence of the principality from Hungarian domination.

1892 – Pudge Heffelfinger becomes the first professional American football player on record, participating in his first paid game for the Allegheny Athletic Association.

1912 – During the First Balkan War, King George I of Greece makes a triumphal entry into Thessaloniki after its liberation from 482 years of Ottoman rule.

1927 – Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Soviet Communist Party, leaving Joseph Stalin in undisputed control of the Soviet Union.

1928 – The Lamport and Holt Line’s SS Vestris sinks in heavy weather approximately 200 miles off Hampton Roads, Virginia, killing at least 110 passengers, mostly women and children who die after the vessel is abandoned.

1933 – Nazi Germany withdraws its membership from the League of Nations.

1936 – The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opens to traffic.

1938 – Within days after Kristallnacht, Nazi Germany issues the Decree on the Elimination of Jews from Economic Life prohibiting Jews from selling goods and services or working in a trade, totally segregating Jews from the German economy.

1942 – The 3rd and 4th Battles of Savo Island between Japanese and American naval forces, begin off Guadalcanal.

1948 – In Tokyo, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East sentences 7 Japanese military and government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, to death for their roles in commiting War Crimes during World War II.

1954 – Ellis Island ceases immigrant inprocessing operations.

1958 – A team of rock climbers led by Warren Harding completes the first ascent of ‘The Nose’ on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley.

1979 – In response to the hostage situation in Tehran, President Carter orders a halt to all petroleum imports into the United States from Iran.

1981 – Space Shuttle Columbia, launched on Shuttle Mission STS-2 marks the first time a manned spacecraft is launched into space twice.

1990 – Tim Berners-Lee publishes a formal proposal for the World Wide Web.

1997 – Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and sentenced to 2 life terms plus 240 years in federal prison.

2001 – American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300, enroute to the Dominican Republic, crashes minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 passengers and crew aboard and another 5 people on the ground.

2008 – A treacherous Iraqi soldier is killed after assassinating U.S. Army Sergeant Jose Regalado and Specialist Corey Shea in Mosul, Iraq

2011 – A explosion of mysterious origin at Bidganeh arsenal in Iran’s Shahid Modarres missile base kills 17 Revolutionary Guards and the chief of its missile program.

2021 – The Los Angeles Superior Court formally ends the 14 year long conservatorship to pop singer Britney Spears.

November 9

1620 – Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sight land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

1780 – In the Battle of Fishdam Ford during the Revolutionary War, a force of British and Loyalist troops fail in a surprise attack against the South Carolina Patriot militia under Brigadier General Thomas Sumter, who later has a fort named after him.

1862 – Union General Ambrose Burnside assumes command of the Army of the Potomac, after General George B. McClellan is removed.

1867 – The last Shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, hands power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration.

1872 – A fire erupts in the basement of a commercial warehouse at 83–87 Summer Street, Boston and is not controlled until 12 hours later, after destroying 776 buildings and much of the financial district in the city’s downtown, causing over $73 million in damage and killing 30 people died, including 12 firefighters.

1887 – Having earlier acquired rights to the exclusive use of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the U.S. Navy officially takes possession of the area.

1913 – A massive blizzard, the most destructive natural disaster ever to hit the lakes, reaches its greatest intensity after beginning two days earlier, destroying 19 ships and killing more than 250 people.

1917 – The Balfour Declaration,  a letter from Britain’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Walter, Baron Rothschild, declaring the British government’s support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in what would become British Mandate Palestine, is publicly published.

1918 – Due to massive civil unrest and mutinies in the imperial navy and army, German Kaiser Wilhelm abdicates the throne.

1935 – The Committee for Industrial Organization, the precursor to the Congress of Industrial Organizations, is founded in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by eight trade unions belonging to the American Federation of Labor. AFL-CIO

1938 – Using the assassination of their diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris as an excuse, the Nazis instigate what is called Kristallnacht for the breaking of the glass windows in many Jewish owned businesses and synagogues in Germany.

1960 – Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Company, the first non-Ford to serve in that post, but resigns a month later to join the administration of newly elected John Kennedy.

1967 – NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft, atop the first Saturn V rocket, from Cape Kennedy.

1970 – In the case of Massachusetts v. Laird, the Supreme Court, citing a lack of jurisdiction, refuses to hear the case. Massachusetts’ Attorney General seeking the Court to rule on the passage of a state law granting residents the right to refuse military service in an undeclared war.

1979 –  North American Aerospace Defense Command computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland, detect a purported massive Soviet nuclear missile strike against the U.S. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early warning radars, the alert is cancelled as a false alarm caused by a NORAD technician loading a test tape, but failing to switch the system status to “test”.

1989 – East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to freely travel to West Berlin.

1998 – A U.S. federal judge, in the largest civil settlement in American history, orders 37 U.S. brokerage houses to pay $1.03 billion to cheated NASDAQ investors to compensate for price fixing.

2004 – The Firefox 1.0 internet browser is released.