11-30-09 Today in History
HAPPY RAFFLE DAY!!
USCC members Ed Martin and gviking were born this date.
AP: Today is Monday, Nov. 30, the 334th day of 2009. There are 31 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Nov. 30, 1939, the Russo-Finnish War, also known as the Winter War, began as Soviet troops invaded Finland. (The conflict ended the following March with a Soviet victory.)
On this date:
In 1782, the United States and Britain signed preliminary peace articles in Paris, ending the Revolutionary War.
In 1803, Spain completed the process of ceding Louisiana to France, which had sold it to the United States.
In 1835, Samuel Langhorne Clemens â better known as Mark Twain â was born in Florida, Mo.
In 1874, British statesman Sir Winston Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace.
In 1900, Irish writer Oscar Wilde died in Paris at age 46.
In 1936, London’s famed Crystal Palace, constructed for the Great Exhibition of 1851, was destroyed in a fire.
In 1949, Chinese communist troops captured Chongqing.
In 1962, U Thant of Burma, who had been acting secretary-general of the United Nations following the death of Dag Hammarskjold the year before, was elected to a four-year term.
In 1966, the former British colony of Barbados became independent.
In 1981, the United States and the Soviet Union opened negotiations in Geneva aimed at reducing nuclear weapons in Europe.
Ten years ago: The opening of a 135-nation trade gathering in Seattle was disrupted by at least 40,000 demonstrators, some of whom clashed with police.
Five years ago: Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced his resignation. NAACP President Kweisi Mfume announced he was stepping down after a nearly nine-year tenure. President George W. Bush tried to repair strained U.S.-Canada relations during a visit to Ottawa. “Jeopardy!” fans saw Ken Jennings end his 74-game winning streak as he lost to real estate agent Nancy Zerg.
One year ago: Space shuttle Endeavour returned to Earth after a nearly 16-day mission to repair and upgrade the international space station. The world’s most comprehensive legalized heroin program became permanent with overwhelming approval from Swiss voters, who simultaneously rejected the decriminalization of marijuana.
Today’s Birthdays: Historian Jacques Barzun is 102. Actor Efrem Zimbalist Jr. is 91. Actor Robert Guillaume is 82. TV personality and producer Dick Clark is 80. Radio talk show host G. Gordon Liddy is 79. Country singer-recording executive Jimmy Bowen is 72. Movie director Ridley Scott is 72. Singer Rob Grill (The Grassroots) is 66. Movie writer-director Terrence Malick is 66. Rock musician Roger Glover (Deep Purple) is 64. Playwright David Mamet is 62. Actress Margaret Whitton is 59. Actor Mandy Patinkin is 57. Musician Shuggie Otis is 56. Country singer Jeannie Kendall is 55. Singer Billy Idol is 54. Historian Michael Beschloss is 54. Rock musician John Ashton (The Psychedelic Furs) is 52. Comedian Colin Mochrie is 52. Former football and baseball player Bo Jackson is 47. Rapper Jalil (Whodini) is 46. Actor-director Ben Stiller is 44. Rock musician Mike Stone is 40. Actress Sandra Oh is 39. Country singer Mindy McCready is 34. Singer Clay Aiken is 31. Actress Elisha Cuthbert is 27. Actress Kaley Cuoco is 24.
Thought for Today: “‘Plain English, everybody loves it, demands it from the other fellow.” Jacques Barzun, French-born American historian.
Wikipedia:
1700 – Battle of Narva — A Swedish army of 8,500 men under Charles XII defeats a much larger Russian army at Narva.
1718 – Swedish king Charles XII dies during a siege of the fortress Fredriksten in Norway.
1782 – American Revolutionary War: Treaty of Paris (1783) — In Paris, representatives from the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles (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, promulgates a penal reform making his country the first state to abolish the death penalty. For this, November 30 is commemorated by 300 cities around the world as Cities for Life Day.
1803 – In New Orleans, Louisiana, Spanish representatives officially transfer Louisiana Territory to a French representative. Just 20 days later, France transfers the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.
1804 – The Democratic-Republican-controlled United States Senate begins an impeachment trial against Federalist-partisan Supreme Court of the United States Justice Samuel Chase.
1824 – First ground is broken at Allenburg for the building of the original Welland Canal.
1829 – First Welland Canal opens for a trial run, 5 years to the day from the ground breaking.
1853 – Crimean War: Battle of Sinop — The Imperial Russian Navy under Pavel Nakhimov destroys the Ottoman fleet under Osman Pasha at Sinop, a sea port in northern Turkey.
1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Franklin — The Army of Tennessee led by General John Bell Hood mounts a dramatically unsuccessful frontal assault on Union positions commanded by John McAllister Schofield around Franklin, Tennessee (Hood lost six generals and almost a third of his troops).
1868 – The inauguration of a statue of King Charles XII of Sweden takes place in the King’s garden in Stockholm.
1872 – The first-ever international football match takes place at Hamilton Crescent, Glasgow, between Scotland and England.
1886 – The Folies Bergère stages its first revue.
1902 – American Old West: Second-in-command of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch gang, Kid Curry Logan, is sentenced to 20 years imprisonment with hard labor.
1908 – A mine explosion in the mining town of Marianna, Pennsylvania kills 154.
1916 – Costa Rica becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.
1934 – The steam locomotive Flying Scotsman becomes the first to officially exceed 100mph.
1936 – In London, the Crystal Palace is destroyed by fire.
1939 – Winter War: Soviet forces cross the Finnish border in several places and bomb Helsinki and several other Finnish cities, starting the war.
1940 – Lucille Ball marries Desi Arnaz in Greenwich, Connecticut.
1942 – World War II Guadalcanal Campaign: Battle of Tassafaronga — A smaller squadron of Japanese destroyers led by Raizo Tanaka defeats a US cruiser force under Carleton H. Wright.
1953 – Edward Mutesa II, the kabaka (king) of Buganda is deposed and exiled to London by Sir Andrew Cohen, Governor of Uganda.
1954 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, United States, the Hodges Meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap in the only documented case of a human being hit by a rock from space.
1966 – Barbados becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
1967 – The People’s Republic of South Yemen becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
1967 – The Pakistan Peoples Party is founded by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who becomes its first Chairman later as the Head of state and Head of government after the 1971 Civil War.
1971 – Iran seizes the Greater and Lesser Tunbs from the United Arab Emirates.
1972 – Vietnam War: White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler tells the press that there will be no more public announcements concerning American troop withdrawals from Vietnam due to the fact that troop levels are now down to 27,000.
1974 – Lucy (Australopithecus) is discovered by Donald Johanson, Maurice Taieb, Yves Coppens and Tim White in the Middle Awash of Ethiopia’s Afar Depression.
1981 – Cold War: In Geneva, representatives from the United States and the Soviet Union begin to negotiate intermediate-range nuclear weapon reductions in Europe (the meetings ended inconclusively on December 17).
1989 – Deutsche Bank board member Alfred Herrhausen is killed by a Red Army Faction terrorist bomb.
1993 – U.S. President Bill Clinton signs the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (the Brady Bill) into law.
1994 – The National Football League announced that the Jacksonville Jaguars would become the league’s the 30th franchise.
1995 – Official end of Operation Desert Storm.
1999 – In Seattle, Washington, United States, protests against the WTO meeting by anti-globalization protesters catch police unprepared and force the cancellation of opening ceremonies.
1999 – British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merge 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 loses, leaving him with $2,520,700 USD, television’s all-time biggest game show haul.
2004 – Lion Air Flight 538 crash lands in Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia, killing 26.
2005 – John Sentamu becomes the first black archbishop in the Church of England with his enthronement as the 97th Archbishop of York.
2007 – Hillary Clinton presidential campaign office hostage crisis: Leeland Eisenberg entered the campaign office of Hillary Clinton in Rochester, New Hampshire with a device suspected of being a bomb and held three people hostage for 5 hours.