11-24-09 Today in History
USCC members Mirisdad-Wes and Teddy Randall were born this date.
AP: Today is Tuesday, Nov. 24, the 328th day of 2009. There are 37 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Nov. 24, 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species,” which explained his theory of evolution by means of natural selection.
On this date:
In 1784, Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States, was born in Orange County, Va.
In 1863, the Civil War Battle of Lookout Mountain began in Tennessee; Union forces succeeded in taking the mountain from the Confederates.
In 1939, British Overseas Airways Corp. was formally established.
In 1944, during World War II, U.S. bombers based on Saipan attacked Tokyo in the first raid against the Japanese capital by land-based planes.
In 1947, a group of writers, producers and directors that became known as the “Hollywood Ten” was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about alleged Communist influence in the movie industry. John Steinbeck’s novel “The Pearl” was first published.
In 1950, the musical “Guys and Dolls,” based on the writings of Damon Runyon and featuring songs by Frank Loesser, opened on Broadway.
In 1963, Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, in a scene captured on live television.
In 1969, Apollo 12 splashed down safely in the Pacific.
In 1971, hijacker “D.B. Cooper” parachuted from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 over Washington state with $200,000 in ransom - his fate remains unknown.
In 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed on terms to scrap shorter- and medium-range missiles.
Ten years ago: Some 280 people were killed when a ferry caught fire and foundered off the coast of eastern China’s Shandong province.
Five years ago: Ukraine’s election officials declared that Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych had won Ukraine’s bitterly disputed presidential runoff balloting; thousands of opposition supporters demonstrated in Kiev. Popular author Arthur Hailey died in New Providence, Bahamas, at age 84.
One year ago: A Muslim charity, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, and five of its former leaders were convicted by a federal jury in Dallas of funneling millions of dollars to the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Pakistan won final approval for a $7.6 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund to help stave off a possible economic meltdown. Former West Virginia Gov. Cecil H. Underwood - elected to the job in 1956 and in 1996 - died at age 86.
Today’s Birthdays: Basketball Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson is 71. Country singer Johnny Carver is 69. Former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue is 69. Rock drummer Pete Best is 68. Rock musician Donald “Duck” Dunn (Booker T. & the MG’s) is 68. Actor-comedian Billy Connolly is 67. Former White House news secretary Marlin Fitzwater is 67. Motion Picture Association of America Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman is 65. Singer Lee Michaels is 64. Actor Dwight Schultz is 62. Actor Stanley Livingston is 59. Rock musician Clem Burke (Blondie; The Romantics) is 54. Record producer Terry Lewis is 53. Actor Ruben Santiago-Hudson is 53. Actress Denise Crosby is 52. Actress Shae D’Lyn is 47. Rock musician John Squire (The Stone Roses) is 47. Rock musician Gary Stonadge (Big Audio) is 47. Actor Garret Dillahunt is 45. Rock musician Chad Taylor (Live) is 39. Actress Lola Glaudini is 38. Actress Danielle Nicolet is 36. Olympic bronze medal figure skater Chen Lu is 33. Actor Colin Hanks is 32. Actress Katherine Heigl (”Grey’s Anatomy”) is 31. Actress Sarah Hyland (”Modern Family”) is 19.
Thought for Today: “Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold.” - Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, American writer (1900-1948).
Wikipedia:
380 – Theodosius I makes his adventus, or formal entry, into Constantinople.
1983 – Hema the Great born in Tuty
1429 – Joan of Arc unsuccessfully besieges La Charité.
1639 – Jeremiah Horrocks observes the transit of Venus, an event he had predicted.
1642 – Abel Tasman becomes the first European to discover the island Van Diemen’s Land (later renamed Tasmania).
1850 – Danish troops defeat a Schleswig-Holstein force in the town of Lottorf, Schleswig-Holstein.
1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Lookout Mountain – Near Chattanooga, Tennessee, Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant capture Lookout Mountain and begin to break the Confederate siege of the city led by General Braxton Bragg.
1898 – The International Conference of Rome for the Social Defense Against Anarchists opens.
1906 – The Canton Bulldogs-Massillon Tigers Betting Scandal, the first major scandal in professional American football.
1922 – Author and Irish Republican Army member Robert Erskine Childers is executed by an Irish Free State firing squad for illegally carrying a revolver.
1932 – In Washington, D.C., the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory (better known as the FBI Crime Lab) officially opens.
1935 – The Senegalese Socialist Party holds its second congress.
1940 – World War II: Slovakia becomes a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers.
1941 – World War II: The United States grants Lend-Lease to the Free French.
1943 – World War II: The USS Liscome Bay is torpedoed near Tarawa and sinks with nearly 650 men killed.
1944 – World War II: Bombing of Tokyo – The first bombing raid against the Japanese capital from the east and by land is carried out by 88 American aircraft.
1962 – The West Berlin branch of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany forms a separate party, the Socialist Unity Party of West Berlin.
1963 – Lee Harvey Oswald is fatally shot by Jack Ruby in the basement of Dallas police department headquarters. The shooting is broadcast live on television.
1963 – Vietnam War: Newly sworn-in US President Lyndon B. Johnson confirms that the United States intends to continue supporting South Vietnam both militarily and economically.
1965 – Joseph Désiré Mobutu seizes power in the Congo and becomes President; he rules the country (which he renames Zaire in 1971) for over 30 years, until being overthrown by rebels in 1997.
1966 – A Bulgarian plane with 82 people on board crashes near Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.
1966 – New York City experiences the smoggiest day in the city’s history.
1969 – Apollo program: The Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon.
1971 – During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (AKA D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money – neither he nor the money have ever been found.
1974 – Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed “Lucy” after The Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia’s Afar Depression.
1992 – A China Southern Airlines domestic flight in the People’s Republic of China, crashes, killing all 141 people on-board.
1993 – In Liverpool, 11-year-olds Robert Thompson and Jon Venables are convicted of the murder of 2-year-old James Bulger.
2004 – Male Poʻo-uli dies of Avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct.