11-25-09 Today in History
AP: Today is Wednesday, Nov. 25, the 329th day of 2009. There are 36 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Nov. 25, 1783, the British evacuated New York, their last military position in the United States during the Revolutionary War.
On this date:
In 1758, during the French and Indian War, the British captured Fort Duquesne in present-day Pittsburgh.
In 1881, Pope John XXIII was born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli near Bergamo, Italy.
In 1908, the first issue of The Christian Science Monitor was published.
In 1947, movie studio executives meeting in New York agreed to blacklist the “Hollywood Ten” who’d been cited for contempt of Congress the day before.
In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower suffered a slight stroke.
In 1963, the body of President John F. Kennedy was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.
In 1973, Greek President George Papadopoulos was ousted in a bloodless military coup.
In 1984, William Schroeder of Jasper, Ind., became the second man to receive a Jarvik-7 artificial heart, at Humana Hospital Audubon in Kentucky. (He lived 620 days on the device.)
In 1986, the Iran-Contra affair erupted as President Ronald Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese revealed that profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to Nicaraguan rebels.
In 2002, President George W. Bush signed legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security, and appointed Tom Ridge to be its chief.
Ten years ago: Five-year-old Elian Gonzalez was rescued by a pair of sport fishermen off the coast of Florida. (Elian was one of three survivors from a boat carrying 14 Cubans that had sunk two days earlier in the Atlantic Ocean; his rescue set off an international custody battle between relatives in Miami and Elian’s father that eventually resulted in Elian being returned to Cuba.)
Five years ago: Leading Sunni Muslim politicians in Iraq urged postponement of the Jan. 30, 2005 national elections. (However, the elections ended up taking place as scheduled.) A man with a knife broke into a high school dormitory in Ruzhou, China, killing nine boys as they slept. (Chinese authorities later executed a 21-year-old man who confessed to the attack.)
One year ago: President-elect Barack Obama said economic recovery efforts would trump deficit concerns after he took office in January; at the same time, Obama pledged a “page-by-page, line-by-line” budget review to root out unneeded spending. Former NFL quarterback Michael Vick pleaded guilty to a Virginia dogfighting charge, receiving a three-year suspended sentence. Flights in and out of Bangkok, Thailand, were grounded when anti-government demonstrators occupied the international airport. Playwright William Gibson (”The Miracle Worker”) died in Stockbridge, Mass., at age 94. TV personality Brooke Burke and professional partner Derek Hough won “Dancing with the Stars.”
Today’s Birthdays: Actress Noel Neill is 89. Playwright Murray Schisgal is 83. Actress Kathryn Crosby is 76. Actor Matt Clark is 73. Playwright Shelagh Delaney is 70. Singer Percy Sledge is 69. NFL Hall of Fame coach and NASCAR owner Joe Gibbs is 69. Author, actor and game show host Ben Stein is 65. Singer Bob Lind is 65. Actor John Larroquette is 62. Actor Tracey Walter is 62. Movie director Jonathan Kaplan is 62. Author Charlaine Harris is 58. Retired baseball All-Star Bucky Dent is 58. Singer Amy Grant is 49. Rock musician Eric Grossman (K’s Choice) is 45. Rock singer Mark Lanegan is 45. Rock singer-musician Tim Armstrong is 44. Singer Stacy Lattisaw is 43. Rock musician Rodney Sheppard (Sugar Ray) is 43. Rapper-producer Erick Sermon is 41. Actress Jill Hennessy is 40. Actress Christina Applegate is 38. Actor Eddie Steeples (”My Name Is Earl”) is 36. Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb is 33. Former first daughter Barbara Bush is 28. Former first daughter Jenna Hager is 28. Actress Katie Cassidy is 23.
Thought for Today: “The self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul.” _ Henry van Dyke, American clergyman (1852-1933).
Wikipedia:
1034 – Máel Coluim mac Cináeda, King of Scots dies. Donnchad, the son of his daughter Bethóc and Crínán of Dunkeld, inherits the throne.
1120 – The White Ship sinks in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son of Henry I of England.
1177 – Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and Raynald of Chatillon defeat Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard.
1343 – A tsunami, caused by the earthquake in the Tyrrhenian Sea, devastates Naples (Italy) and the Maritime Republic of Amalfi, among other places.
1491 – The siege of Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, begins.
1667 – A deadly earthquake rocks Shemakha in the Caucasus, killing 80,000 people.
1703 – The Great Storm of 1703, the greatest windstorm ever recorded in the southern part of Great Britain, reaches its peak intensity which it maintains through November 27. Winds gust up to 120 mph, and 9,000 people die.
1755 – King Ferdinand IV of Spain grants the Beaterio dela Compania de Jesus or now known as the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary(RVM) a royal protection.
1758 – French and Indian War: British forces capture Fort Duquesne from French control. Fort Pitt is built nearby and it grows into modern Pittsburgh.
1759 – Disastrous earthquake hits Mediterranean, Beirut and Damascus completely destroyed, 30,000-40,000 dead.
1783 – American Revolutionary War: The last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.
1795 – Partitions of Poland: Stanislaus August Poniatowski, the last king of independent Poland, is forced to abdicate and is exiled to Russia.
1826 – The Greek frigate Hellas arrives in Nafplion to become the first flagship of the Hellenic Navy.
1833 – A massive undersea earthquake, estimated magnitude between 8.7-9.2 rocks Sumatra, producing a massive tsunami all along the Indonesian coasts.
1839 – A cyclone slams India with high winds and a 40 foot storm surge, destroying the port city of Coringa (which has never been completely rebuilt). The storm wave sweeps inland, taking with it 20,000 ships and thousands of people. An estimated 300,000 deaths result from the disaster.
1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Missionary Ridge – At Missionary Ridge in Tennessee, Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant break the Siege of Chattanooga by routing Confederate troops under General Braxton Bragg.
1864 – American Civil War: A group of Confederate operatives calling themselves the Confederate Army of Manhattan starts fires in more than 20 locations in an unsuccessful attempt to burn down New York City.
1867 – Alfred Nobel patents dynamite.
1874 – The United States Greenback Party is established as a political party consisting primarily of farmers affected by the Panic of 1873.
1876 – Indian Wars: In retaliation for the American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops sack Chief Dull Knife’s sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River.
1905 – The Danish Prins Carl arrives in Norway to become King Haakon VII of Norway.
1918 – Vojvodina, former Austro-Hungarian crown land, proclaims its secession from Austria–Hungary to join the Kingdom of Serbia.
1926 – The deadliest November tornado outbreak in U.S. history strikes on Thanksgiving day. 27 twisters of great strength are reported in the Midwest, including the strongest November tornado, an estimated F4, that devastates Heber Springs, Arkansas. There are 51 deaths in Arkansas alone, 76 deaths and over 400 injuries in all.
1936 – In Berlin, Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact, thus agreeing to consult on measures to take “to safeguard their common interests” in the case of an unprovoked attack by the Soviet Union against either nation. The pact is renewed on the same day five years later with additional signatories.
1940 – World War II: First flight of the deHavilland Mosquito and Martin B-26 Marauder.
1943 – World War II: Statehood of Bosnia and Herzegovina is re-established at the State Anti-Fascist Council for the People’s Liberation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1947 – Red Scare: The “Hollywood Ten” are blacklisted by Hollywood movie studios.
1947 – New Zealand ratifies the Statute of Westminster and thus becomes independent of legislative control by the United Kingdom.
1950 – The “Storm of the Century”, a violent snowstorm, paralyzes the northeastern United States and the Appalachians, bringing winds up to 100 mph and sub-zero temperatures. Pickens, West Virginia, records 57 inches of snow. 323 people die as a result of the storm.
1950 – The People’s Republic of China joins the Korean War, sending thousands of troops across the Yalu river border to fight United Nations forces.
1952 – Agatha Christie’s murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London and eventually becomes the longest continuously-running play in history.
1958 – French Sudan gains autonomy as a self-governing member of the French Community.
1960 – The Mirabal sisters of the Dominican Republic are assassinated.
1963 – President John F. Kennedy is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
1970 – In Japan, author Yukio Mishima and one compatriot commit ritualistic suicide after an unsuccessful coup attempt.
1973 – George Papadopoulos, head of the military Regime of the Colonels in Greece, is ousted in a hardliners’ coup led by Brigadier General Dimitrios Ioannidis.
1975 – Suriname gains independence from the Netherlands.
1977 – Former Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr. is found “guilty” by the Philippine Military Commission No. 2 and is sentenced to death by firing squad.
1982 – The Minneapolis Thanksgiving Day Fire destroys an entire city block, including the Northwestern National Bank building and the recently closed Donaldson’s Department Store.
1984 – 36 top musicians gather in a Notting Hill studio and record Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
1986 – Iran Contra Affair: US Attorney General Edwin Meese announces that profits from covert weapons sales to Iran were illegally diverted to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
1986 – The King Fahd Causeway is officially opened in the Persian Gulf.
1987 – Super Typhoon Nina pummels the Philippines with category 5 winds of 165 mph and a surge that swallows entire villages. At least 1,036 deaths are attributed to the storm.
1988 – German politician Rita Süssmuth becomes president of the Bundestag.
1992 – The Czechoslovakia Federal Assembly votes to split the country into the Czech Republic and Slovakia from January 1, 1993.
1996 – An ice storm strikes the central U.S. killing 26 people. A powerful windstorm affects Florida and winds gust over 90 mph, toppling trees and flipping trailers.
1999 – Establishment of International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women by United Nations to commemorate the murder of three Mirabal Sisters for resistance of Rafael Trujillo dictatorship in Dominican Republic.
2000 – 2000 Baku earthquake.
2005 – Polish Minister of National Defence Radek Sikorski opens 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, are released.
2007 – The first European Parliament election and a referendum on changing the voting system (called by the President and declared invalid because of insufficient turnout) are held in Romania.
2008 – A car bomb in St. Petersburg, Russia, kills three people and injures one.