11-19-09 Today in History
USCC members Carl Wohlforth and Russell C. Bega were born this date.
Today is Thursday, Nov. 19, the 323rd day of 2009. There are 42 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address as he dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.
On this date:
In 1600, King Charles I of England was born in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland.
In 1794, the United States and Britain signed Jay’s Treaty, which resolved some issues left over from the Revolutionary War.
In 1831, the 20th president of the United States, James Garfield, was born in Orange Township, Ohio.
In 1919, the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles by a vote of 55 in favor, 39 against, short of the two-thirds majority needed for ratification.
In 1942, during World War II, Russian forces launched their winter offensive against the Germans along the Don front.
In 1959, Ford Motor Co. announced it was halting production of the unpopular Edsel.
In 1969, Apollo XII astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean made the second manned landing on the moon.
In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Israel.
In 1984, some 500 people died in a firestorm set off by a series of explosions at a petroleum storage plant on the edge of Mexico City.
In 1985, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev met for the first time as they began their summit in Geneva.
Ten years ago: Hundreds of anti-American protesters battled riot police and set stores and banks ablaze as President Bill Clinton rode through Athens in a tight security cocoon and proclaimed a “profound and enduring friendship” with Greece. World leaders at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Turkey signed a treaty cutting the number of non-nuclear weapons systems across Europe.
Five years ago: In one of the worst brawls in U.S. sports history, Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson of the Indiana Pacers charged into the stands and fought with Detroit Pistons fans, forcing officials to end the Pacers’ 97-82 win with 45.9 seconds left.
One year ago: Al-Qaida’s No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, slurred Barack Obama as a black American who does the bidding of whites in a new Web message intended to dent the president-elect’s popularity among Arabs and Muslims. The Dow industrial average closed under 8,000 at 7,997.28 - the lowest close since March 2003. Drama and dance critic Clive Barnes died in New York at age 81.
Today’s Birthdays: Actor Alan Young is 90. Talk show host Larry King is 76. Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch is 74. Talk show host Dick Cavett is 73. Broadcasting and sports mogul Ted Turner is 71. Singer Pete Moore (Smokey Robinson and the Miracles) is 70. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, is 70. TV journalist Garrick Utley is 70. Actor Dan Haggerty is 68. Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson is 68. Fashion designer Calvin Klein is 67. Sportscaster Ahmad Rashad is 60. Actor Robert Beltran is 56. Actress Kathleen Quinlan is 55. Actress Glynnis O’Connor is 54. Newscaster Ann Curry is 53. Former NASA astronaut Eileen Collins is 53. Actress Allison Janney is 50. Rock musician Matt Sorum (Guns N’ Roses, Velvet Revolver) is 49. Actress Meg Ryan is 48. Actress-director Jodie Foster is 47. Actress Terry Farrell is 46. TV chef Rocco DiSpirito is 43. Actor Jason Scott Lee is 43. Olympic gold medal runner Gail Devers is 43. Actress Erika Alexander is 40. Rock musician Travis McNabb is 40. Singer Tony Rich is 38. Country singer Jason Albert (Heartland) is 36. Country singer Billy Currington is 36. Dancer-choreographer Savion Glover is 36. Country musician Chad Jeffers is 34. Rhythm-and-blues singer Tamika Scott (Xscape) is 34. Rhythm-and-blues singer Lil’ Mo is 32. Olympic gold medal gymnast Kerri Strug is 32. Actor Reid Scott is 32.
Thought for Today: “You simply cannot hang a millionaire in America.” - Bourke Cockran, American politician and orator (1854-1923).
Wikipedia:
1095 – The Council of Clermont, called by Pope Urban II to discuss sending the First Crusade to the Holy Land, begins.
1493 – Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico).
1794 – The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay’s Treaty, which attempts to resolve some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.
1816 – Warsaw University is established.
1847 – The second Canadian railway line, the Montreal and Lachine Railway, is opened.
1863 – American Civil War: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the military cemetery ceremony at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
1881 – A meteorite lands near the village of Grossliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine.
1916 – Samuel Goldwyn and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures (the company later became one of the most successful independent filmmakers).
1941 – World War II: Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran. The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.
1942 – World War II: Battle of Stalingrad – Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch the Operation Uranus counterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the USSR’s favor.
1943 – Holocaust: Nazis liquidate Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt.
1944 – World War II: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling $14 billion USD in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.
1946 – Afghanistan, Iceland and Sweden join the United Nations.
1950 – US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes supreme commander of NATO-Europe
1954 – Télé Monte Carlo, Europe’s oldest private television channel, is launched by Prince Rainier III.
1955 – National Review publishes its first issue.
1959 – The Ford Motor Company announces the discontinuation of the unpopular Edsel.
1967 – The establishment of TVB, the first wireless commercial television station in Hong Kong.
1969 – Apollo program: Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the “Ocean of Storms”) and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.
1969 – Football player Pelé scores his 1,000th goal.
1976 – Jaime Ornelas Camacho takes office as the first President of the Regional Government of Madeira, Portugal.
1977 – Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel, when he meets Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and speaks before the Knesset in Jerusalem, seeking a permanent peace settlement.
1977 – Transportes Aereos Portugueses Boeing 727 crashes in Madeira islands killing 130.
1979 – Iran hostage crisis: Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran.
1984 – A series of explosions at the PEMEX petroleum storage facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec in Mexico City starts a major fire and kills about 500 people.
1985 – Cold War: In Geneva, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.
1985 – Pennzoil wins a $10.53 billion USD verdict against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States, stemming from Texaco executing a contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.
1988 – Serbian communist representative and future Serbian and Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic publicly declares that Serbia is under attack from Albanian separatism in Kosovo as well as internal treachery within Yugoslavia and a foreign conspiracy to destroy Serbia and Yugoslavia.
1990 – Pop group Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award because the duo did not sing at all on the Girl You Know It’s True album. Session musicians had provided all the vocals.
1994 – In Great Britain, the first National Lottery draw is held. A £1 ticket gave a one-in-14-million chance of correctly guessing the winning six out of 49 numbers.
1996 – Lt. Gen. Maurice Baril of Canada arrives in Africa to lead a multi-national policing force in Zaire.
1997 – In Des Moines, Iowa, Bobbi McCaughey gives birth to septuplets in the second known case where all seven babies were born alive. They would go on to become the first set of septuplets to survive infancy, with all seven alive in 2009.
1998 – Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against U.S. President Bill Clinton.
1998 – Vincent van Gogh’s Portrait of the Artist Without Beard sells at auction for $71.5 million USD.
1999 – Shenzhou 1: The People’s Republic of China launches its first Shenzhou spacecraft.
1999 – In Istanbul, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ends a two-day summit by calling for a political settlement in Chechnya and adopting a Charter for European Security.