This Day in History | November 17th

On Nov. 17, 1558, Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne upon the death of her half-sister, Queen Mary, beginning a 44-year reign.

In 1800, Congress held its first session in the partially completed U.S. Capitol building.

In 1869, the Suez Canal opened in Egypt.

In 1889, the Union Pacific Railroad Co. began direct, daily railroad service between Chicago and Portland, Oregon, as well as Chicago and San Francisco.

In 1969, the first round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks between the United States and the Soviet Union opened in Helsinki, Finland.

In 1970, the Soviet Union landed an unmanned, remote-controlled vehicle on the moon, the Lunokhod 1.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon told Associated Press managing editors in Orlando, Florida: “People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”

In 1979, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini (ah-yah-TOH’-lah hoh-MAY’-nee) ordered the release of 13 Black and/or female American hostages being held at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

In 1989, the Walt Disney animated feature “The Little Mermaid” opened in wide release.

In 1997, 62 people, most of them foreign tourists, were killed when militants opened fire at the Temple of Hatshepsut (haht-shehp-SOOT’) in Luxor, Egypt; the attackers, who also hacked their victims, were killed by police.

In 2002, Abba Eban (AH’-bah EE’-ban), the statesman who helped persuade the world to approve creation of Israel and dominated Israeli diplomacy for decades, died near Tel Aviv; he was 87.

In 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn in as the 38th governor of California.

In 2018, Argentina’s navy announced that searchers had found a submarine that disappeared a year earlier with 44 crewmen aboard; the government said it would be unable to recover the vessel.

This Day in History | November 16th

On Nov. 16, 1907, Oklahoma became the 46th state of the union.

In 1914, the newly created Federal Reserve Banks opened in 12 cities.

In 1933, the United States and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations.

In 1945, “The Friendly Ghost,” an animated short featuring the debut of Casper, was released by Paramount’s cartoon division.

In 1961, House Speaker Samuel T. Rayburn died in Bonham, Texas, having served as speaker since 1940 except for two terms.

In 1981, the Senate confirmed Dr. C. Everett Koop to be surgeon general. Oscar-winning actor William Holden, 63, was found dead in his Santa Monica, California, apartment.

In 1982, an agreement was announced in the 57th day of a strike by National Football League players.

In 1989, six Jesuit priests, a housekeeper and her daughter were slain by army troops at the University of Central America Jose Simeon Canas in El Salvador.

In 1991, former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards won a landslide victory in his bid to return to office, defeating State Rep. David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader.

In 2001, investigators found a letter addressed to Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., containing anthrax; it was the second letter bearing the deadly germ known to have been sent to Capitol Hill.

In 2004, President George W. Bush picked National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to be his new secretary of state, succeeding Colin Powell.

In 2006, Democrats embraced Nancy Pelosi as the first female House speaker in history, but then selected Steny Hoyer as majority leader against her wishes.

In 2018, a U.S. official said intelligence officials had concluded that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi (jah-MAHL’ khahr-SHOHK’-jee).

This Day in History | November 13th

On Nov. 13, 1775, during the American Revolution, the Continental Army captured Montreal.

In 1849, voters in California ratified the state’s original constitution.

In 1940, the Walt Disney film “Fantasia,” featuring animated segments set to classical music, had its world premiere in New York.

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure lowering the minimum draft age from 21 to 18.

In 1956, the Supreme Court struck down laws calling for racial segregation on public buses.

In 1969, speaking in Des Moines, Iowa, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew accused network television news departments of bias and distortion, and urged viewers to lodge complaints.

In 1971, the U.S. space probe Mariner 9 went into orbit around Mars.

In 1974, Karen Silkwood, a 28-year-old technician and union activist at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron plutonium plant near Crescent, Oklahoma, died in a car crash while on her way to meet a reporter.

In 1979, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan announced in New York his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination.

In 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

In 1985, some 23,000 residents of Armero, Colombia, died when a volcanic mudslide buried the city.

In 2015, Islamic State militants carried out a set of coordinated attacks in Paris on the national stadium, restaurants and streets, and a crowded concert hall, killing 130 people in the worst attack on French soil since World War II.

In 2019, the House Intelligence Committee opened two weeks of public impeachment hearings with a dozen current and former career foreign service officials and political appointees scheduled to testify about efforts by President Donald Trump and others to pressure Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rivals.

This Day in History | November 12th

On Nov. 12, 1920, baseball got its first “czar” as Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was elected commissioner of the American and National Leagues.

In 1927, Josef Stalin became the undisputed ruler of the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party.

In 1936, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened as President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in Washington, D.C., giving the green light to traffic.

In 1942, the World War II naval Battle of Guadalcanal began. (The Allies ended up winning a major victory over Japanese forces.)

In 1948, former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and several other World War II Japanese leaders were sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal.

In 1969, news of the My Lai (mee ly) Massacre carried out by U.S. forces in South Vietnam in March 1968 was broken by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh.

In 1975, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas retired because of failing health, ending a record 36-year term.

In 1982, Yuri V. Andropov (ahn-DROH’-pawf) was elected to succeed the late Leonid I. Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee.

In 1987, the American Medical Association issued a policy statement saying it was unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat someone solely because that person had AIDS or was HIV-positive.

In 1996, a Saudi Boeing 747 jetliner collided shortly after takeoff from New Delhi, India, with a Kazak Ilyushin (il-YOO’-shin)-76 cargo plane, killing 349 people.

In 2001, American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 headed to the Dominican Republic, crashed after takeoff from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 people on board and five people on the ground.

In 2009, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan (nih-DAHL’ mah-LEEK’ hah-SAHN’) was charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder in the Fort Hood, Texas, shooting rampage. (Hasan was later convicted and sentenced to death; no execution date has been set.)

In 2019, Venice saw its worst flooding in more than 50 years, with the water reaching 6.14 feet above average sea level; damage was estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

This Day in History | November 11th

On Nov. 11, 1620, 41 Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, anchored off Massachusetts, signed a compact calling for a “body politick.”

In 1831, former slave Nat Turner, who’d led a slave uprising, was executed in Jerusalem, Virginia.

In 1918, fighting in World War I ended as the Allies and Germany signed an armistice in the Forest of Compiegne (kohm-PYEHN’-yeh).

In 1921, the remains of an unidentified American service member were interred in a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in a ceremony presided over by President Warren G. Harding.

In 1938, Irish-born cook Mary Mallon, who’d gained notoriety as the disease-carrying “Typhoid Mary” blamed for the deaths of three people, died on North Brother Island in New York’s East River at age 69 after 23 years of mandatory quarantine.

In 1942, during World War II, Germany completed its occupation of France.

In 1966, Gemini 12 blasted off on a four-day mission with astronauts James A. Lovell and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. aboard; it was the tenth and final flight of NASA’s Gemini program.

In 1972, the U.S. Army turned over its base at Long Binh to the South Vietnamese, symbolizing the end of direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War.

In 1987, following the failure of two Supreme Court nominations, President Ronald Reagan announced his choice of Judge Anthony M. Kennedy, who went on to win confirmation.

In 1992, the Church of England voted to ordain women as priests.

In 1998, President Clinton ordered warships, planes and troops to the Persian Gulf as he laid out his case for a possible attack on Iraq. Iraq, meanwhile, showed no sign of backing down from its refusal to deal with U.N. weapons inspectors.

In 2003, in Galveston, Texas, millionaire Robert Durst was found not guilty of murdering Morris Black, an elderly neighbor who Durst said he’d killed accidentally.

In 2004, Palestinians at home and abroad wept, waved flags and burned tires in an eruption of grief at news of the death of Yasser Arafat in Paris at age 75.

This Day in History | November 10th

On Nov. 10, 1775, the U.S. Marines were organized under authority of the Continental Congress.

In 1871, journalist-explorer Henry M. Stanley found Scottish missionary David Livingstone, who had not been heard from for years, near Lake Tanganyika in central Africa.

In 1919, the American Legion opened its first national convention in Minneapolis.

In 1928, Hirohito (hee-roh-hee-toh) was enthroned as Emperor of Japan.

In 1944, during World War II, the ammunition ship USS Mount Hood (AE-11) exploded while moored at the Manus Naval Base in the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific, leaving 45 confirmed dead and 327 missing and presumed dead.

In 1951, customer-dialed long-distance telephone service began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey, called Alameda, California, Mayor Frank Osborne without operator assistance.

In 1969, the children’s educational program “Sesame Street” made its debut on National Educational Television (later PBS).

In 1975, the U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution equating Zionism with racism (the world body repealed the resolution in Dec. 1991).

In 1982, the newly finished Vietnam Veterans Memorial was opened to its first visitors in Washington, D.C., three days before its dedication. Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev died at age 75.

In 2006, actor Jack Palance died in Montecito, California, at age 87.

In 2009, John Allen Muhammad, mastermind of the 2002 sniper attacks that killed 10 in the Washington, D.C. region, was executed. President Barack Obama visited Fort Hood, Texas, where he somberly saluted the 13 Americans killed in a shooting rampage, and pledged that the killer would be “met with justice — in this world, and the next.”

In 2017, facing allegations of sexual misconduct, comedian Louis C.K. said the harassment claims by five women that were detailed in a New York Times report “are true,” and he expressed remorse for using his influence “irresponsibly.”

In 2018, President Donald Trump, in France to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, canceled a visit to a cemetery east of Paris where Americans killed in that war are buried; rainy weather had grounded the presidential helicopter. Authorities in Northern California said 14 additional bodies had been found in the ruins from a fire that virtually destroyed the town of Paradise.

This Day in History | November 9th

On Nov. 9, 1620, the passengers and crew of the Mayflower sighted Cape Cod.

In 1872, fire destroyed nearly 800 buildings in Boston.

In 1918, it was announced that Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II would abdicate; he then fled to the Netherlands.

In 1935, United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other labor leaders formed the Committee for Industrial Organization.

In 1938, Nazis looted and burned synagogues as well as Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria in a pogrom or deliberate persecution that became known as “Kristallnacht.”

In 1965, the great Northeast blackout began with a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours, leaving 30 million people in seven states and part of Canada without electricity.

In 1970, former French President Charles de Gaulle died at age 79.

In 1976, the U.N. General Assembly approved resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa, including one characterizing the white-ruled government as “illegitimate.”

In 1989, communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West for the first time in decades; joyous Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall.

In 2007, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf (pur-VEHZ’ moo-SHAH’-ruhv) of Pakistan placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto (BEN’-uh-zeer BOO’-toh) under house arrest for a day, and rounded up thousands of her supporters to block a mass rally against his emergency rule.

In 2011, after 46 seasons as Penn State’s head football coach and a record 409 victories, Joe Paterno was fired along with the university president, Graham Spanier, over their handling of child sex abuse allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

In 2012, retired four-star Army Gen. David Petraeus abruptly resigned as CIA director after an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, was revealed by an FBI investigation.

In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton conceded the presidential election to Republican Donald Trump, telling supporters in New York that her defeat was “painful, and it will be for a long time.” But Clinton told her faithful to accept Trump and the election results, urging them to give him “an open mind and a chance to lead.”

In 2018, President Donald Trump issued an order to deny asylum to migrants who enter the country illegally.

In 2020, President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, injecting more uncertainty to a rocky transition period as Joe Biden prepared to assume the presidency.

This Day in History | November 8th

On Nov. 8, 1793, the Louvre began admitting the public, even though the French museum had been officially open since August.

In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln won re-election as he defeated Democratic challenger George B. McClellan.

In 1889, Montana became the 41st state.

In 1923, Adolf Hitler launched his first attempt at seizing power in Germany with a failed coup in Munich that came to be known as the “Beer-Hall Putsch.”

In 1950, during the Korean War, the first jet-plane battle took place as U.S. Air Force Lt. Russell J. Brown shot down a North Korean MiG-15.

In 1960, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard M. Nixon for the presidency.

In 1966, Republican Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California, defeating Democratic incumbent Pat Brown.

In 1972, the premium cable TV network HBO (Home Box Office) made its debut with a showing of the movie “Sometimes a Great Notion.”

In 1974, a federal judge in Cleveland dismissed charges against eight Ohio National Guardsmen accused of violating the civil rights of students who were killed or wounded in the 1970 Kent State shootings.

In 2000, a statewide recount began in Florida, which emerged as critical in deciding the winner of the 2000 presidential election. Earlier that day, Vice President Al Gore had telephoned Texas Gov. George W. Bush to concede, but called back about an hour later to retract his concession.

In 2002, the U.N. Security Council unanimously approved Resolution 1441, aimed at forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face “serious consequences.” President George W. Bush said the new resolution presented the Iraqi regime “with a final test.”

In 2010, former kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart took the stand in Salt Lake City on the first day of testimony in the trial of Brian David Mitchell, the man accused of abducting her in June 2002 when she was 14.

In 2012, Jared Lee Loughner was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the January 2011 shootings in Tucson, Arizona, that killed six people and wounded 13 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

This Day in History | November 7th

On Nov. 7, 1861, former U.S. President John Tyler was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives (however, Tyler died before he could take his seat).

1917, Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution took place as forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin overthrew the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky.

In 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term in office, defeating Republican Thomas E. Dewey.

In 1967, Carl Stokes was elected the first Black mayor of a major city — Cleveland, Ohio.

In 1972, President Richard Nixon was re-elected in a landslide over Democrat George McGovern.

In 1973, Congress overrode President Richard Nixon’s veto of the War Powers Act, which limits a chief executive’s power to wage war without congressional approval.

In 1980, actor Steve McQueen died in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, at age 50.

In 1989, L. Douglas Wilder won the governor’s race in Virginia, becoming the first elected Black governor in U.S. history; David N. Dinkins was elected New York City’s first Black mayor.

In 2001, the Bush administration targeted Osama bin Laden’s multi-million-dollar financial networks, closing businesses in four states, detaining U.S. suspects and urging allies to help choke off money supplies in 40 nations.

In 2013, shares of Twitter went on sale to the public for the first time; by the closing bell, the social network was valued at $31 billion.

In 2015, the leaders of China and Taiwan met for the first time since the formerly bitter Cold War foes split amid civil war 66 years earlier; Chinese President Xi Jinping and Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou hailed the meeting in Singapore as a sign of a new stability in relations.

In 2017, former star baseball pitcher Roy Halladay died when the small private plane he was flying crashed into the Gulf of Mexico; the 40-year-old was an eight-time All-Star for the Blue Jays and Phillies.

In 2018, a gunman killed 12 people at a country music bar in Thousand Oaks, California, before apparently taking his own life as officers closed in; the victims included a man who had survived the mass shooting at a country music concert in Las Vegas.

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