On This Day in History... (1950's, slavery, Eisenhower, origin)

[Da Grouch]

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~498 – Following the death of Pope Anastasius II, Symmachus was elected Pope in the Lateran Palace, meanwhile Laurentius was elected Pope in Santa Maria Maggiore. (They eventually worked it all out.)

~845 – The forces of Nominoe, the first King of all Brittany, defeated the army of Frankish king Charles the Bald at The Battle of Ballon near Redon, in northwestern France.

~1573 – The Brazilian city of Niterói was founded. (You just GOTTA go there, the beaches are to die for!)

~1718 – Perhaps the most notorious pirate of all time, Blackbeard (Edward Teach), met his fate off the coast of North Carolina when he was killed in a battle with seamen from HMS Pearl led by Royal Navy Lieutenant Robert Maynard.

~1812 – At The Battle of Wildcat Creek, a force of 60 Indiana Rangers and 3 US Army officers fell for a ploy that led them into an ambush by Kickapoo, Winnebago, and Shawnee warriors. 17 of the Indiana Rangers were killed.

~1830 – Charles Grey, (2nd Earl Grey), became Prime Minister of Britain.

~1837 – Canadian journalist and politician William Lyon Mackenzie called for a rebellion against Great Britain in his essay To the People of Upper Canada, published in his newspaper The Constitution. (It didn't happen.)

~1858 – Denver, Colorado was founded. (Definitely one of my favorite towns!)

~1859 – Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species was first offered for sale, in London, England.

~1864 – Sherman's March to the Sea: Confederate General John Bell Hood's army invaded Tennessee in an unsuccessful attempt to draw Union General William T. Sherman away from Georgia.

~1869 – In Dumbarton, Scotland, the clipper Cutty Sark was launched. She was one of the last clippers ever to be built, and one of only a very few still surviving today.

Cutty Sark under full sail (c. 1880)



~1916 – Died this day: Jack London, novelist. (b. 1876)

~1928 РThe premier performance of Ravel's Bol̩ro took place in Paris.

~1935 – The China Clipper took off from Alameda, California on its first commercial flight. It reached its final destination of Manila a week later.

Martin M-130 China Clipper four engined flying boat



~1940 – Following the initial Italian invasion, Greek troops counterattacked into Italian occupied Albania and captured Korytsa.

~1942 – The Battle of Stalingrad: General Friedrich Paulus sent Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the German 6th army was completely surrounded. Hitler's response was the same as it would remain right up to the surrender of the German 6th, "Fight to the last man."

~1943 – The Cairo Conference: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek met in Cairo, Egypt, to discuss the tactics of defeating Japan.

~1943 – Lebanon gained (took) its independence from France. (Which, at the time, was only capable of receiving its ass kicking from Germany.)

~1954 – The Humane Society of the United States was founded.

~1955 - Shemp Howard, actor, comedian, and member of The Three Stooges; died of a heart attack following an evening out with friends watching boxing matches.

~1963 – At Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, shots were fired into the presidential motorcade. US President John F. Kennedy was killed and Texas Governor John B. Connally was seriously wounded. A suspect was later captured and initially charged with the murder of police officer J. D. Tippit. On that same day, US Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in to office as the 36th President of the United States.

Dealey Plaza in 2003 with the (former) Texas School Book Depository Building at left.



~1967 – UN Security Council Resolution 242 was adopted by the UN Security Council. It established a set of the principles aimed at guiding negotiations for an Arab-Israeli peace settlement. (Stay tuned for even more resolutions from your good friends at Resolutions "R" Us)

~1968 - The Beatles released The White Album.

~1974 – The United Nations General Assembly granted the Palestine Liberation Organization observer status. (Hey! Let's have Black September, the Tamil Tigers, the Black Panthers and the mob sit in, too!)

~1975 – Juan Carlos was declared King of Spain following the death of Francisco Franco.

~1977 – British Airways inaugurated regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service.

British Airways Concorde at Heathrow (c. 1980)

Photo by Plismo


~1986 – A 20 year old Mike Tyson knocked out Trevor Berbick in the 2nd round to become the youngest heavyweight champion in boxing history. (2 dorks in 1 ring!)

~1987 – Two Chicago television stations were hijacked by an unknown pirate dressed as Max Headroom.

~1988 – In Palmdale, California, the first prototype of the Northrop B-2 Spirit stealth bomber was revealed.

B-2 Spirit
U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Bennie J. Davis III


~1989 – In West Beirut, a bomb exploded near the motorcade of Lebanese President Rene Moawad, killing him.

~1990 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher withdrew from the Conservative Party leadership election, confirming the end of her premiership.

~1995 – Toy Story was released as the first feature length film created completely by use of computer generated imagery.

~2002 – In Nigeria, more than 100 people were killed at an attack aimed at the contestants of the Miss World contest.

~2004 – The Orange Revolution began in the Ukraine, resulting from the presidential elections.

~2005 – Angela Merkel became the first woman Chancellor of Germany. (All cheer for Angie!)

~2008 – YouTube hosted the largest ever live broadcast, YouTube Live.

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[Da Grouch]

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~1227 – Polish Prince Leszek I the White was assassinated at an assembly of Piast dukes at Gąsawa.

~1248 – Control of Seville, Spain was wrested from the Moors by the Christian army of King Ferdinand III of Castile.

~1499 – Pretender to the English throne Perkin Warbeck was hanged for attempting to escape from the Tower of London. He had invaded England with a hodge-podge army in 1497 claiming to be the long lost son of King Edward IV of England. (Just like most braggarts and hoaxters, he was one of history's greatest cowards as well.)

~1531 – The Second War of Kappel came to an end with the dissolution of the Protestant alliance in Switzerland following their disasterous defeat at The Battle of Kappel some 6 weeks earlier on October 11th.

~1644 – John Milton published Areopagitica. This polemical tract is among history's most influential and impassioned philosophical defences of the principle of a right to free expression. It was written in opposition to licensing and censorship and is regarded as one of the most eloquent defenses of press freedom ever written.




~1808 – The combined French and Polish armies defeated a Spanish force of just over half their number at The Battle of Tudela during The Peninsula War.

~1863 – The Battle of Chattanooga began. Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant reinforced the troops at Chattanooga, Tennessee who then counter-attacked an invading Confederate army.

~1867 – The Manchester Martyrs were hanged in Manchester, England for killing a police officer while freeing 2 Irish nationalists from custody. (Some call them martyrs...I call them murderers.)

~1876 – Corrupt Tammany Hall leader William Marcy Tweed (better known as Boss Tweed) was delivered to authorities in New York City after being captured in Spain. (Uh oh! Looks like de pawty iz ovuh, Boss!)

~1889 – The world's very first jukebox went into operation at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco.

~1890 – King William III of the Netherlands died without a male heir so a special law was passed to allow his daughter, Princess Wilhelmina, to ascend the throne.

Queen Wilhelmina (c. 1898)



~1903 – Colorado governor James Peabody sent the state militia into the town of Cripple Creek to break up a miners' strike. (That one kinda blew up in your face later with the Colorado Labor Wars, didn't it, Jimmy!)

~1914 – The last U.S. forces withdrew from Veracruz, occupied seven months earlier in response to The Tampico Affair.

~1934 – An Anglo-Ethiopian boundary commission in the Ogaden discovered an Italian garrison at Walwal, well within Ethiopian territory. This would lead to The Abyssinia Crisis. (No! Say it ain't so...our good buds the Italians would do that?)

~1936 – The first edition of Life newsmagazine was published.

~1943 - The Deutsche Opernhaus on Bismarckstraße, in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg, was destroyed. This, courtesy a squadron of RAF Lancaster bombers conducting a raid. It was finally rebuilt in 1961 and renamed the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

The Deutsches Opernhaus, in 1936

Photo from Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)


~1943 – Both the Tarawa and Makin atolls fell to American forces.

~1946 – The French Navy opened fire on Hai Phong, Viet Nam. In doing so they killed more than 6,000 civilians. (Gosh, I wonder why the Vietnamese rose up and kicked France's sorry ass into oblivion after that?)

~1955 – The Cocos Islands were transferred from the control of the United Kingdom to Australia.

~1958 - Following the great success it achieved with the television series, Have Gun Will Travel premiered on CBS Radio for the first of its 106 episodes during its 2 year run. This was one of the few cases of a television show spawning a successful radio version.

~1959 – French President General Charles de Gaulle declared, during a speech made in Strasbourg, his vision for a "Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals." (As usual the rest of the world ignored the pompous idiot.)

~1963 – The BBC broadcast the very first episode of Doctor Who, which starred William Hartnell as the good doctor. It is the world's longest running (campy or otherwise) science fiction drama.

~1971 – Representatives of the People's Republic of China attended the United Nations, including the United Nations Security Council, for the first time.

~1976 – Apneist Jacques Mayol was the first man to reach a depth of 100 m undersea without breathing equipment.

~1979 – In Dublin, Ireland, a Provisional Irish Republican Army member was sentenced to life in prison for the assassination of Lord Mountbatten.

~1980 – A series of earthquakes struck southern Italy and killed approximately 4,800 people.

~1981 – The Iran-Contra Affair: US President Ronald Reagan signed the top secret National Security Decision Directive 17 (NSDD-17), giving the Central Intelligence Agency the authority to recruit and support Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

~1985 – Gunmen hijacked EgyptAir Flt. 648 while en route from Athens to Cairo. When the plane landed in Malta, Egyptian commandos stormed the hijacked jetliner. 60 people died in the raid.

~1990 – The first all woman expedition to the south pole consisting of 3 Americans, 1 Japanese and 12 Russians set off from the Antarctic coast on the first leg of a 70 day, 800 mile (1287 km) ski trek.

~1993 – Rachel Whiteread won both the £20,000 Turner Prize award for best British modern artist and the £40,000 K Foundation Art Award for the worst artist of the year. (I'd have to say that the K Foundation award was by far the most appropriate...)

~1996 – Ethiopian Airlines Flt. 961 was hijacked. The hijackers were told that the Boeing 767-260 must land to refuel but they refused to allow this. It then crashed into the Indian Ocean off the coast of Comoros after running out of fuel. 125 aboard were killed, including all 3 hijackers. (Hijackers aren't known to be one of the more intelligent life forms inhabiting the planet.)

~2001 – The Convention on Cybercrime Treaty was signed in Budapest, Hungary.

~2003 – Georgian president Eduard Shevardnadze resigned following weeks of mass protests over flawed elections.

~2005 – Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was elected president of Liberia and became the first woman to lead an African country. (Woohoooo!!! Go Ellen!)

~2007 – MS Explorer, a cruise liner carrying 154 people, sank in the Antarctic Ocean south of Argentina after hitting an iceberg near the South Shetland Islands. Unlike the most famous case of a liner striking an iceberg, this time there were no fatalities. (Except for the career of the captain who was left to explain how he managed to hit a chunk of ice the size of Staten Island in a ship equipped with one of the most modern radar and sonar systems in the world...)

MS Explorer, January 2005

Photo by Constantine

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[Da Grouch]

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~380 – Roman Emperor Theodosius I made his adventus (formal entry) into Constantinople.

~1429 РJoan of Arc and her forces unsuccessfully besieged La Charit̩.

~1639 – Jeremiah Horrocks observed the transit of Venus across the face of the Sun, an event he had predicted.

~1642 – Abel Tasman became the first European to discover the island Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania).

~1850 – At The Battle of Lottorf during the First Schleswig War, a small Danish force defeated a Schleswig-Holstein (area of Prussia) force of approximately the same size in the town of Lottorf, Schleswig-Holstein.

~1863 – The Battle of Lookout Mountain – Near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant captured Lookout Mountain and began to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.

The view north from Point Lookout on Lookout Mountain over the Chattanooga region.

Engraving scanned from Johnson, Robert Underwood, and Buel, Clarence C. (eds.), Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. 3, p. 690, Century Co., 1885


~1922 – Author and Irish Republican Army member Robert Erskine Childers was executed by an Irish Free State firing squad for illegally carrying a revolver.

~1932 – The FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opened in Washington, DC.

~1940 – Slovakia became a signatory to the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers already at war.

~1941 – The United States granted Lend-Lease to the Free French. (The French immediately complained that nothing in it was good enough for them.)

~1943 – The USS Liscome Bay, a Casablanca class escort carrier, was torpedoed and sunk near Tarawa, taking 650 US servicemen down with her.

USS Liscome Bay underway, September 1943



~1944 – The first bombing raid against the Japanese capital of Tokyo from the east and, more importantly, by land was carried out by an attack force of 88 American aircraft.

~1962 – The West Berlin branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany formed a separate party, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin. (It must have been a slow news day back in '62.)

~1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald was gunned down by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters. The shooting was broadcast live on television.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snShVwfTStA


~1963 – Newly sworn in US President Lyndon B. Johnson confirmed that the United States intended to continue supporting South Vietnam both militarily and economically.

~1965 РJoseph D̩sir̩ Mobutu seized power in the Congo and appointed himself President. He ruled the country, which he renamed Zaire in 1971, for over 30 years until finally being overthrown by rebels in 1997. (I wish I'd put a bullet through that corrupt bastard's head when I had the chance in '77.)

~1966 – Bulgarian-Soviet Transport Aviation Corporation Flt. 101, an Ilyushin IL-18B, crashed into a wooded hillside shortly after takeoff from Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. All 82 aboard were killed.

~1966 – New York City experienced the worst air quality day in the city's history.

~1969 – The Apollo 12 command module splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon. (Believe it or not, Chopper #66 didn't recover the crew!)

Recovery of the Apollo 12 capsule after splashdown, by the USS Hornet



~1971 – During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (AKA D. B. Cooper) parachuted out the rear door of a Northwest Orient Airlines Boeing 727, from 10,000 feet and at over 200 mph. With him was $200,000 in ransom money. He has never been found.

~1974 – In the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression, Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discovered the (40% complete) Australopithecus afarensis skeleton. They nicknamed it "Lucy" after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".

~1992 – A China Southern Airlines domestic flight, in the People's Republic of China, crashed killing all 141 people aboard.

~1993 – In Liverpool, 11 year olds Robert Thompson and Jon Venables were convicted of the brutal murder of 2 year old James Bulger.

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[mensaguy]

On November 25, 1965, Richard Robbins and Arlo Guthrie had Thanksgiving Dinner at the home of Alice and Ray Brock. Later they offered to help out and take out the garbage.

[Da Grouch]

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~1034 – Máel Coluim mac Cináeda, the King of Scots died. Donnchad, the son of his daughter Bethóc and Crínán of Dunkeld, then inherited the throne instead of MacBeth.

~1120 – The White Ship sank in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son of Henry I of England.

~1177 – The combined forces of Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Raynald of Chatillon defeated the army of Saladin at The Battle of Montgisard.

~1343 – A tsunami, caused by the earthquake in the Tyrrhenian Sea, devastated Naples and the Maritime Republic of Amalfi, along with much of the Italian coast and northern Sicily.

~1491 – The siege of Granada: Spanish forces of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile laid siege to the walled city of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain.

~1667 – A deadly earthquake struck Şamaxı in the Caucasus, killing over 80,000 people and destroying more than a third of the city.

~1703 – The Great Storm of 1703: The greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern portion of Great Britain reached its peak intensity, which it maintained through November 27. Winds gusted up to 120 mph causing extensive damage and over 9,000 deaths.

~1755 – King Ferdinand IV of Spain granted royal protection to the Beaterio dela Compania de Jesus, now known as the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary.

~1758 – British forces captured Fort Duquesne from the French. Fort Pitt was built nearby and it grew into what is now modern Pittsburgh.

~1759 – An major earthquake devastated the Mediterranean destroying both Beirut and Damascus. Upwards of 40,000 people died in the shaker.

~1783 – The last British troops left New York City three months after the signing of The Treaty of Paris.

~1795 – Stanislaus August Poniatowski, the last king of independent Poland, was forced to abdicate and went into exile in Russia.

~1826 – The Greek frigate Hellas arrived in Nafplion and became the first flagship of the Hellenic Navy. (A frigate for a flagship? Well, OK then!)

~1833 – A massive undersea earthquake, with an estimated magnitude between 8.7-9.2 rocked Sumatra, producing a massive tsunami all along the Indonesian coast.

~1839 – A cyclone tore into India with high winds and a 40 foot storm surge. It completely destroyed the port city of Coringa (which has never been completely rebuilt). The storm wave swept inland, taking with it 20,000 boats and ships along with tens of thousands of people. An estimated 300,000+ deaths resulted from the disaster.

~1863 – At The Battle of Missionary Ridge in Tennessee, Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant finally broke the Siege of Chattanooga by routing the Confederate troops under General Braxton Bragg.

~1864 – A group of Confederate operatives calling themselves the Confederate Army of Manhattan started fires in more than 20 locations in an unsuccessful attempt to burn down New York City.

~1867 – Alfred Nobel was granted a patent on dynamite in the US. (As a true diehard pyromaniac...I cannot begin to tell you how much fun I've had with Alfie's great creation over the years.)

~1874 – The United States Greenback Party was established as a political party consisting primarily of farmers affected by The Panic of 1873.

~1876 – In retaliation for the American defeat (wipeout) at The Battle of the Little Bighorn, US Army troops sacked Chief Morning Star's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River.

~1905 – The Danish Prins Carl arrived in Norway to become King Haakon VII of Norway.

~1918 – Vojvodina, which was formerly Austro-Hungarian crown land, proclaimed its secession from Austria–Hungary to join the Kingdom of Serbia.

~1926 – The deadliest November tornado outbreak in U.S. history struck on Thanksgiving day. 27 twisters of great strength were reported in the Midwest. Included was the strongest November tornado, an estimated F4, that devastated Heber Springs, Arkansas. There were 51 deaths in Arkansas alone. There were 76 deaths and over 400 injuries in all.

~1936 – In Berlin, Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, agreeing to consult on measures "to safeguard their common interests" in the case of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union against either nation. The pact was renewed on the same day five years later with additional signatories. (This would be 5 months after Germany launched its own unprovoked attack on the Soviet Union.)

~1940 – In the skies over southern England, the first flight of the deHavilland Mosquito took place.

De Havilland Mosquito B Mark IV Series 2 in flight, November 1942



~1940 – In the skies over Nebraska, the first flight of the Martin B-26 Marauder took place.

U.S. Army Air Force B-26B bomber "A Kay Pro's Dream" in flight over western Europe (c. 1944)



~1940 - Woody Woodpecker first appeared in the film Knock Knock.

~1944 - A German V-2 rocket hit a Woolworth's store in Deptford, killing 160 shoppers. Another 121 were seriously injured in the strike. It was the most devastating V-2 bombing of the entire war.

~1947 – Red Scare: The now infamous Hollywood Ten were blacklisted by Hollywood movie studios due to alleged communist ties.

~1947 – New Zealand ratified the Statute of Westminster, becoming independent of legislative control by the United Kingdom.

~1950 – The Storm of the Century: A violent snowstorm paralyzed the northeastern United States and the Appalachians, bringing with it winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures. Pickens, West Virginia, recorded 57 inches of snow. 323 people died as a result of the blizzard.

~1950 – The People's Republic of China joined the Korean War, sending thousands of troops across the Yalu river border to fight United Nations forces. (And what did Truman authorize to stop the inflow of Chinese troops? Can you say, "Jack Sh**"?)

~1952 – Agatha Christie's murder mystery play The Mousetrap opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. It would go on to become the longest continuously running play in history.

~1958 – French Sudan gained autonomy as a self governing member of the French Community. (Not quite as good as telling Paris to stuff it where the sun don't shine...but almost.)

~1960 – The Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic were assassinated.

~1963 – United States President John F. Kennedy was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The John F. Kennedy gravesite with The Eternal Flame at Arlington National Cemetery.



~1970 – In Japan, author Yukio Mishima and one compatriot committed ritualistic suicide after an unsuccessful coup attempt. (Took the failure rather hard, did they?)

~1973 – George Papadopoulos, head of the military Regime of the Colonels in Greece, was ousted from power in a hardliners' coup led by Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannidis.

~1975 – Suriname was granted its independence from the Netherlands.

~1977 – Former Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., by daring to oppose Philippine (a**hole) president Ferdinand Marcos, was found guilty on trumped up charges of murder, illegal possession of firearms and subversion by the Philippine Military Commission No. 2. He was sentenced to death by firing squad.

~1982 – The Minneapolis Thanksgiving Day Fire destroyed an entire city block, including the Northwestern National Bank building and the recently closed Donaldson's Department Store.

~1984 – 36 of the world's top musicians gathered in a Notting Hill studio and recorded Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. (Good Lord, can you believe it's actually been a quarter century?)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jEnTSQStGE


~1986 – The Iran Contra Affair: US Attorney General Edwin Meese announced that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

~1986 – The 17 mile long King Fahd Causeway, connecting Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, was officially opened a mere 18 years after construction began.

~1987 – Super Typhoon Nina pummelled much of the Philippines into debris with category 5 winds of over 165 mph and a 15 ft. storm surge that destroyed entire villages. At least 1,036 deaths were attributed to the storm and over 100,000 people were left homeless.

~1988 – German politician Rita Süssmuth became president of the Bundestag.

~1992 – The Federal Assembly of Czechoslovakia voted to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia effective January 1st, 1993.

~1996 – An ice storm struck the central U.S. resulting in the deaths of 26 people.

~1996 - A powerful windstorm roared into Florida with gusts of over 90 mph, toppling trees and flipping trailers.

~1999 – The United Nations passed a resolution establishing the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, to commemorate the murder of the three Mirabal Sisters for resistance against the Rafael Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic in 1960. (Yet another UN symbolic hot air resolution with no teeth to back it.)

~2000 – The magnitude 7.0 2000 Baku Earthquake struck, killing 26 and destroying more than 90 buildings and apartment blocks. Power to most of Baku, Azerbaijan was knocked out for days. (Is it just me or is Nov. 25th a really bad day for earthquakes?)

~2005 – The Polish Minister of National Defence, Radek Sikorski, opened the Warsaw Pact archives to historians. Maps of possible nuclear strikes against Western Europe as well as the possible nuclear annihilation of 43 Polish cities and 2 million of its citizens by Soviet controlled forces were released.

~2007 – The first European Parliament election, along with a referendum on changing the voting system, were held in Romania. These were later declared invalid by the President because of insufficient voter turnout.

~2008 – A car bomb exploded in St. Petersburg, Russia killing 3 people and injuring 1.

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[Da Grouch]

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~43 BC – The Second Triumvirate alliance of Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus ("Octavian", later "Caesar Augustus"), Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and Mark Antony was created.

~783 – The Asturian queen Adosinda was put up in a monastery to prevent her kin from retaking the throne from Mauregatus.

~1476 – The forces of Vlad III Dracula defeated Basarab Laiota's army with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Bathory. With this Vlad the Impaler became the ruler of Wallachia for the third time. (Unfortunately for him, though, he would be dead within the month.)

~1778 – In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook became the first European to land on Maui.

~1789 – A national Thanksgiving Day was observed in the United States as recommended by President George Washington and approved by Congress.

~1805 – In northeast Wales the official opening of Thomas Telford's Pontcysyllte Aqueduct took place.

The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct

Photo by Akke Monasso


~1825 – At Union College in Schenectady, New York a group of college students formed Kappa Alpha Society, the first college social fraternity.

~1842 – In Indiana the University of Notre Dame was founded.

~1863 – In Orange County, Virginia, Union forces under General George Meade positioned against troops led by Confederate General Robert E. Lee in the preparation for The Battle of Mine Run.

~1864 - Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, sent the handwritten manuscript of Alice's Adventures Under Ground to 12 year old Alice Liddell.

~1872 - The San Francisco Evening Bulletin exposed The Great Diamond Hoax, one of the most notorious mining scandals in US history.

~1917 – The National Hockey League was formed, with the Montreal Canadiens, Montreal Wanderers, Ottawa Senators, Quebec Bulldogs, and Toronto Arenas as the first teams.

~1922 – Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to see inside the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in over 3000 years, through the famous "tiny breach in the top left hand corner" of the doorway.

~1922 – Toll of the Sea debuted as the first general release film to use two-tone Technicolor (The Gulf Between was the first film to do so but it was not widely distributed).

~1939 – The Shelling of Mainila: The Soviet Army orchestrated the incident which was used to justify the start of The Winter War with Finland four days later.

~1941 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

~1941 - The Hull note: US Secretary of State Cordell Hull presented the Japanese ambassador with the Hull note which, as one of its conditions, demanded the complete withdrawal of all Japanese troops from French Indochina and China.

~1941 - Attack on Pearl Harbor: A fleet of 6 aircraft carriers commanded by Japanese Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo left Hitokapu Bay in northern Japan enroute to the Hawaiian Islands, under strict radio silence. 5 Japanese submarines had departed Kure Naval District for Pearl Harbor the previous day.

~1942 – Yugoslav Partisans convened the first meeting of the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia at Bihać in northwestern Bosnia.

~1942 - The Hollywood film classic Casablanca premiered at the Hollywood Theater in New York City.

~1944 – Germany began V-1 and V-2 attacks on Antwerp, Belgium.

~1949 – The Indian Constituent Assembly adopted India's constitution as presented by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar.

~1950 – Troops from the People's Republic of China launched a massive counterattack in North Korea against South Korean and United Nations forces at The Battle of Ch'ongch'on River. This dashed any hopes of a quick end to the conflict.

~1965 – In the Hammaguir launch facility in the Sahara Desert, France launched a Diamant-A rocket with its first satellite, Asterix, on board. This made France the third country to enter outer space.


Replica of Astérix at Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace, Paris Le Bourget

Photo by Pline


~1968 – US Air Force helicopter pilot James P. Fleming rescued an Army Special Forces unit pinned down by Viet Cong fire and was later awarded the Medal of Honor.

~1970 – In Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, 1.5 inches (38.1 mm) of rain fell in 1 minute, to date this is the heaviest rainfall ever recorded on the planet.

~1975 - A Federal jury found Manson family member Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme guilty of the attempted assassination of US President Gerald Ford.

~1977 – Vrillon, claiming to be the representative of the "Ashtar Galactic Command", took over Britain's Southern Television for six minutes at 5:12 PM. (Yup, ya' know what they say genius is just one step away from...)

~1983 – The Brinks Mat Robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly £26 million were stolen from the Brinks Mat vault at Heathrow Airport. Most of the gold has never been recovered. (Nice haul, guys.)

~1986 – The Iran-Contra Affair: U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced the members of what would become known as the Tower Commission.

~1990 – The Delta II-7000 rocket made its maiden flight.

Delta II 7925 at dawn on Lauch pad 17B at the Kennedy Space Center (September 27, 2007, 7:34 a.m. EDT )



~1998 – Tony Blair became the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the Republic of Ireland's parliament. (And they didn't even shoot him!)

~2003 – A sad day for aviation as the Concorde made its final flight, over Bristol, England.

~2004 – The Ruzhou School Massacre: A deranged whack-job stabbed and killed eight students and seriously wounded another four inside a school dormitory in Ruzhou, China.

~2004 – The last known male Po'ouli (Black-faced Honeycreeper) died of Avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii before it could breed. This occurance made the species in all probability extinct.

The Black-faced Honeycreeper
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Po%60o-uli.jpg (broken link)


~2008 – The Terrorist Attacks on Mumbai: The 10 co-ordinated attacks by Pakistan based terrorists began. Before they were done (on Nov. 29th) 164 people had been killed and another 250+ injured in Mumbai, India.

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[Da Grouch]

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~399 - (Saint) Anastasius I became Pope.

~1095 – Pope Urban II declared the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont.

Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont of 1095

artist unknown

~1703 – The first Eddystone Lighthouse was destroyed during The Great Storm of 1703.

~1815 – The adoption of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland.

~1830 – St. Catherine Laboure experienced a vision of the Blessed Virgin standing on a globe, crushing the feet of a serpent, and eminating rays of light from her hands. (Of course there are rumors that old Cathy had been well into a bottle of Jack Daniel's that night, too.)

~1863 – Confederate cavalry leader John Hunt Morgan and several of his men escaped from the Ohio Penitentiary and successfully evaded capture to return safely to the South.

~1868 - The Battle (slaughter) of Was-hita River – US Army Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer led an attack on the camp of a band of peaceful Cheyenne led by Chief Black Kettle. The Cheyenne were on reservation land at the time. (Note: There is no - in the name Was-hita River, but with the magical onsite auto-censor here on duty 24/7 to save us all from the vulgarities, real or perceived, of the English language...so it must be. Hey, I know; let's rename the river Wacrappa!)

~1895 – At the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signed his last will and testament. He set aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes after he died.

~1901 – The U.S. Army War College was established.

~1912 – Spain declared a protectorate over the north shore of Morocco.

~1924 – In New York City, the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was held. (No, there were no balloons. That didn't happen until 1927.)

~1934 – The murderous bank robber Lester J.Gillis, aka George Nelson, aka Baby Face Nelson, got into one shoot-out too many when he engaged FBI agents Herman Hollis (who was alleged to have delivered the fatal shot to a wounded Pretty Boy Floyd a month earlier) and Sam Cowley. Though Baby Face succeeded in killing the two G-men, he was fatally wounded in the gunfight and died several hours later just outside of Barrington, Illinois.

Baby Face Nelson (c.1933)



~1940 – In Romania, the ruling party Iron Guard arrested and then executed over 60 aides of the exiled King Carol II of Romania, including former minister Nicolae Iorga.

~1940 – At The Battle of Cape Spartivento, the Royal Navy engaged the Italian Regia Marina in the Mediterranean Sea.

~1942 – At Toulon, the French navy scuttled its ships and submarines to keep them from falling into the hands of the Nazis.

RAF aerial photo of the scuttled fleet



~1944 – An explosion in a Royal Air Force ammunition dump at Fauld, Staffordshire killed 70 people.

~1954 – Suspected Soviet spy Alger Hiss was released from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary after serving 44 months for perjury.

~1964 – Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru appealed to the United States and the Soviet Union to end nuclear testing and to start nuclear disarmament, stating that such an action would "save humanity from the ultimate disaster".

~1965 – The Pentagon told U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson that if planned operations were to succeed, the number of American troops in Vietnam would have to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000. (And of course, we all know what Lyndy did with regards to that one...)

~1971 – The Soviet space program's Mars 2 orbiter released a descent module. It malfunctioned and crashed, but it was still the first man made object to reach the surface of Mars.

1972 Soviet Union issue 6 kopeks stamp honoring the Mars 2 space probe



~1973 – As per the provisions of the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the U S Senate voted 92 to 3 to confirm Gerald Ford as the 40th Vice President of the United States. (On December 6, the House confirmed him 387 to 35.)

~1975 – The Provisional IRA murdered Ross McWhirter, co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records, after a press conference in which McWhirter had announced a reward for the capture of those responsible for the multiple bombings and shootings across England.

~1978 – In San Francisco City Hall, mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk were gunned down by former supervisor Dan White.

~1983 – A Colombian Boeing 747, Avianca Flt. 011, crashed near Madrid's Barajas Airport, killing 181 of the 192 aboard.

~1984 – Under The Brussels Agreement, signed between the governments of Britain and Spain, the UK agreed to enter into discussions with Spain over Gibraltar, including sovereignty. (Good thing we didn't hold our collective breaths wating on that to happen.)

~1990 - The British Conservative Party chose John Major to succeed Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister of Britain.

~1991 – The United Nations Security Council adopted (yet another) UN Security Council Resolution; Resolution 721. This lead the way to the establishment of peacekeeping operations in Yugoslavia. (Which were about as much of a joke as the UN Resolution was.)

~1992 – For the second time in less than a year, military forces tried to overthrow president Carlos Andres Perez in Venezuela.

~1997 – In the small mountain town of Souhane, Algeria, 25 people were killed in The Second Souhane Massacre.

~1999 – The left wing Labour Party took control of the New Zealand government with their leader, Helen Clark, becoming the first "elected" female Prime Minister in New Zealand's history.

~2001 – A sodium atmosphere was discovered on the extrasolar planet Osiris, by the Hubble Space Telescope, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet.

~2004 – Pope John Paul II returned the relics of Saint John Chrysostom to the Eastern Orthodox Church.

~2005 – The first partial human face transplant was completed in Amiens, France.

~2006 – The Canadian House of Commons endorsed Prime Minister Stephen Harper's motion to declare the province of Quebec "A nation within a unified Canada". (It's really not too hard to sell out an entire country when you have no morals, scruples or principles.)

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[Da Grouch]

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~1095 – On the last day of the Council of Clermont, Pope Urban II appointed Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy and Count Raymond IV of Toulouse to lead the First Crusade to the Holy Land.

~1443 – Skanderbeg and his forces liberated Kruja in Middle Albania from the Ottoman Empire.

~1520 – After navigating through the South American strait, three ships under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reached the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

~1582 – In Stratford on Avon, William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway.

~1729 – Natchez Indians massacred 229 French; 138 men, 35 women and 56 children at Fort Rosalie, near the site of modern day Natchez, Mississippi.

~1785 – The Treaty of Hopewell was signed by both the US government and the Cherokee nation.

~1811 – Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 was performed for the very fist time, at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.

~1814 – The Times in London was, for the first time, printed by automatic steam powered presses built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer. This signalled the beginnings of the availability of newspapers to a mass audience.

~1821 – Panama Independence Day: Panama separated from Spain and joined Gran Colombia.

~1843 – Ka Lā Hui: Hawaiian Independence Day – The Kingdom of Hawaii was officially recognized by both the United Kingdom and France as an independent nation.

~1862 – At The Battle of Cane Hill, Union troops under General John Blunt defeated General John Marmaduke's Confederate forces.

~1868 - Sicily's Mt. Etna erupted violently. (Sorta like me when I don't get my morning coffee - refer to coffee rationing, this date 1942...)

Mt. etna

Photo by Josep Renalias


~1893 – Women voted in a national election for the first time. This took place in New Zealand's general election.

~1895 – The Chicago Times Herald Race, the first American automobile race, took place over the 54 miles from Chicago's Jackson Park to Waukegan, Illinois. J. Frank Dureyea was the winner, travelling at an average speed of 7 and 1/2 miles per hour. It took him 7 hours 53 minutes to make the trip and won him a $2,000 purse for the effort.

Duryea in the Duryea Motor Wagon


~1905 РIrish nationalist Arthur Griffith founded Sinn F̩in as a political party with the main aim of establishing a dual monarchy in Ireland.

~1907 – In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opened his first movie theater. (Been there, it's a cool place.)

~1910 – Eleftherios Venizelos, leader of the Liberal Party, won the Greek elections (again).

~1912 – Albania declared its independence from the Ottoman Empire.

~1914 – Following a war induced closure in July, the New York Stock Exchange re-opened for bond trading.

~1918 – Bucovina voted in favor of the union with the Kingdom of Romania.

~1919 – Lady Astor was elected as a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. She was the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. (Countess Markiewicz, the first to be elected, refused to sit.)

~1920 – The Kilmichael Ambush - The Irish Republican Army ambushed a convoy of British auxiliaries and killed 17 of them.

~1929 – Ernie Nevers of the (then) Chicago Cardinals scored all the Card's points in this game as the Cardinals defeated the Chicago Bears 40-6.

~1942 – The Cocoanut Grove Disaster: In Boston, Massachusetts, a fast spreading fire inside the Cocoanut Grove nightclub killed 492 people.

Aftermath of the Cocoanut Grove fire.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b4/Cocoanut_grove_fire2.jpg (broken link)


~1942 - Coffee rationing began in the United States, lasting through to the end of World War II. (I woulda had'ta kill me sumbody...!)

~1943 – The Tehran Conference: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader (butcher) Joseph Stalin met in Tehran, Iran to discuss war strategy.

~1943 - 2 days after being viewing the protoype of the 6-engined long range Junkers Ju-390, Adolph Hitler personally approved the order for the plane as part of the Amerika Bomber program.

Junkers Ju-390
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Junkers_Ju_390.jpg (broken link)

~1944 – Albania was liberated by the Albanian partisans.

~1948 - Edwin Land's first Polaroid cameras went on sale in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

~1958 – Chad, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon became autonomous republics within the French Community. (Not nearly as good as independence, but a start.)

~1960 – Mauritania became independent of France. (Now THAT is how it's done...)

~1964 – NASA launches the Mariner 4 probe toward Mars. It became the first spacecraft to fly by Mars, passing within 5,400 miles of the red planet in July 1965.

~1964 – National Security Council members agreed to recommend that U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson adopt a plan for a two stage escalation in the bombing of North Vietnam. (Yup, we all saw where that show was going to lead to.)

~1965 – In response to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson's call for "more flags" in Vietnam, Philippines President Elect Ferdinand Marcos announced he would send troops to help fight in South Vietnam. (Ya' see? The murderous dick was a US, British, French, etc. brown-noser right from the start.)

~1972 – The last executions took place in Paris. The Clairvaux Mutineers, Roger Bontems and Claude Buffet, were guillotined at La Sante Prison. Bontems had been found innocent of murder by the court, but as Buffet's accomplice was condemned to death anyway. (It's the French way.)

~1975 – East Timor was granted its independence from Portugal.

~1975 – As the World Turns and The Edge of Night, the final two American soap operas that had resisted going to pre-taped broadcasts, aired their last live episodes. (Another slow news day...)

~1979 – Air New Zealand Flt. 901, a DC-10 conducting a sightseeing flight over Antarctica, crashed into Mount Erebus killing all 257 people on board.

~1984 – Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn were made Honorary Citizens of the United States.

~1987 – South African Airways flight 295 erupted into flames and crashed into the Indian Ocean, killing all 159 passenger and crew aboard.

~1989 – The Velvet Revolution: In the face of mounting protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announced that it would give up its monopoly on political power in the country.

~1991 – South Ossetia declare its independence from Georgia. (Nah...nothing will EVER come of that.)

~1994 – Voters in Norway rejected membership in the European Union.

~1994 – In Portage, Wisconsin, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was clubbed to death by a fellow inmate in the Columbia Correctional Institution gymnasium. (And who says there's no justice in this world?)

~1997 – The first public appearance of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), an ethnic Albanian guerrilla group that fought for the independence of Kosovo from Serbia.

~2000 – Ukrainian politician Oleksander Moroz began The Cassette Scandal by publicly accusing President Leonid Kuchma of involvement in the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze.

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[Da Grouch]

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~800 – Charlemagne arrived at Rome to investigate the alleged crimes of Pope Leo III.

~1394 – The Korean king Yi Song-gye, founder of the Joseon-Dynasty, moved the capital from Kaesŏng to Hanyang, today known as Seoul.

~1777 – San Jose, California, was founded as el Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe. It was the first civilian settlement (or pueblo) in Alta California.
~1781 – The crew of the slave ship Zong began murdering 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea in order to claim insurance.

A replica of the Zong at London's Tower Bridge, April 2007, as part of the 200th slave abolition commemoration.



~1807 – The Portuguese Royal Family escaped from Lisbon just ahead of the invading troops of Napoleon.

~1830 – The November Uprising: An armed rebellion against Russia's rule in Poland began.

~1845 – The Sonderbund was defeated by the joint forces of other Swiss cantons under General Guillaume Henri Dufour.

~1847 – The Whitman Massacre: Missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 15 others were killed by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians just outside of present day Walla Walla, Washington. This event precipitated The Cayuse War.

~1850 – The Punctation of Olmütz treaty was signed signed in Olomouc. Prussia capitulated to the Austrian Empire, which took over the leadership of the German Confederation.

~1854 – Lead by Peter Lalor, the Australian miners of the camp Eureka Stockade protested for the release of the imprisioned and argued for democratic reformation.

~1864 – The Sand Creek Massacre: A 700 man force of Colorado Territory militia volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington massacred 133 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants, 105 of which were women and children, inside Colorado Territory. Chivington (also a Methodist preacher) was quoted on more than one occasion as saying :
"Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians! ... I have come to kill Indians, and believe it is right and honorable to use any means under God's heaven to kill Indians." (In addition to being a proficient murderer the good preacher was also an accomplished hypocrite.)

~1864 – The Battle of Spring Hill: The Confederate advance into Tennessee missed the opportunity to crush the retreating Union army.

~1872 – Near the Lost River, along the California-Oregon border, The Skirmish at Lost River occurred. It was to be the opening engagement of The Modoc War.

~1881 – The city of Spokan Falls (today Spokane, Washington) was officially incorporated as a city.

~1890 – The Meiji Constitution went into effect in Japan and the first Diet convened.

~1893 – In Hubei, The Ziqiang Institute, today known as Wuhan University, was founded by Zhang Zhidong, governor of Hubei and Hunan Provinces.

~1910 – The first US patent for a traffic lights system was issued to Ernest Sirrine.

~1915 – A fire destroyed half of the buildings on Santa Catalina Island, California.

~1929 – U.S. Admiral Richard Byrd along with pilot Bernt Balchen, co-pilot/radioman Harold June and photographer Ashley McKinley, flew a Ford Trimotor to the South Pole and back in 18 hours 41 minutes, becoming the first people to fly over the South Pole.

A Ford Trimotor similar to Byrd's



~1934 – The Chicago Bears defeated the Detroit Lions 19-16 in the first nationally broadcast game.

~1940 - The first flight of the Junkers Ju 288 medium bomber.

The Junkers Ju 288

Photo courtesy Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive),


~1943 – The second session of AVNOJ, the Anti-fascist council of national liberation of Yugoslavia, was held in Jajce, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to determine the post war order of the country.

~1944 – The first surgery on a human to correct blue baby syndrome was successfully performed by Drs. Alfred Blalock and Vivien Thomas at John Hopkins in Baltimore.

~1944 – Albania was liberated by the Albanian partisans.

~1945 – The Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was declared.

~1947 – The Partition Plan: The United Nations General Assembly voted to partition Palestine between Arabs and Jews. (Oh! THAT won’t cause any problems now, will it?)

~1948 - The fisrt airing of the children's television program Kukla, Fran and Ollie.

Left to right: Kukla, Ollie and Fran
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d5/Kfotv.gif (broken link)
Coutesy NBC

~1950 – North Korean forces aided by massive reinforcements from the People's Liberation Army of China conter-attack and force a desperate retreat by United Nations (read: US) forces from North Korea.

~1961 – Mercury-Atlas 5 Mission: Enos, a chimpanzee, was launched into space. The spacecraft orbited the Earth twice and splashed down off the coast of Puerto Rico. (The monkey did well for himself.)

~1963 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson established the Warren Commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (Don't get me started...)

~1963 – Trans Canada Airlines (now Air Canada) Flight 831, a DC-8, crashed into a field soon after takeoff from Montreal’s Dorval airport. All 118 aboard are killed. The cause of the crash was never determined but evidence pointed to the jet's pitch trim system. To this day the "831" flight designation has never been used again by Air Canada. At the controls that night, along with Capt. Snyder, was First Officer Henry J. Dyck, a fine pilot and a damned good man. (It's been 46 years, Marlene, but we still remember.)

~1965 – The Canadian Space Agency launched the satellite Alouette 2.

~1967 – U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announced his resignation.

~1972 – Nolan Bushnell, the co-founder of Atari, released Pong. The first machine was placed in Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California. Pong was to become the first commercially successful video game.

~1981 - Actress Natalie Wood drowned in a boating accident off Santa Catalina Island.

~1983 – The Soviet war in Afghanistan: The United Nations General Assembly passed United Nations Resolution 37/37, stating that Soviet Union forces should withdraw from Afghanistan. (The Soviets finally got around to doing that more than 5 years later.)

~1987 – A bomb explosion blew Korean Air Flt. 858, a Boeing 707. out of the sky over the Thai-Burmese border. All 155 aboard were killed.

~1990 – The United Nations Security Council passes United Nations Security Council Resolution 678, authorizing "use all necessary means to uphold and implement United Nations Security Council Resolution 660 to restore international peace and security" if Iraq did not withdraw its forces from Kuwait and free all foreign hostages by January 15, 1991. (Stay tuned for more from Resolutions Ad Nauseam.)

~2005 – The new Croatian Communist Party (KPH) was founded in Vukovar. (Yet another slow news day...)

~2007 – The Armed Forces of the Philippines laid siege to the hotel Peninsula Manila after soldiers led by Senator Antonio Trillanes staged a mutiny.

~2007 – A 7.4 magnitude earthquake occured off the northern coast of Martinique. This affected the Eastern Caribbean as far north as Puerto Rico and as far south as Trinidad.

...

[Da Grouch]

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~1700 – The Battle of Narva: A Swedish army of 8,500 men under Charles XII crushed a Russian army led by Peter the Great that was more than 4 times their number, at Narva in present day Estonia. (A great day for Chuck & co.)

~1718 – Swedish king Charles XII died during a siege of the Fortress Fredriksten in Norway. (A not so great day for Chuck & co.)

~1782 – The American Revolutionary War: The Treaty of Paris (1783) — In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain signed the preliminary peace articles that were later formalized as The 1783 Treaty of Paris.

~1783 – A 5.3 magnitude earthquake struck New Jersey.

~1786 – Peter Leopold Joseph of Habsburg-Lorraine, Grand Duke of Tuscany, promulgated a penal reform making his country the first state to abolish the death penalty.

~1803 - At the Cabildo building in New Orleans, Spanish representatives Governor Manuel de Salcedo and the Marqués de Casa Calvo, officially transferred the Louisiana Territory to French representative Prefect Pierre Clément de Laussat. 20 days later France transferred the same land to the United States as The Louisiana Purchase.

~1804 - The Jeffersonian Republican controlled US Senate began an impeachment trial against, Federalist partisan, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase. Charged with political bias he was acquitted by the Senate of all charges on March 1, 1805.

~1824 – The first ground was broken at Allenburg (Ontario) for the building of The First Welland Canal.

~1829 – The First Welland Canal opened for a trial run, 5 years to the day from the ground breaking.

~1853 – During The Crimean War, the Imperial Russian Navy commanded by Pavel Nakhimov destroyed the Ottoman fleet under Osman Pasha at The Battle of Sinop. (A sea port in northern Turkey.)

~1864 – The Battle of Franklin: The Army of Tennessee led by CSA General John Bell Hood mounted a dramatic frontal assault on Union positions commanded by General John McAllister Schofield around Franklin, Tennessee. The attack failed miserably and Hood lost six of his generals along with almost a third of his troops.

~1872 – The first-ever international football (soccer) match took place at Hamilton Crescent in Glasgow, between Scotland and England. They played to a scoreless tie.

~1902 – The notorious menber of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch gang, Kid Curry Logan, was captured after a drawn out brawl with lawmen in Knoxville pool hall. He later received a prison sentence of 20 years hard labor.

~1908 – A mine explosion in the town of Marianna, Pennsylvania killed 154 miners.

~1916 - The Hellenic Genocide entered its final phase when Turkish Minister of the Interior, Rafet Bey, was reported to have said, "We must finish off the Greeks as we did with the Armenians."

~1933 - The German advanced trainer aircraft Focke-Wulf Fw 56 "Stösser" took to the air for the first time. Many of the Luftwaffe's WWII pilots earned their wings in this nimble little bird.

Focke-Wulf Fw 56's, March 1936

Photo courtesy Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive)

~1934 – The steam locomotive Flying Scotsman became the first engine to be officially recorded traveling in excess of 100 mph.

Flying Scotsman taken at the Doncaster Works, 2003



~1936 – A classic piece of history was lost in London when The Crystal Palace was completely destroyed by fire.

The Crystal Palace during The Great Exhibition, 1851



~1939 – Soviet forces crossed the Finnish border in several places and bombed Helsinki along with several other Finnish cities in an unprovoked attack, starting The Winter War.

~1940 – Lucille Ball eloped with Desi Arnaz. They were married in Greenwich, Connecticut.

~1942 – The Guadalcanal Campaign: A smaller squadron of Japanese destroyers, led by rear admiral Raizo Tanaka defeated a US destroyer/cruiser force under the command of rear admiral Carleton H. Wright at The Battle of Tassafaronga.

~1943 - At The Teheran Conference US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet leader Josef Stalin established an agreement concerning a planned Spring 1944 invasion of Europe by the western Allies to be codenamed Operation Overlord.

~1953 – Edward Mutesa II, the kabaka (king) of Buganda was deposed and exiled to London by Sir Andrew Cohen, the Governor of Uganda.

~1954 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, the Hodges Meteorite (an 8.5 pound sulfide meteorite) crashed through a roof and hit a Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges, who was taking an afternoon nap on her living room couch, after bouncing off her radio. It left her nursing a bad bruise.

~1960 - It was a sad day for automotive enthusiasts as Chrysler announced the discontinuation the DeSoto, just 47 days after the introduction of the 1961 models.

The last Desoto



~1966 – Barbados was granted its full independence by Britain. (The islanders celebrated with the inaugural voyage of The Booze Cruise.)

~1967 – The People's Republic of South Yemen became independent from the United Kingdom. (Actually, the fed up Brits told them to go away and don't come back!)

~1967 – The Pakistan Peoples Party was founded by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who became its first Chairman and later the Head of state, then Head of government following the 1971 civil war.

~1971 – Iran seized the Greater and Lesser Tunbs islands from the United Arab Emirates. (No Middle East oil on those 2 islands so no need to send hundreds of thousands of troops to liberate them...)

~1972 – White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler informed the press that there would be no more public announcements concerning American troop withdrawals from Vietnam. This due to the fact that troop levels were then down to only 27,000. (Yeah...sure thing, Ronny...we all bought into that one.)

~1979 - Pink Floyd released the mega-selling rock opera The Wall. (We don't need no education...we don't need no thought control...)

~1981 – In Geneva, representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union began to negotiate intermediate range nuclear weapon reductions in Europe. The talks went nowhere and broke off on December 17th.

~1982 - British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher received a parcel bomb at 10 Downing Street. (Was it something she said...?)

~1989 – Deutsche Bank board member Alfred Herrhausen was killed by a Red Army Faction terrorist bomb.

~1989 - Richard Mallory of Palm Harbor, Florida took a ride in his car with Aileen Wuornos before becoming the female serial killer's first victim.

~1993 – To the consternation of the NRA and thousands of gun enthusiasts, U.S. President Bill Clinton signed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (the Brady Bill) into law.

~1999 – In Seattle, Washington, protests against the WTO meeting by anti-globalization protesters caught the local police unprepared and forced the cancellation of opening ceremonies. (Many WTO demonstrators protested by firing bottle rockets through the plate glass windows of the Bon Marche and then looting the store's shelves...Oh yeah, that showed 'em we weren't gonna take no crap from the damned WTO!)

~1999 – British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merged to form BAE Systems, Europe's largest defense contractor and the fourth largest aerospace firm in the world.

~2004 – Longtime Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings of Salt Lake City, Utah finally met his match in the form of one Nancy Zerg and lost in his 75th game. This left him with $2,520,700 USD, television's all time biggest game show haul.

~2004 – Lion Air Flt. 538 crash landed in Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia when it overran the runway. While 142 of those on board survived, 26 died in the incident.

~2005 – John Sentamu was enthronement as the 97th Archbishop of York.

~2007 – The Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign Office Hostage Incident: A whack job named Leeland Eisenberg entered the campaign office of Hillary Clinton in Rochester, New Hampshire with a device suspected of being a bomb and held 6 people hostage, some for up to 5 hours. The "bomb" turned out to be fake.

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