On This Day

October 17, 2012

1777 - American troops defeated British forces in Saratoga, NY. It was the turning point in the American Revolutionary War.

1888 - The first issue of "National Geographic Magazine" was released at newsstands.

1917 - The Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was formed.

1931 - Al Capone was convicted on income tax evasion and was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was released in 1939.

1933 - "News-Week" appeared for the first time at newsstands. The name was later changed to "Newsweek."

1933 - Dr. Albert Einstein moved to Princeton, NJ, after leaving Germany.

1939 - "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" premiered.

1945 - Ava Gardner and Artie Shaw were married.

1945 - Colonel Juan Peron became the dictator of Argentina after staging a coup in Buenos Aires.

1973 - The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) began an oil-embargo against several countries including the U.S. and Great Britain. The incident stemmed from Western support of Israel when Egypt and Syria attacked the nation on October 6, 1973. The embargo lasted until March of 1974.

1978 - U.S. President Carter signed a bill that restored full U.S. citizenship rights to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

1979 - Mother Teresa of India was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1987 - U.S. First Lady Nancy Reagan underwent a modified radical mastectomy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.

1989 - An earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter Scale hit the San Francisco Bay area in California. The quake caused about 67 deaths, 3,000 injuries, and damages up to $7 billion.

1994 - Israel and Jordan initialed a draft peace treaty.

1994 - The Angolan government and rebels agreed to a peace treaty that ended their 19 years of civil war.

1997 - The remains of revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara were laid to rest in his adopted Cuba, 30 years after his execution in Bolivia.

2000 - In New York City, Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum opened to the public. The 42nd Street location joined Tussaud's other exhibitions already in London, Hong Kong, Amsterdam and Las Vegas.

2000 - Patrick Roy (Colorado Avalanche) achieved his 448th victory as a goalie in the NHL. Roy passed Terry Sawchuck to become the record holder for career victories.

2001 - Israel's tourism minister was killed. A radical Palestinian faction claimed that it had carried out the assassination to avenge the killing of its leader by Israel 2 months earlier.

2001 - Pakistan placed its armed forces on high alert because of troop movements by India in the disputed territory of Kashmir. India said that the movements were part of a normal troop rotation.

2001 - Italian priest Giuseppe "Beppe" Pierantoni was kidnapped by the terrorist group the "Pentagon." He was released on April 8, 2002.

2003 - In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration approved a drug, known as memantine, to help people with Alzheimer's symptoms.

2003 - In Taipei, Taiwan, construction crews finished 1,676-foot-tall-building called Taipei 101. The building was planned to open for business in 2004.

2003 - In northwest England, the Carnforth railway station reopened as a heritage center.

October 18, 2012

1469 - Ferdinand of Aragon married Isabella of Castile. The marriage united all the dominions of Spain.

1685 - King Louis XIV of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had established the legal toleration of the Protestant population.

1767 - The Mason-Dixon line was agreed upon. It was the boundary between Maryland and Pennsylvania.

1842 - Samuel Finley Breese Morse laid his first telegraph cable.

1860 - British troops burned the Yuanmingyuan at the end of the Second Opium War.

1867 - The U.S. took formal possession of Alaska from Russia. The land was purchased of a total of $7 million dollars (2 cents per acre).

1873 - The first rules for intercollegiate football were drawn up by representatives from Rutgers, Yale, Columbia and Princeton Universities.

1892 - The first long-distance telephone line between Chicago, IL, and New York City, NY, was opened.

1898 - The American flag was raised in Puerto Rico only one year after the Caribbean nation won its independence from Spain.

1929 - The Judicial Committee of England’s Privy Council ruled that women were to be considered as persons in Canada.

1943 - The first broadcast of "Perry Mason" was presented on CBS Radio. The show went to TV in 1957.

1944 - Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Soviets during World War II.

1944 - "Forever Amber", written by Kathleen Windsor, was first published.

1950 - Connie Mack announced that he was going to retire after 50 seasons as the manager of the Philadelphia Athletics.

1956 - NFL commissioner Bert Bell disallowed the use of radio-equipped helmets by NFL quarterbacks.

1958 - The first computer-arranged marriage took place on Art Linkletter's show.

1961 - Henri Matiss' "Le Bateau" went on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art. It was discovered 46 days later that the painting had been hanging upside down.

1967 - The American League granted permission for the A's to move to Oakland. Also, new franchises were awarded to Kansas City and Seattle.

1968 - Two black athletes, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, were suspended by the U.S. Olympic Committee for giving a "black power" salute during a ceremony in Mexico City.

1969 - The U.S. government banned artificial sweeteners due to evidence that they caused cancer.

1970 - Quebec's minister of labor was found strangled to death after eight days of being held captive by the Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ).

1971 - After 34 years, the final issue of "Look" magazine was published.

1977 - Reggie Jackson tied Babe Ruth's record for hitting three homeruns in a single World Series game. Jackson was only the second player to achieve this.

1983 - General Motors agreed to hire more women and minorities for five years as part of a settlement with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

1985 - South African authorities hanged black activist Benjamin Moloise. Moloise had been convicted of murdering a police officer.

1989 - Egon Krenz became the leader of East Germany after Erich Honecker was ousted. Honeker had been in power for 18 years.

1989 - The space shuttle Atlantis was launched on a mission that included the deployment of the Galileo space probe.

1990 - Iraq made an offer to the world that it would sell oil for $21 a barrel. The price level was the same as it had been before the invasion of Kuwait.

1997 - A monument honoring U.S. servicewomen, past and present, was dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery.

2006 - Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7.0.

October 19, 2012

1765 - In the U.S., The Stamp Act Congress met and drew up a declaration of rights and liberties.

1781 - British General Charles Lord Cornwallis surrendered to U.S. General George Washington at Yorktown, Virginia. It was to be the last major battle of the American Revolutionary War.

1812 - Napoleon Bonaparte's French forces began their retreat out of Russia after a month of chasing the retreating Russian army.

1914 - In the U.S., government owned vehicles were first used to pick up mail in Washington, DC.

1915 - The U.S. recognized General Venustiano Carranza as the president of Mexico. The U.S. imposed embargo to all parts of Mexico except where Carranza was in control.

1933 - Basketball was introduced to the 1936 Olympic Games by the Berlin Organization Committee.

1937 - "Woman's Day" was published for the first time.

1937 - "Big Town" made its debut on CBS.

1943 - The Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers began in Russia during World War II. Delegates from the U.S.S.R., Great Britain, the U.S., and China met to discuss war aims and cooperation between the nations.

1944 - The play "I Remember Mama" opened on Broadway. Marlon Brando made his debut with his appearance.

1944 - The U.S. Navy announced that black women would be allowed into Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES).

1950 - The United Nations forces entered the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

1951 - U.S. President Truman singed an act officially ending the state of war with Germany.

1959 - Patty Duke, at the age of 12, made her Broadway debut in "The Miracle Worker." The play lasted for 700 performances.

1960 - The United States imposed an embargo on exports to Cuba covering all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products.

1969 - U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew referred to anti-Vietnam War protesters "an effete corps of impudent snobs."

1974 - The news program "Weekend" debuted on NBC.

1977 - The Concorde made its first landing in New York City.

1983 - The U.S. Senate approved a bill establishing a national holiday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

1984 - Four U.S. employees of the CIA were killed in El Salvador when their plane crashed.

1987 - The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 508 points. It was the worst one-day percentage decline, 22.6%, in history.

1989 - The U.S. Senate rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that barred the desecration of the American flag.

1993 - Benazir Bhutto was returned to the premiership of Pakistan.

1998 - In Washington, DC, Microsoft went on trial to defend against an antitrust case.

1998 - Former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson got his boxing license back after he had lost it for biting Evander Holyfield's ear during a fight.

2003 - In London, magician David Blaine emerged from a clear plastic box that had been suspended by a crane over the banks of the Thames River. He survived only on water for 44 days. Blaine had entered the box on September 5.

2006 - The Dow Jones industrial average ended the day at 12,011.73. It was the first close above 12,000.

October 21, 2012

1797 - "Old Ironsides," the U.S. Navy frigate Constitution, was launched in Boston's harbor.

1805 - The Battle of Trafalgar occurred off the coast of Spain. The British defeated the French and Spanish fleet.

1849 - The first tattooed man, James F. O’Connell, was put on exhibition at the Franklin Theatre in New York City, NY.

1858 - The Can-Can was performed for the first time in Paris.

1879 - Thomas Edison invented the electric incandescent lamp. It would last 13 1/2 hours before it would burn out.

1917 - The first U.S. soldiers entered combat during World War I near Nancy, France.

1918 - Margaret Owen set a typing speed record of 170 words per minute on a manual typewriter.

1925 - The photoelectric cell was first demonstrated at the Electric Show in New York City, NY.

1925 - The U.S. Treasury Department announced that it had fined 29,620 people for prohibition (of alcohol) violations.

1927 - Construction began on the George Washington Bridge.

1944 - During World War II, the German city of Aachen was captured by U.S. troops.

1945 - Women in France were allowed to vote for the first time.

1950 - Chinese forces invaded Tibet.

1959 - The Guggenheim Museum was opened to the public in New York. The building was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

1966 - In south Wales, 140 people were killed by a coal waste landslide engulfed a school and several houses.

1967 - Thousands of demonstrators marched in Washington, DC, in opposition to the Vietnam War.

1980 - The Philadelphia Phillies won their first World Series.

1983 - The Pentagon reported that 2,000 Marines were headed to Grenada to protect and evacuate Americans living there.

1986 - Pro-Iranian kidnappers in Lebanon claimed that they had abducted American writer Edward Tracy. He was not released until August of 1991.

1986 - The U.S. ordered 55 Soviet diplomats to leave. The action was in reaction to the Soviet Union expelling five American diplomats.

1988 - Former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos and his wife, Imelda, were indicted in New York on fraud and racketeering charges. Marcos died before his trial and Imelda was acquitted in 1990.

1991 - Jesse Turner, an American hostage in Lebanon, was released after nearly five years of being imprisoned.

1993 - The play "The Twilight of the Golds" opened.

1994 - North Korea and the U.S. signed an agreement requiring North Korea to halt its nuclear program and agree to inspections.

1994 - Rosario Ames, the wife of CIA agent Aldrich Ames, was sentenced to five years in prison for her role in her husband's espionage.

1998 - 68 people were arrested in Indonesia for the killing spree that left nine suspected murderers dead.

1998 - The New York Yankees set a major league baseball record of 125 victories for the regular and postseason combined.

1998 - Cancer specialist Dr. Jane Henney became the FDA's first female commissioner.

2003 - The U.S. Senate voted to ban what was known as partial birth abortions.

2003 - North Korea rejected U.S. President George W. Bush's offer of a written pledge not to attack in exchange for the communist nation agreeing to end its nuclear weapons program.

October 22, 2012

1746 - The College of New Jersey was officially chartered. It later became known as Princeton University.

1797 - Andre-Jacques Garnerin made the first recorded parachute jump. He made the jump from about 3,000 feet.

1836 - Sam Houston was inaugurated as the first constitutionally elected president of the Republic of Texas.

1844 - This day is recognized as "The Great Disappointment" among those who practiced Millerism. The world was expected to come to an end according to the followers of William Miller.

1879 - Thomas Edison conducted his first successful experiment with a high-resistance carbon filament.

1883 - The New York Horse show opened. The first national horse show was formed by the newly organized National Horse Show Association of America.

1907 - The Panic of 1907 began when depositors began withdrawing money from many New York banks.

1934 - Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd, the notorious bank robber, was shot and killed by Federal agents in East Liverpool, OH.

1939 - The first televised pro football game was telecast from New York. Brooklyn defeated Philadelphia 23-14.

1950 - The Los Angeles Rams set an NFL record by defeating the Baltimore Colts 70-27. It was a record score for a regular season game.

1954 - The Federal Republic of Germany was invited to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

1959 - "Take Me Along" opened on Broadway.

1962 - U.S. President Kennedy went on radio and television to inform the United States about his order to send U.S. forces to blockade Cuba. The blockade was in response to the discovery of Soviet missile bases on the island.

1968 - Apollo 7 splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean. The spacecraft had orbited the Earth 163 times.

1975 - Air Force Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich was discharged after publicly declaring his homosexuality. His tombstone reads " "A gay Vietnam Veteran. When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one."

1979 - The ousted Shah of Iran, Mohammad Riza Pahlavi was allowed into the U.S. for medical treatment.

1981 - The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization was decertified by the federal government for its strike the previous August.

1983 - At the Augusta National Golf Course in Georgia, an armed man crashed a truck through front gates and demanded to speak with U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

1986 - U.S. President Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 into law.

1991 - The European Community and the European Free Trade Association agreed to create a free trade zone of 19 nations by the year 1993.

1995 - The 50th anniversary of the United Nations was marked by a record number of world leaders gathering.

1995 - British writer Sir Kingsley Amis died at the age of 73.

1998 - The United Nations announced that over 2 million children had been killed in war as innocent victims since 1987.

1998 - Pakistan's carpet weaving industry announced that they would begin to phase out child labor.

1999 - China ended its first-ever human rights conference in which it defied Western definitions of civil liberties.

1999 - The U.N. Security Council voted to send 6,000 troops to Sierra Leone to oversee a peace plan that had been signed in July.

2010 - The Internation Space Station set the record (3641 days) for the longest continuous human occupation of space. It had been continously inhabited since November 2, 2000.

October 23, 2012

42 B.C. - Marcus Junius Brutus committed suicide after his defeat at the Battle of Philippi. He was a leading conspirator in the assassination of Julius Caesar.

1864 - During the U.S. Civil War, Union forces led by Gen. Samuel R. Curtis defeated the Confederate forces in Missouri that were under Gen. Stirling Price.

1869 - John (William) Heisman was born. He is recognized as one of the greatest innovators of the game of football.

1910 - Blanche S. Scott became the first woman to make a public solo airplane flight in the United States.

1915 - The first U.S. championship horseshoe tourney was held in Kellerton, IA.

1915 - Approximately 25,000 women demanded the right to vote with a march in New York City, NY.

1929 - In the U.S., the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged starting the stock-market crash that began the Great Depression.

1930 - J.K. Scott won the first miniature golf tournament. The event was held in Chattanooga, TN.

1942 - During World War II, the British began a major offensive against Axis forces at El Alamein, Egypt.

1944 - During World War II, the Battle of Leyte Gulf began.

1946 - The United Nations General Assembly convened in New York for the first time.

1956 - Hungarian citizens began an uprising against Soviet occupation. On November 4, 1956 Soviet forces enter Hungar and eventually suppress the uprising.

1956 - NBC broadcasted the first videotape recording. The tape of Jonathan Winters was seen coast to coast in the U.S.

1958 - Russian poet and novelist Boris Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He was forced to refuse the honor due to negative Soviet reaction. Pasternak won the award for writing "Dr. Zhivago".

1962 - During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the U.S. naval "quarantine" of Cuba was approved by the Council of the Organization of American States (OAS).

1962 - The U.S. Navy reconnaissance squadron VFP-62 began overflights of Cuba under the code name "Blue Moon."

1971 - The U.N. General Assembly voted to expel Taiwan and seat Communist China.

1973 - U.S. President Richard M. Nixon agreed to turn over the subpoenaed tapes concerning the Watergate affair.

1978 - China and Japan formally ended four decades of hostility when they exchanged treaty ratifications.

1980 - The resignation of Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin was announced.

1983 - At Beirut International Airport, a suicide bomber destroyed a U.S. Marine compound and killed 241 U.S. Marines and sailors. 58 French paratroopers were killed in a near-simultaneous attack.

1984 - "NBC Nightly News" aired footage of the severe drought in Ethiopia.

1985 - U.S. President Reagan arrived in New York to address the U.N. General Assembly.

1989 - In Boston, MA, Charles Stuart claimed he and his pregnant wife, Carol, had been shot in their car by a black robber. Carol Stuart and her prematurely delivered baby died. Charles Stuart later died, an apparent suicide, after he was implicated in the murder of his wife and child.

1989 - Hungary became an independent republic, after 33 years of Soviet rule.

1992 - Japanese Emperor Akihito became the first Japanese emperor to stand on Chinese soil.

1992 - A former French health official was sentenced to four years in prison for allowing 1,200 hemophiliacs to receive AIDS-tainted blood.

1993 - Joe Carter (Toronto Blue Jays) became only the second player to end the World Series with a homerun.

1995 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin and U.S. President Bill Clinton agree to a joint peacekeeping effort in the war-torn Bosnia.

1996 - The civil trial of O.J. Simpson opened in Santa Monica, CA. Simpson was later found liable in the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole and her friend, Ronald Goldman.

1998 - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat reach a breakthrough in a land-for-peace West Bank accord.

1998 - Japan nationalized its first bank since World War II.

1998 - Dr. Barnett Slepian, a doctor who performed legal abortions, was killed at his home in suburban Buffalo, NY, by sniper fire through his kitchen window. James Kopp was charged with second-degree murder.

October 24, 2012

1537 - Jane Seymour, the third wife of England's King Henry VIII, died after giving birth to Prince Edward. Prince Edward became King Edward VI.

1632 - Scientist Anthony van Leeuwenhoek was born in Delft, Holland. He created the first microscope lenses that were powerful enough to observe single-celled animals.

1648 - The Holy Roman Empire was effectively destroyed by the Peace of Westphalia that brought an end to the Thirty Years War.

1788 - Poet Sarah Joseph Hale was born. She wrote the poem "Mary Had A Little Lamb."

1795 - The country of Poland was divided up between Austria, Prussia, and Russia.

1830 - Belva Lockwood was born. She was the first woman formally nominated for the U.S. Presidency.

1836 - Alonzo D. Phillips received a patent for the phosphorous friction safety match.

1861 - The first transcontinental telegraph message was sent when Justice Stephen J. Field of California transmitted a telegram to U.S. President Lincoln.

1901 - Daredevil Anna Edson Taylor became the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel. She was 63 years old.

1929 - In the U.S., investors dumped more than 13 million shares on the stock market. The day is known as "Black Thursday."

1931 - The upper level of the George Washington Bridge opened for traffic between New York and New Jersey.

1939 - Nylon stockings were sold to the public for the first time in Wilmington, DE.

1940 - In the U.S., the 40-hour workweek went into effect under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.

1945 - The United Nations (UN) was formally established less than a month after the end of World War II. The Charter was ratified by China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and by a majority of other signatories.

1945 - Pierre Laval of France and Vidkum Abraham Quisling of Norway were executed. The two men were recognized as the two most prominent collaborators of the Nazis.

1948 - The term "cold war" was used for the first time. It was in a speech by Bernard Baruch before the Senate War Investigating Committee.

1949 - The cornerstone for the U.N. Headquarters was laid in New York City.

1960 - All remaining American-owned property in Cuba was nationalized. The process of nationalizing all U.S. and foreign-owned property in Cuban had begun on August 6, 1960.

1962 - During the Cuban Missile Crisis, U.S. military forces went on the highest alert in the postwar era in preparation for a possible full-scale war with the Soviet Union. The U.S. blockade of Cuba officially began on this day.

1969 - Richard Burton bought his wife Elizabeth Taylor a 69-carat Cartier diamond ring for $1.5 million. Burton presented the ring to Taylor several days later.

1986 - Britain broke off relations with Syria after a Jordanian was convicted in an attempted bombing. The evidence in the trial led to the belief that Syria was involved in the attack on the Israeli jetliner.

1989 - Reverend Jim Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prison and fined $500,000 for his conviction on 24 counts of fraud. In 1991, his sentence was reduced to eighteen years and he was released on parole after a total five years in prison.

1992 - The Toronto Blue Jays became the first non-U.S. team to win the World Series.

1997 - In Arlington, VA, former NBC sportscaster Marv Albert was spared a jail sentence after a courtroom apology to the woman he'd bitten during a sexual encounter.

1999 - An Israeli court sentenced American teen-ager Samuel Sheinbein to 24 years in prison. The crime was killing an acquaintance in Maryland in 1997.

2001 - The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation that gave police the power to secretly search homes, tap all of a person's telephone conversation and track people's use of the Internet.

2001 - The U.S. stamp "United We Stand" was dedicated.

2001 - NASA's 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft successfully entered orbit around Mars.

2003 - In London, the last commercial supersonic Concorde flight landed.

October 24, 2012

"1939 - Nylon stockings were sold to the public for the first time in Wilmington, DE."

They had been on sale everywhere else for 10 years prior to this :yes:

See Raist. People still do read this :D Just wanted to reassure you & give you the motive to go on...........& on...............

& on .................etc :lol2:

October 24, 2012

2137 B.C. - Chinese Royal astronomers, Ho and Hsi, were executed after not predicting a solar eclipse caused panic in the streets of China.

1400 - Geoffrey Chaucer died at the age of 57. He was the first poet to be buried in Westminster Abbey.

1415 - In Northern France, England won the Battle of Agincourt over France during the Hundred Years' War. Almost 6000 Frenchmen were killed while fewer than 400 were lost by the English.

1760 - George III took the British throne after the death of King George II, his grandfather.

1812 - During the War of 1812, the U.S. frigate United States captured the British vessel Macedonian.

1854 - The Charge of the Light Brigade took place during the Crimean War. The British were winning the Battle of Balaclava when Lord James Cardigan received an order to attack the Russians. He took his troops into a valley and suffered 40 percent caualties. Later it was revealed that the order was the result of confusion and was not given intentionally.

1870 - The first U.S. trademark was given. The recipient was the Averill Chemical Paint Company of New York City.

1881 - The founder of "Cubism," Pablo Picasso, was born in Malaga, Spain.

1888 - Richard Byrd, the first person to see the North Pole, was born.

1917 - The Bolsheviks (Communists) under Vladimir Ilyich Lenin seized power in Russia.

1918 - The Canadian steamship Princess Sophia hit the reef off the coast of Alaska. Nearly 400 people died.

1920 - King Alexander of Greece died from blood poisoning that resulted from a bite from his pet monkey.

1929 - Alber B. Fall, of U.S. President Harding's cabinet, was found guilty of taking a bribe. He was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $100,000.

1939 - "The Time of Your Life," by William Saroyan, opened in New York.

1951 - In Panmunjom, peace talks concerning the Korean War resumed after 63 days.

1954 - A U.S. cabinet meeting was televised for the first time.

1955 - The microwave oven, for home use, was introduced by The Tappan Company.

1958 - U.S. Marines withdrew from Beirut, Lebanon. They had been sent in on July 25, 1958, to protect the nation's pro-Western government.

1960 - The Accutron watch by the Bulova Watch Company was introduced.

1962 - U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson presented photographic evidence to the United Nations Security Council. The photos were of Soviet missile bases in Cuba.

1962 - American author John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

1971 - The U.N. General Assembly voted to expel Taiwan and admit mainland China.

1983 - U.S. troops and soldiers from six Caribbean nations invaded Grenada to restore order and provide protection to U.S. citizens after a recent coup within Grenada's Communist (pro-Cuban) government.

1990 - It was announced by U.S. Defense Secretary Dick Cheney that the Pentagon was planning to send 100,000 more troops to Saudi Arabia.

1994 - Susan Smith of Union, SC, claimed that a black carjacker had driven off with her two sons. Smith was later convicted of drowning her children in a nearby lake.

1999 - Golfer Payne Stewart and five others were killed when their Learjet crashed in South Dakota. The plane flew uncontrolled for four hours before the crash.

2000 - AT&T Corp. announced that it would restructure into a family of four separately traded companies (consumer, business, broadband and wireless).

2001 - It was announced that scientists had unearthed the remains of an ancient crocodile which lived 110 million years ago. The animal, found in Gadoufaoua, Niger, grew as long as 40 feet and weighed as much as eight metric tons.

October 26, 2012

1774 - The First Continental Congress of the U.S. adjourned in Philadelphia.

1825 - The Erie Canal opened in upstate New York. The 363-mile canal connected Lake Erie and the Hudson River at a cost of $7,602,000.

1854 - Charles William Post was born. He was the inventor of "Grape Nuts," "Postum" and "Post Toasties."

1858 - H.E. Smith patented the rotary-motion washing machine.

1881 - The "Gunfight at the OK Corral" took place in Tombstone, AZ. The fight was between Wyatt Earp, his two brothers and Doc Holiday and the Ike Clanton Gang.

1905 - Norway gained independence from Sweden.

1942 - The U.S. ship Hornet was sunk in the Battle of Santa Cruz during World War II.

1944 - During World War II, the Battle of Leyte Gulf ended. The battle was won by American forces and brought the end of the Pacific phase of World War II into sight.

1949 - U.S. President Harry Truman raised the minimum wage from 40 to 75 cents an hour.

1951 - Winston Churchill became the prime minister of Great Britain.

1955 - New York City's "The Village Voice" was first published.

1957 - The Soviet Union announced that defense minister Marchal Georgi Zhukov had been relieved of his duties.

1958 - Pan American Airways flew its first Boeing 707 jetliner from New York City to Paris.

1962 - The Soviet Union made an offer to end the Cuban Missile Crisis by taking their missile bases out of Cuba if the U.S. agreed to not invade Cuba and would remove Jupiter missiles in Turkey.

1967 - The Shah of Iran crowned himself and his Queen after 26 years on the Peacock Throne.

1970 - "Doonesbury," the comic strip by Gary Trudeau, premiered in 28 newspapers across the U.S.

1972 - U.S. National security adviser Henry Kissinger declared, "Peace is at hand" in Vietnam.

1975 - Anwar Sadat became the first Egyptian president to officially visit to the United States.

1977 - The experimental space shuttle Enterprise successfully landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

1979 - South Korean President Park Chung-hee was shot to death by Kim Jae-kyu, the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.

1980 - Israeli President Yitzhak Navon became the first Israeli head of state to visit Egypt.

1984 - "Baby Fae" was given the heart of baboon after being born with a severe heart defect. She lived for 21 days with the animal heart.

1985 - Approximately 110,000 people marched past the U.S. and Soviet embassies in London to pressure the two countries to end their arms race.

1988 - Roussel Uclaf, a French pharmaceutical company, announced it was halting the worldwide distribution of RU-486. The pill is used to induce abortions. The French government made the company reverse itself two days later.

1988 - Two whales were freed by Soviet and American icebreakers. The whales had been trapped for nearly 3 weeks in an Arctic ice pack.

1990 - The U.S. State Department issued a warning that terrorists could be planning an attack on a passenger ship or aircraft.

1990 - Wayne Gretzky became the first NHL player to reach 2,000 points.

1991 - Former Washington Mayor Marion Barry arrived at a federal correctional institution in Petersburg, VA, to begin serving a six-month sentence for cocaine possession.

1992 - General Motors Corp. Chairman Robert Stempel resigned after the company recorded its highest losses in history.

1992 - In Canada, voters rejected the Charlottetown accord, which was designed to unify the country.

1993 - Deborah Gore Dean was convicted of 12 felony counts of defrauding the U.S. government and lying to the U.S. Congress. Dean was a central figure in the Reagan-era HUD scandal.

1994 - Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel and Prime Minister Abdel Salam Majali of Jordan signed a peace treaty.

1995 - Alec Baldwin got into a fight with a paparazzi in front of his home when he and his wife Kim Bassinger were bringing their first baby home from the hospital.

1995 - Mario Lemieux (Pittsburgh Penguins) scored his 500th National Hockey League (NHL) career goal against the New York Islanders in his 605th game. He became the second-fastest player to attain the plateau. Wayne Gretzky had reached 600 goals by his 575th NHL game.

1996 - Federal prosecutors cleared Richard Jewell as a suspect in the Olympic park bombing.

1998 - A French lab found a nerve agent on an Iraqi missile warhead.

2001 - It was announced that Fort Worth's Lockheed Martin won a defense contract for $200 billion over 40 years. The contract, for the "joint strike fighter," was the largest defense contract in history.

2002 - Russian authorities pumped a gas into a theater where separatist rebels held over 800 hostages. The gas killed 116 hostages and all 50 hostage-takers were killed by the gas or gunshot wounds.

October 27, 2012

1659 - William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson became the first Quakers to be executed in America.

1787 - The first of the Federalist Papers were published in the New York Independent. The series of 85 essays, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, were published under the pen name "Publius."

1795 - The United States and Spain signed the Treaty of San Lorenzo. The treaty is also known as "Pinckney's Treaty."

1858 - Roland Macy opened Macy's Department Store in New York City. It was Macy's eighth business adventure, the other seven failed.

1878 - The Manhattan Savings Bank in New York City was robbed of over $3,000,000. The robbery was credited to George "Western" Leslie even though there was not enough evidence to convict him, only two of his associates were convicted.

1904 - The New York subway system officially opened. It was the first rapid-transit subway system in America.

1925 - Fred Waller received a patent for water skis.

1927 - The first newsreel featuring sound was released in New York.

1931 - Chuhei Numbu of Japan set a long jump record at 26' 2 1/4".

1938 - Du Pont announced "nylon" as the new name for its new synthetic yarn.

1947 - "You Bet Your Life," the radio show starring Grouch Marx, premiered on ABC. It was later shown on NBC television.

1954 - Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio were divorced. They had been married on January 14, 1954.

1954 - The first Walt Disney television show "Disneyland" premiered on ABC.

Disney movies, music and books

1962 - The Soviet Union adds to the Cuban Missile Crisis by calling for the dismantling of U.S. missile basis in Turkey. U.S. President Kennedy agreed to the new aspect of the agreement.

1978 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin were named winners of the Nobel Peace Prize for their progress toward achieving a Middle East accord.

1994 - The U.S. Justice Department announced that the U.S. prison population had exceeded one million for the first time in American history.

1997 - The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 554.26 points. The stock market was shut down for the first time since the 1981 assassination attempt on U.S. President Reagan.

1998 - The reunion episode "CHiPs '99" aired for the first time on the cable network TNT.

1998 - Disney's "Lion King II: Simba's Pride" was released on video.

2002 - The Anaheim Angels won their first World Series. They beat the San Francisco Giants in Game 7 of the series.

2002 - Emmitt Smith (Dallas Cowboys) became the all-time leading rusher in the NFL when he extended his career yardage to 16,743. He achieved the record in his 193rd game.

2002 - Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was elected president of Brazil in a runoff. He was the country's first elected leftist leader.

2003 - Bank of America Corp. announced it had agreed to buy FleetBoston Financial Corp. The deal created the second largest banking company in the U.S.

October 29, 2012

1618 - Sir Walter Raleigh was beheaded under a sentence that had been brought against him 15 years earlier for conspiracy against King James I.

1652 - The Massachusetts Bay Colony proclaimed itself to be an independent commonwealth.

1682 - William Penn landed at what is now Chester, PA. He was the founder of Pennsylvania.

1863 - The International Committee of the Red Cross was founded.

1901 - Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of U.S. President McKinley, was electrocuted.

1923 - Turkey formally became a republic after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. The first president was Mustafa Kemal, later known as Kemal Ataturk.

1929 - America's Great Depression began with the crash of the Wall Street stock market.

1940 - The first peacetime military draft began in the U.S.

1945 - The first ballpoint pens to be made commercially went on sale at Gimbels Department Store in New York at the price of $12.50 each.1956 - Israel invaded Egypt's Sinai Peninsula during the Suez Canal Crisis.

1956 - "The Huntley-Brinkley Report" premiered on NBC. The show replaced "The Camel News Caravan."

1959 - General Mills became the first corporation to use close-circuit television.

1960 - Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) won his first professional fight.

1966 - The National Organization for Women was founded.

1969 - The U.S. Supreme Court ordered an immediate end to all school segregation.

1973 - O.J. Simpson, of the Buffalo Bills, set two NFL records. He carried the ball 39 times and he ran 157 yards putting him over 1,000 yards at the seventh game of the season.

1974 - U.S. President Gerald Ford signed a new law forbidding discrimination in credit applications on the basis of sex or marital status

1985 - It was announced that Maj. Gen. Samuel K. Doe had won the first multiparty election in Liberia.

1990 - The U.N. Security Council voted to hold Saddam Hussein's regime liable for human rights abuses and war damages during its occupation of Kuwait.

1991 - The U.S. Galileo spacecraft became the first to visit an asteroid (Gaspra).

1991 - Trade sanctions were imposed on Haiti by the U.S. to pressure the new leaders to restore the ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.

1992 - Depo Provera, a contraceptive, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

1995 - Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers became the NFL's career leader in receiving yards with 14,040 yards.

1998 - South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission condemned both apartheid and violence committed by the African National Congress.

1998 - The space shuttle Discovery blasted off with John Glenn on board. Glenn was 77 years old. In 1962 he became the first American to orbit the Earth.

1998 - The oldest known copy of Archimedes' work sold for $2 million at a New York auction.

2001 - KTLA broadcasted the first coast to coast HDTV network telecast.

October 30, 2012

1735 - John Adams, the second President of the United States, was born in Braintree, MA. His son became the sixth President of the U.S.

1817 - The independent government of Venezuela was established by Simon Bolivar.

1831 - Escaped slave Nat Turner was apprehended in Southampton County, VA, several weeks after leading the bloodiest slave uprising in American history.

1875 - The constitution of Missouri was ratified by popular vote.

1893 - The U.S. Senate gave final approval to repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890.

1894 - The time clock was patented by Daniel M. Cooper of Rochester, NY.

1938 - Orson Welles' "The War of the Worlds" aired on CBS radio. The belief that the realistic radio dramatization was a live news event about a Martian invasion caused panic among listeners.

1943 - In Moscow, a declaration was signed by the Governments of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States and China called for an early establishment of an international organization to maintain peace and security. The goal was supported on December 1, 1943, at a meeting in Teheran.

1944 - Martha Graham's ballet "Appalachian Spring" premiered at the Library of Congress.

1945 - The U.S. government announced the end of shoe rationing.

1953 - General George C. Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1961 - The Soviet Union tested a hydrogen bomb with a force of approximately 58 megatons.

1961 - The Soviet Party Congress unanimously approved an order to remove Joseph Stalin's body from Lenin's tomb.

1972 - U.S. President Richard Nixon approved legislation to increase Social Security spending by $5.3 billion.

1972 - In Illinois, 45 people were killed when two trains collided on Chicago's south side.

1975 - Prince Juan Carlos assumed power in Spain as dictator Francisco Franco was near death.

1975 - The New York Daily News ran the headline "Ford to City: Drop Dead." The headline came a day after U.S. President Gerald R. Ford said he would veto any proposed federal bailout of New York City.

1982 - Portugal's constitution was revised for the first time since it was ratified on April 25, 1976.

1984 - In Poland, police found the body of kidnapped pro-Solidarity priest Father Jerry Popieluszko. His death was blamed on four security officers.

1989 - Mitsubishi Estate Company announced it would buy 51 percent of Rockefeller Group Inc. of New York.

1993 - Martin Fettman, America's first veterinarian in space, performed the world's first animal dissections in space, while aboard the space shuttle Columbia.

1993 - The United Nations deadline concerning ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide passed with country's military still in control.

1995 - Federalist prevailed over separatists in Quebec in a referendum concerning secession from the federation of Canada.

1997 - The play revival "The Cherry Orchard" opened.

1998 - The terrorist who hijacked a Turkish Airlines plane and the 39 people on board was killed when anti-terrorist squads raided the plane.

2001 - In New York City, U.S. President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch at Game 3 of the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks.

2001 - Michael Jordan returned to the NBA with the Washington Wizards after a 3 1/2 year retirement. The Wizards lost 93-91 to the New York Knicks.

October 31, 2012

1517 - Martin Luther posted the 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Palace Church. The event marked the start of the Protestant Reformation in Germany.

1860 - Juliette Low, the founder off the Girl Scouts, was born.

1864 - Nevada became the 36th state to join the U.S.

1868 - Postmaster General Alexander Williams Randall approved a standard uniform for postal carriers.

1887 - Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek was born. He was the first constitutional President of the Republic of China.

1914 - The Ottoman Empire (Turkey) joined the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria).

1922 - Benito Mussolini became prime minister of Italy.

1926 - Magician Harry Houdini died of gangrene and peritonitis resulting from a ruptured appendix. His appendix had been damaged twelve days earlier when he had been punched in the stomach by a student unexpectedly. During a lecture Houdini had commented on the strength of his stomach muscles and their ability to withstand hard blows.

1940 - The British air victory in the Battle of Britain prevented Germany from invading Britain.

1941 - Mount Rushmore was declared complete after 14 years of work. At the time the 60-foot busts of U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln were finished.

1941 - The U.S. Navy destroyer Reuben James was torpedoed by a German submarine near Iceland. The U.S. had not yet entered World War II. More than 100 men were killed.

1952 - The U.S. detonated its first hydrogen bomb.

1954 - The Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) began a revolt against French rule.

1955 - Britain's Princess Margaret announced she would not marry Royal Air Force Captain Peter Townsend.

1956 - Rear Admiral G.J. Dufek became the first person to land an airplane at the South Pole. Dufek also became the first person to set foot on the South Pole.

1959 - Lee Harvey Oswald, a former U.S. Marine from Fort Worth, TX, announced that he would never return to the U.S. At the time he was in Moscow, Russia.

1961 - In the Soviet Union, the body of Joseph Stalin was removed from Lenin's Tomb where it was on public display.

1968 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a halt to all U.S. bombing of North Vietnam.

1969 - Wal-Mart Discount City stores were incorporated as Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

1981 - Antiqua and Barbuda became independent of Great Britain.

1983 - The U.S. Defense Department acknowledged that during the U.S. led invasion of Grenada, that a U.S. Navy plane had mistakenly bombed a civilian hospital.

1984 - Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated near her residence by two Sikh security guards. Her son, Rajiv, was sworn in as prime minister.

1992 - In Liberia, it was announced that five American nuns had been killed near Monrovia. Rebels loyal to Charles Taylor were blamed for the murders.

1993 - River Phoenix died at the age of 23 after collapsing outside The Viper Room in Hollywood.

1993 - The play "Wonderful Tennessee" closed after only 9 performances.

1994 - 68 people were killed when an American Eagle ATR-72, plunged into a northern Indiana farm.

1997 - Louise Woodward, British au pair, was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of second-degree murder in the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen. She was released after her sentence was reduced to manslaughter.

1998 - Iraq announced that it was halting all dealings with U.N. arms inspectors. The inspectors were investigating the country's weapons of mass destruction stemming from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

1999 - EgyptAir Flight 990 crashed off the coast of Nantucket, MA, killing all 217 people aboard.

1999 - Leaders from the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church signed the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification. The event ended a centuries-old doctrinal dispute over the nature of faith and salvation.

2001 - Microsoft and the U.S. Justice Department reached a tentative agreement to settle the antitrust case against the software company.

November 2, 2012

1721 - Peter the Great (Peter I), ruler of Russia, changed his title to emperor.

1776 - During the American Revolutionary War, William Demont, became the first traitor of the American Revolution when he deserted.

1783 - U.S. Gen. George Washington gave his "Farewell Address to the Army" near Princeton, NJ.

1867 - "Harpers Bazaar" magazine was founded.

1883 - Thomas Edison executed a patent application for an electrical indicator using the Edison effect lamp (U.S. Pat. 307,031).

1889 - North Dakota and South Dakota were admitted into the union as the 39th and 40th states.

1895 - In Chicago, IL, the first gasoline powered car contest took place in America.

1917 - British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour expressed support for a "national home" for the Jews of Palestine.

1920 - The first commercial radio station in the U.S., KDKA of Pittsburgh, PA, began regular broadcasting.

1921 - Margaret Sander's National Birth Control League combined with Mary Ware Denetts Voluntary Parenthood League to form the American Birth Control League.

1930 - Haile Selassie was crowned emperor of Ethiopia.

1930 - The DuPont Company announced the first synthetic rubber. It was named DuPrene.

1937 - The play "I'd Rather be Right" opened in New York City.

1947 - Howard Hughes flew his "Spruce Goose," a huge wooden airplane, for eight minutes in California. It was the plane's first and only flight. The "Spruce Goose," nicknamed because of the white-gray color of the spruce used to build it, never went into production.

1948 - Harry S. Truman defeated Thomas E. Dewey for the U.S. presidency. The Chicago Tribune published an early edition that had the headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN." The Truman victory surprised many polls and newspapers. (Illinois>

1959 - Charles Van Doren, a game show contestant on the NBC-TV program "Twenty-One" admitted that he had been given questions and answers in advance.

1960 - In London, the novel "Lady Chatterly's Lover," was found not guilty of obscenity.

1962 - U.S. President Kennedy announced that the U.S.S.R. was dismantling the missile sites in Cuba.

1963 - South Vietnamese President Ngo Dihn Diem was assassinated in a military coup.

1966 - The Cuban Adjustment Act allows 123,000 Cubans to apply for permanent residence in the U.S.

1979 - Joanna Chesimard, a black militant escaped from a New Jersey prison, where she'd been serving a life sentence for the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper.

1983 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed a bill establishing a federal holiday on the third Monday of January in honor of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

1984 - Velma Barfield became the first woman to be executed in the U.S. since 1962. She had been convicted of the poisoning death of her boyfriend.

1985 - The South African government imposed severe restrictions on television, radio and newspaper coverage of unrest by both local and foreign journalists.

1986 - The 12-by-16-inch celluloid of a poison Apple from Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"" was purchased for $30,800.

Disney movies, music and books

1986 - American hostage David Jacobson was released after being held in Lebanon for 17 months by Shiite Muslims kidnappers.

1989 - Carmen Fasanella retired after 68 years and 243 days of taxicab service in Princeton, NJ.

1992 - Magic Johnson retired from the NBA again, this time for good because of fear due to his HIV infection.

1993 - The U.S. Senate called for full disclosure of Senator Bob Packwood's diaries in a sexual harassment probe.

1993 - Christie Todd Whitman was elected the first woman governor of New Jersey.

1995 - The play "Sacrilege" opened.

1995 - The U.S. expelled Daiwa Bank Ltd. for allegedly covering up $1.1 billion in trading losses.

1998 - U.S. President Clinton gave his first in-depth interview since the White House sex scandal to Black Entertainment Television talk show host and political commentator Tavis Smiley on the network's "BET Tonight with Tavis Smiley."

2001 - The computer-animated movie "Monsters, Inc." opened. The film recorded the best debut ever for an animated film and the 6th best of all time.

2003 - In the U.S., the Episcopal Church diocese consecrated the church's first openly gay bishop.

November 3, 2012

1507 - Leonardo DaVinci was commissioned by the husband of Lisa Gherardini to paint her. The work is known as the Mona Lisa.

1631 - The Reverend John Eliot arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was the first Protestant minister to dedicate himself to the conversion of Native Americans to Christianity.

1793 - Stephen F. Austin was born. He was the principal founder of Texas.

1796 - John Adams was elected the 2nd U.S. President.

1839 - The first Opium War between China and Britain erupted.

1892 - The first automatic telephone went into service at LaPorte, IN. The device was invented by Almon Strowger.

1900 - The first automobile show in the United States opened at New York's Madison Square Garden.

1903 - Panama proclaimed its independence from Columbia.

1911 - Chevrolet Motor Car Company was founded by Louis Chevrolet and William C. Durant.

1934 - The first race track in California opened under a new pari-mutuel betting law.

1941 - U.S. Ambassador to Japan John Grew warned that the Japanese may be planning a sudden attack on the U.S.

1952 - Frozen bread was offered for sale for the first time in a supermarket in Chester, NY.

1953 - The Rules Committee of organized baseball restored the sacrifice fly. The rule had not been used since 1939.

1957 - Sputnik II was launched by the Soviet Union. It was the second manmade satellite to be put into orbit and was the first to put an animal into space, a dog named Laika.

1973 - The U.S. launched the Mariner 10 spacecraft. On March 29, 1974 it became the first spacecraft to reach the planet Mercury.

1975 - "Good Morning America" premiered on ABC-TV.

1979 - Five members of the Communist Workers' Party are shot to death in broad daylight at an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally in Greensboro, NC. Eight others were wounded.

1986 - The Ash-Shiraa, pro-Syrian Lebanese magazine, first broke the story of U.S. arms sales to Iran to secure the release of seven American hostages. The story turned into the Iran-Contra affair.

1987 - China told the U.S. that it would halt the sale of arms to Iran.

1991 - Israeli and Palestinian representatives held their first-ever face-to-face talks in Madrid, Spain.

1992 - Carol Moseley-Braun became the first African-American woman U.S. senator.

1994 - Susan Smith of Union, SC, was arrested for drowning her two sons. Nine days earlier Smith had claimed that the children had been abducted by a black carjacker.

1995 - U.S. President Clinton dedicated a memorial at Arlington National Cemetery to the 270 victims of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

1998 - Bob Kane, the creator of Batman, died at the age of 83.

1998 - A state-run newspaper in Iraq urged the country to prepare for to battle "the U.S. monster."

1998 - Minnesota elected Jesse "The Body" Ventura, a former pro wrestler, as its governor.

2003 - In Kabul, Afghanistan, a post-Taliban draft constitution was unveiled.

November 4, 2012

1842 - Abraham Lincoln married Mary Todd in Springfield, IL.

1846 - The patent for the artificial leg is granted to Benjamin Palmer.

1880 - James and John Ritty patented the first cash register.

1922 - In Egypt, Howard Carter discovered the entry of the lost tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen.

1924 - Nellie T. Ross of Wyoming was elected America's first woman governor so she could serve out the remaining term of her late husband, William B. Ross.

1939 - During World War II, the U.S. modified its neutrality stance with the Neutrality Act of 1939. The new policy allowed cash-and-carry purchases of arms by belligerents.

1939 - At the 40th National Automobile Show the first air-conditioned car was put on display.

1942 - During World War II, Axis forces retreated from El Alamein in North Africa. It was a major victory for the British.

1956 - Soviet forces enter Hungary in order to supress the uprising that had begun on October 23, 1956.

1965 - Lee Ann Roberts Breedlove became the first woman to exceed 300 mph when she went 308.5 mph.

1970 - Former King Peter II of Yugoslavia died in Denver, CO. He was the first European king or queen to die and to be buried in the U.S.

1979 - Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 63 Americans hostage (90 total hostages). The militants, mostly students, demanded that the U.S. send the former shah back to Iran to stand trial. Many hostages were later released, but 52 were held for the next 14 months.

1981 - The second scheduled flight of the space shuttle Columbia was canceled with only 31 seconds left in the countdown.

1984 - Nicaragua held its first free elections in 56 years.

1985 - Soviet defector Vitaly Yurchenko announced he was returning to the Soviet Union. He had charged that he had been kidnapped by the CIA.

1989 - About a million East Germans filled the streets of East Berlin in a pro-democracy rally.

1990 - Iraq issued a statement saying it was prepared to fight a "dangerous war" rather than give up Kuwait.

1991 - Ronald Reagan opened his presidential library in Simi Valley, CA. The dedication ceremony was attended by President Bush and former U.S. presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald R. Ford and Richard M. Nixon. It was the 1st gathering of 5 U.S. chief executives.

1995 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, 73 years old, was assassinated by right-wing Israeli Yigal Amir after attending a peace rally.

1999 - Cristina Saralegui received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1999 - The United Nations imposed economic sanctions against the Taliban that controlled most of Afghanistan. The sanctions were imposed because the Taliban had refused to turn over Osama bin Laden, who had been charged with masterminding the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

2001 - Hurrican Michelle hit Cuba destroying crops and thousands of homes. The United States made the gesture of sending humanitarian aid. On December 16, 2001, Cuba received the first commercial food shipment from the U.S. in nearly 40 years.

2010 - Microsoft's Kinect was launched worldwide.

November 5, 2012

1605 - The "Gunpowder Plot" attempted by Guy Fawkes failed when he was captured before he could blow up the English Parliament. Guy Fawkes Day is celebrated every November 5th in Britain to celebrate his failure to blow up all the members of Parliament and King James I.

1844 - In California, a grizzly bear underwent a successful cataract operation at the Zoological Garden.

1872 - In the U.S., Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote in the presidential election. She never paid the fine.

1895 - George B. Selden received the first U.S. patent for an automobile. He sold the rights for $200,000 four years later.

1911 - Italy officially annexed Tripoli.

1935 - The game "Monopoly" was introduced by Parker Brothers Company.

1940 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term in office.

1944 - Lord Moyne, a British official, was assassinated by the Zionist Stern gang in Cairo, Egypt.

1946 - John F. Kennedy was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives at the age of 29.

1955 - The Vienna State Opera House in Austria formally opened.

1956 - British and French forces began landing in Egypt during the Suez Canal Crisis. A cease-fire was declared 2 days later.

1959 - The American Football League was formed.

1963 - Archaeologists found the remains of a Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.

1974 - Ella T. Grasso was elected governor of Connecticut. She was the first woman in the U.S. to win a governorship without succeeding her husband.

1984 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the NFL had exceeded antitrust limits in attempting to stop the Oakland Raiders from moving to Los Angeles.

1986 - The White House reaffirmed the U.S. ban on the sale of weapons to Iran.

1987 - In South Africa, Goban Mbeki was released after serving 24 years in the Robben Island prison. He had been sentenced to life for treason against the white minority government of South Africa.

1998 - Scientists published a genetic study that showed strong evidence that Thomas Jefferson fathered at least one child (Eston Hemings) of his slave, Sally Hemings. (for more information)

1990 - Rabbi Meir Kahane, founder of the Kach movement, was shot to death after a speech at a New York Hotel. His assassin, Egyptian El Sayyid, was later convicted of the murder and was sentenced to life in prison for his part in the World Trade Center bombing.

1992 - Malice Green, a black motorist, was beaten to death in Detroit during a struggle with police. Two officers were later convicted in his death and sentenced to prison.

1994 - Former U.S. President Reagan announced that he had Alzheimer's disease.

1994 - George Foreman, 45, became boxing's oldest heavyweight champion when he knocked out Michael Moorer in the 10th round of their WBA fight in Las Vegas, NV.

1998 - In the U.S., Chairman Henry Hyde of the Judiciary Committee asked President Clinton to answer 81 questions for the House impeachment inquiry.

1998 - The U.N. announced that the Taliban militia had killed up to 5,000 civilians in a takeover of an Afghani town.

1999 - A 12-day conference on global warming, attended by delegates from 170 nations, ended in Bonn, Germany.

1999 - Dennis Rodman (NBA) and Carmen Electra were both arrested and charged with Battery and domestic violence in a hotel in Miami Beach, FL.

1999 - U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled that Microsoft Corp. enjoyed "monopoly power".

2001 - It was announced that European aircraft manufacturer Airbus and Dubai-based Emirates airlines set up a joint venture specializing in airline services.

2009 - At Fort Hood, near Kileen, TX, Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 30 others.

November 6, 2012

1789 - Father John Carroll was appointed as the first Roman Catholic bishop in the United States of America.

1832 - Joseph Smith, III, was born. He was the first president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He was also the son of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.

1851 - Charles Henry Dow was born. He was the founder of Dow Jones & Company.

1860 - Abraham Lincoln was elected to be the sixteenth president of the United States.

1861 - Jefferson Davis was elected as the president of the Confederacy in the U.S.

1861 - The inventor of basketball, James Naismith, was born.

1869 - The first official intercollegiate football game was played in New Brunswick, NJ.

1913 - Mohandas K. Gandhi was arrested as he led a march of Indian miners in South Africa.

1917 - During World War I, Candian forces take the village of Passchendaele, Belgium, in the Third Battle of Ypres.

1923 - Jacob Schick was granted a patent for the electric shaver.

1935 - Edwin H. Armstrong announced his development of FM broadcasting.

1952 - The first hydrogen bomb was exploded at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

1962 - The U.N. General Assembly adopts a resolution that condemned South Africa's racist apartheid policies. The resolution also called for all member states to terminate military and economic relations with South Africa.

1965 - The Freedom Flights program began which would allow 250,000 Cubans to come to the United States by 1971.

1967 - Phil Donahue began a TV talk show in Dayton, OH. The show was on the air for 29 years.

1975 - King Hassan II of Morocco launches the Green March, a mass migration of 300,000 unarmed Moroccans, that march into the nation of Western Sahara.

1977 - 39 people were killed when an earthen dam burst, sending a wall of water through the campus of Toccoa Falls Bible College in Georgia.

1983 - U.S. Army choppers dropped hundreds of leaflets over northern and central Grenada. The leaflets urged residents to cooperate in locating any Grenadian army or Cuban resisters to the U.S-led invasion.

1984 - For the first time in 193 years, the New York Stock Exchange remained open during a presidential election day.

1985 - Leftist guerrillas belonging to Columbia's April 19 Movement seized control of the Palace of Justice in Bogota.

1986 - Former Navy radioman John A. Walker Jr., was sentenced in Baltimore to life imprisonment. Walker had admitted to being the head of a family spy ring.

1986 - U.S. intelligence sources confirmed a story run by the Lebanese magazine Ash Shiraa that reported the U.S. had been secretly selling arms to Iran in an effort to secure the release of seven American hostages.

1989 - In the hopes of freeing U.S. hostages held in Iran, the U.S. announced that it would unfreeze $567 million in Iranian assets that had been held since 1979.

1990 - About 20% of the Universal Studios backlot in southern California was destroyed in an arson fire.

1991 - Kuwait celebrated the dousing of the last of the oil fires ignited by Iraq during the Persian Gulf War.

1995 - Art Modell, the owner of the Cleveland Browns, announced plans to move his team to Baltimore. (Maryland)

1995 - Mark Messier scored his 500th NHL goal.

1996 - Michael Jordan scored 50 points for the 29th time in his NBA career.

1998 - The Islamic militant group Hamas exploded a car bomb killing the two attackers and injuring 21 civilians.

1999 - Australian voters rejected a referendum to drop Britain's queen as their head of state.

2001 - In London, the "Lest We Forget" exhibit opened at the National Memorial Arboretum. Fred Seiker was the creator of the 24 watercolors. Seiker was a prisoner of war that had been forced to build the Burma Railroad, the "railway of death," for the Japanese during World War II.

2001 - In Madrid, Spain, a car bomb injured about 60 people. The bomb was blamed on Basque separatists.

2001 - Ten people were executed in Beijing, China. The state newspaper of China said that all of the people executed were robbers and killers aged 20-23.

November 7, 2012

1637 - Anne Hutchinson, the first female religious leader in the American colonies, was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for heresy.

1665 - "The London Gazette" was first published.

1811 - The Shawnee Indians of chief Tecumseh were defeated by William Henry Harrison at the Battle of Wabash (or (Tippecanoe).

1837 - In Alton, IL, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy was shot to death by a mob (supporters of slavery) while trying to protect his printing shop from a third destruction.

1874 - The Republican party of the U.S. was first symbolized as an elephant in a cartoon by Thomas Nast in Harper's Weekly.

1876 - The cigarette manufacturing machine was patented by Albert H. Hook.

1877 - "The Sorcerer" was performed for the first time of 178 total performances.

1893 - The state of Colorado granted its women the right to vote.

1895 - The last spike was driven into Canada's first transcontinental railway in the mountains of British Columbia.

1914 - The "New Republic" magazine was printed for the first time.

1916 - Jeanette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress.

1917 - Russia's Bolshevik Revolution took place. The provisional government of Alexander Kerensky was overthrown by forces led by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

1918 - During World War I, a false report through the United Press announced that an armistice had been signed.

1929 - The Museum of Modern Art in New York City opened to the public.

1932 - "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century" was broadcast for the first on CBS Radio.

1933 - Voters in Pennsylvania eliminated sports from Pennsylvanian "Blue Laws."

1940 - The middle section of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington state collapsed during a windstorm. The suspension bridge had opened to traffic on July 1, 1940.

1944 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first person to win a fourth term as president.

1963 - The comedy "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" premiered in Hollywood.

1963 - Elston Howard, of the New York Yankees, became the first black player to be named the American League's Most Valuable Player.

1965 - The "Pillsbury Dough Boy" debuted in television commercials.

1967 - Carl Stokes was elected the first black mayor Cleveland, OH, becoming the first black mayor of a major city.

1967 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a bill establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

1967 - The U.S. Selective Service Commission announced that college students arrested in anti-war demonstrations would lose their draft deferments.

1973 - New Jersey became the first U.S. state to permit girls to play on Little League baseball teams.

1973 - The U.S. Congress over-rode President Nixon's veto of the War Powers Act, which limits a chief executive's power to wage war without congressional approval.

1983 - A bomb exploded in the U.S. Capitol. No one was injured.

1985 - The Colombian army stormed the country's Palace of Justice. The siege claimed the lives of 100 people, including 11 Supreme Court Justices. The Palace had been seized by leftist guerrillas belonging to the April 19 Movement.

1987 - Tunisia's president Habib Bourguiba was overthrown. He had been president since the country's independence in 1956.

1988 - Sugar Ray Leonard knocked out Donnie LaLonde.

1989 - L. Douglas Wilder won the governor's race in Virginia, becoming the first elected African-American state governor in U.S. history.

1989 - David Dinkins was elected and become New York City's first African-American mayor.

1989 - Richard Ramirez, convicted of California's "Night Stalker" killings, was sentenced to death.

1991 - Magic Johnson (NBA) announced that he had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS, and that he was retiring from basketball.

1991 - Pro- and anti-Communists rallies took place in Moscow on the 74th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.

1991 - Actor Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee Wee Herman, pled no contest to charges of indecent exposure. Reubens had been arrested in Sarasota, FL, for exposing himself in a theater.

1995 - In a Japanese courtroom, three U.S. military men admitted to the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl.

1999 - Tiger Woods became the first golfer since Ben Hogan in 1953 to win four straight tournaments.

2000 - Hillary Rodham Clinton made history as the first president's wife to win public office. The state of New York elected her to the U.S. Senate. (New York)

2001 - The new .BIZ domain extension was officially launched.

2001 - After a 16-month stoppage the Concorde resumed flying commercially.

November 8, 2012

1656 - Edmond Halley was born. Halley, an astronomer-mathmatician, was the first to calculate the orbit that was named after him. The comet makes an appearance every 76 years.

1793 - The Louvre Museum, in Paris, opened to the public for the first time.

1805 - The "Corps of Discovery" reached the Pacific Ocean. The expedition was lead by William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. The journey had begun on May 14, 1804, with the goal of exploring the Louisiana Purchase territory.

1880 - French actress Sarah Bernhardt made her American stage debut in "Adrienne Lecouvreur" in New York City.

1887 - Doc Holliday died at the age of 35. The gun fighting dentist died from tuberculosis in a sanitarium in Glenwood Springs, CO.

1889 - Montana became the 41st U.S. state.

1895 - Wilhelm Roentgen while experimenting with electricity discovered the scientific principle involved and took the first X-ray pictures.

1910 - William H. Frost patented the insect exterminator.

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

1933 - The Civil Works Administration was created by executive order by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The organization was designed to create jobs for more than 4 million unemployed people in the U.S.

1939 - "Life With Father" premiered on Broadway in New York City.

1942 - The U.S. invaded Morocco and Algeria.

1942 - During World War II, Operation Torch began as U.S. and British forces landed in French North Africa.

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

1954 - The American League approved the transfer of the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team to Kansas City, MO.

1956 - After turning down 18,000 names, the Ford Motor Company decided to name their new car the "Edsel," after Henry Ford's only son.

1959 - Elgin Baylor of the Minneapolis Lakers, scored 64 points and set a National Basketball Association scoring record.

1965 - The soap opera "Days of Our Lives" debuted on NBC-TV.

1966 - Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts became the first African-American elected to the U.S. Senate by popular vote.

1966 - Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California.

1979 - The program, "The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage", premiered on ABC-TV. The show was planned to be temporary, but it evolved into "Nightline" in March of 1980.

1979 - U.S. Senators John Warner (R-VA) and Mac Mathias (R-MD) introduced legislation to provide a site on the National Mall for the building of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

1980 - Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California announced that they had discovered a 15th moon orbiting the planet Saturn.

1981 - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarek asserted that Egypt was "an African State" that was "neither East nor West".

1985 - A letter signed by four American hostages in Lebanon was delivered to The Associated Press in Beirut. The letter, contained pleas from Terry Anderson, Rev. Lawrence Jenco, David Jacobsen and Thomas Sutherland to President Reagan to negotiate a release.

1986 - Vyacheslav M. Molotov died at age 96. During World War II, Molotov ordered the mass production of bottles filled with flammable liquid later called the "Molotov cocktail."

1987 - A bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army exploded in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland, at a ceremony honoring Britain's war dead. Eleven people were killed.

1990 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush ordered more troop deployments in the Persian Gulf, adding about 150,000 soldiers to the multi-national force fighting against Iraq.

1991 - The European Community and Canada imposed economic sanctions on Yugoslavia in an attempt to stop the Balkan civil war.

1992 - About 350,000 people rallied in Berlin against racist violence.

1993 - Five Picasso paintings and other artwork were stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm, Sweden. The works were valued at $52 million.

1997 - Chinese engineers diverted the Yangtze River to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.

2000 - In Florida, a statewide recount began to decide the winner of the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

2000 - Waco special counsel John C. Danforth released his final report that absolved the government of wrongdoing in the 1993 seige of the Branch Davidian compound in Texas.

2001 - The "Homage to Van Gogh: International Artists Pay Tribute to a Legend" exhibit opened at the Appleton Museum of Art in Florida.

November 9, 2012

1857 - The "Atlantic Monthly" first appeared on newsstands and featured the first installment of "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

1872 - A fire destroyed about 800 buildings in Boston, MA.

1906 - U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt left for Panama to see the progress on the new canal. It was the first foreign trip by a U.S. president.

1911 - George Claude of Paris, France, applied for a patent on neon advertising signs.

1918 - Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II announced he would abdicate. He then fled to the Netherlands.

1923 - In Munich, the Beer Hall Putsch was crushed by German troops that were loyal to the democratic government. The event began the evening before when Adolf Hitler took control of a beer hall full of Bavarian government leaders at gunpoint.

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

1938 - Nazi troops and sympathizers destroyed and looted 7,500 Jewish businesses, burned 267 synagogues, killed 91 Jews, and rounded up over 25,000 Jewish men in an event that became known as Kristallnacht or "Night of Broken Glass."

1953 - The U.S. Supreme Court upheld a 1922 ruling that major league baseball did not come within the scope of federal antitrust laws.

1961 - Major Robert White flew an X-15 rocket plane at a world record speed of 4,093 mph.

1961 - The Professional Golfer's Association (PGA) eliminated its "caucasians only" rule.

1963 - In Japan, about 450 miners were killed in a coal-dust explosion.

1963 - In Japan, 160 people died in a train crash.

1965 - The great Northeast blackout occurred as several states and parts of Canada were hit by a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours.

1967 - A Saturn V rocket carrying an unmanned Apollo spacecraft blasted off from Cape Kennedy on a successful test flight.

1976 - The U.N. General Assembly approved ten resolutions condemning the apartheid government in South Africa.

1979 - The United Nations Security Council unanimously called upon Iran to release all American hostages "without delay." Militants, mostly students had taken 63 Americans hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran, on November 4.

1981 - U.S. troops began arriving in Egypt for a three-week Rapid Deployment Force excercise. Somalia, Sudan and Oman were also involved in the operation.

1981 - The Internation Monetary Fund approved a $5.8 billion load to India. It was the highest loan to date.

1982 - Sugar Ray Leonard retired from boxing. In 1984 Leonard came out of retirement to fight one more time before becoming a boxing commentator for NBC.

1984 - A bronze statue titled "Three Servicemen," by Frederick Hart, was unveiled at the site of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.

1989 - Communist East Germany opened its borders, allowing its citizens to travel freely to West Germany.

1990 - Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a non-aggression treaty with Germany.

1992 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin, visiting London, appealed for assistance in rescheduling his country's debt, and asked British businesses to invest.

1997 - Barry Sanders (Detroit Lions) became the first player in NFL history to rush for over 1,000 yards in nine straight seasons. In the same game Sanders passed former Dallas Cowboy Tony Dorsett for third place on the all-time rushing list.

1998 - A federal judge in New York approved the richest antitrust settlement in U.S. history. A leading brokerage firm was ordered to pay $1.03 billion to investors who had sued over price-rigging of Nasdaq stocks.

1998 - PBS aired its documentary special "Chihuly Over Venice."

2004 - U.S. First Lady Laura Bush officially reopened Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House to pedestrians.

November 11, 2012

1620 - The Mayflower Compact was signed by the 41 men on the Mayflower when they landed in what is now Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod. The compact called for "just and equal laws."

1831 - Nat Turner, a slave and educated minister, was hanged in Jerusalem, VA, after inciting a violent slave uprising.

1851 - The telescope was patented by Alvan Clark.

1868 - The first indoor amateur track and field meet was held by the New York Athletic Club.

1880 - Australian outlaw and bank robber Ned Kelly was hanged at the Melbourne jail at age 25.

1887 - Labor Activists were hanged in Illinois after being convicted of being connected to a bombing that killed eight police officers.

1889 - Washington became the 42nd state of the United States.

1918 - World War I came to an end when the Allies and Germany signed an armistice. This day became recognized as Veteran's Day in the United States.

1918 - Poland was reestablished shortly after the surrender of Germany.

1920 - The body of an unknown British soldier was buried in Westminster Abbey. The service was recorded with the first electronic recording process developed by Lionel Guest and H.O. Merriman.

1921 - The Tomb of the Unknowns was dedicated at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia by U.S. President Harding.

1938 - Kate Smith first sang Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on network radio.

1940 - The Jeep made its debut.

1942 - During World War II, Germany completed its occupation of France.

1946 - The New York Knickerbockers (now the Knicks) played their first game at Madison Square Garden.

1952 - The first video recorder was demonstrated by John Mullin and Wayne Johnson in Beverly Hills, CA.

1965 - The government of Rhodesia declared its independence from Britain. The country later became known as Zimbabwe.

1966 - The U.S. launched Gemini 12 from Cape Kennedy, FL. The craft circled the Earth 59 times before returning.

1972 - The U.S. Army turned over its base at Long Bihn to the South Vietnamese army. The event symbolized the end of direct involvement in the Vietnam War by the U.S. military.

1975 - Civil war broke out when Angola gained independence from Portugal.

1981 - Stuntman Dan Goodwin scaled the outside of the 100-story John Hancock Center in Chicago in about six hours.

1981 - The U.S.S. Ohio was commissioned at the Electric Boat Division in Groton, CT. It was the first Trident class submarine.

1984 - The Reverend Martin Luther King Sr. died in Atlanta at age 84.

1984 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan accepted the Vietnam Veterans Memorial as a gift to the nation from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.

1984 - Gary Coleman, at age 13, underwent his second kidney transplant in Los Angeles. He had his first transplant at age 5.

1986 - Sperry Rand and Burroughs merged to form "Unisys," becoming the second largest computer company.

1987 - Vincent Van Gogh's "Irises" was sold for a then record 53.9 million dollars in New York.

1988 - Police in Sacramento, CA, found the first of seven bodies buried on the grounds of a boardinghouse. Dorothea Puente was later charged in the deaths of nine people, convicted of three murders and sentenced to life in prison.

1990 - Stormie Jones, the world's first heart-liver transplant recipient, died at a Pittsburgh hospital at age 13.

1991 - The U.S. stationed its first diplomat in Cambodia in 16 years to help the nation arrange democratic elections.

1992 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin told U.S. senators in a letter that Americans had been held in prison camps after World War II. Some were "summarily executed," but others were still living in his country voluntarily.

1992 - The Church of England voted to ordain women as priests.

1993 - Walt Disney Co. announced plans to build a U.S. history theme park in a Virginia suburb of Washington. The plan was halted later due to local opposition.

Disney movies, music and books

1993 - In Washington, DC, the Vietnam Women's Memorial was dedicated to honor the more than 11,000 women who had served in the Vietnam War.

1994 - In Gaza, a suicide bomber detonated his explosives at an Israeli military checkpoint killing three soldiers.

1996 - The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund unveiled "The Wall That Heals." The work was a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial that would tour communities throughout the United States.

1997 - The Eastman Kodak Company announced that they were laying off 10,000 employees.

1997 - Roger Clemens (Toronto Blue Jays) became the third major league player to win the Cy Young Award four times.

1998 - Jay Cochrane set a record for the longest blindfolded skywalk. He walked on a tightrope between the towers of the Flamingo Hilton in Las Vegas, NV. The towers are 600 feet apart.

1998 - Vincente Fernandez received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1998 - Israel's Cabinet ratified a land-for-peace agreement with the Palestinians.

2002 - Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates pledged $100 million to fight AIDS in India.

November 12, 2012

1799 - Andrew Ellicott Douglass witnesses the Leonids meteor shower from a ship off the Florida Keys.

1815 - American suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in Johnstown, NY.

1840 - Sculptor Auguste Rodin was born in Paris. His most widely known works are "The Kiss" and "The Thinker."

1859 - The first flying trapeze act was performed by Jules Leotard at Cirque Napoleon in Paris, France. He was also the designer of the garment that is named after him.

1892 - William "Pudge" Heffelfinger became the first professional football player when he was paid a $500 bonus for helping the Allegheny Athletic Association beat the Pittsburgh Athletic Club.

1915 - Theodore W. Richards, of Harvard University, became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

1918 - Austria and Czechoslovakia were declared independent republics.

1920 - Judge Keneshaw Mountain Landis was elected the first commissioner of the American and National Leagues.

1921 - Representatives of nine nations gathered for the start of the Washington Conference for Limitation of Armaments.

1927 - Joseph Stalin became the undisputed ruler of the Soviet Union. Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party leading to Stalin coming to power.

1931 - Maple Leaf Gardens opened in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was to be the new home of the Toronto Maple Leafs in the National Hockey League (NHL).

1933 - In Philadelphia, the first Sunday football game was played.

1940 - Walt Disney released "Fantasia."

1942 - During World War II, naval battle of Guadalcanal began between Japanese and American forces. The Americans won a major victory.

1944 - During World War II, the German battleship "Tirpitz" was sunk off the coast of Norway.

1946 - The first drive-up banking facility opened at the Exchange National Bank in Chicago, IL.

1948 - The war crimes tribunal sentenced Japanese Premier Hideki Tojo and six other World War II Japanese leaders to death.

1953 - The National Football League (NFL) policy of blacking out home games was upheld by Judge Allan K. Grim of the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia.

1954 - Ellis Island, the immigration station in New York Harbor, closed after processing more than 20 million immigrants since 1892.

1964 - Paula Murphy set the female land speed record 226.37 MPH.

1972 - Don Shula, coach of the Miami Dolphins, became the first NFL head coach to win 100 regular season games in 10 seasons.

1975 - U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas retired because of failing health, ending a record 36½-year term.

1979 - U.S. President Carter ordered a halt to all oil imports from Iran in response to 63 Americans being taken hostage at the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran on November 4.

1980 - The U.S. space probe Voyager I came within 77,000 miles of Saturn while transmitting data back to Earth.

1982 - Yuri V. Andropov was elected to succeed the late Leonid I. Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee.

1984 - Space shuttle astronauts Dale Gardner and Joe Allen snared the Palapa B-2 satellite in history's first space salvage.

1985 - In Norfolk, VA, Arthur James Walker was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a spy ring run by his brother, John A. Walker Jr.

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

1990 - Japanese Emperor Akihito formally assumed the Chrysanthemum Throne.

1991 - In the U.S., Robert Gates was sworn in as CIA director.

1995 - The space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a mission to dock with the Russian space station Mir.

1997 - Four Americans and their Pakistani driver were shot to death in Karachi, Pakistan. The Americans were oil company employees.

1997 - The UN Security Council imposed new sanctions on Iraq for constraints being placed on UN arms inspectors.

1997 - Ramzi Yousef was found guilty of masterminding the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

1998 - Daimler-Benz completed a merger with Chrysler to form Daimler-Chrysler AG.

2001 - American Airlines flight 587 crashed just minutes after take off from Kennedy Airport in New York. The Airbus A300 crashed into the Rockaway Beach section of Queens. All 260 people aboard were killed.

2001 - It was reported that the Northern Alliance had taken the Kabul, Afghanistan, from the ruling Taliban. The Norther Alliance at this point was reported to have control over most of the northern areas of Afghanistan.

2002 - Stan Lee filed a lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment Inc. that claimed the company had cheated him out of millions of dollars in movie profits related to the 2002 movie "Spider-Man." Lee was the creator of Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk and Daredevil.

November 13, 2012

1775 - During the American Revolution, U.S. forces captured Montreal.

1789 - Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to a friend in which he said, "In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."

1805 - Johann George Lehner, a Viennese butcher, invented a recipe and called it the "frankfurter."

1850 - Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is best known for Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

1909 - 250 miners were killed in a fire and explosion at the St. Paul Mine at Cherry, IL.

1927 - The Holland Tunnel opened to the public, providing access between New York City and New Jersey beneath the Hudson River.

1933 - In Austin, MN, the first sit-down labor strike in America took place.

1940 - The Walt Disney movie "Fantasia" had its world premiere at New York's Broadway Theater.

1942 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure lowering the minimum draft age from 21 to 18.

1956 - The U.S. Supreme Court struck down laws calling for racial segregation on public buses.

1971 - The U.S. spacecraft Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit another planet, Mars.

1977 - The comic strip "Li'l Abner" by Al Capp appeared in newspapers for the last time.

1982 - The Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington, DC.

1984 - A libel suit against Time, Inc. by former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon went to trial in New York.

1985 - About 23,000 residents of Armero, Colombia, died when a gigantic mudslide buried the city. The slide was triggered by a mild eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano.

1986 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan publicly acknowledged that the U.S. had sent "defensive weapons and spare parts" to Iran. He denied that the shipments were sent to free hostages, but that they had been sent to improve relations.

1991 - Roger Clemens won his third Cy Young Award for the American League.

1994 - In San Francisco, CA, a heavily armed gunman traded fire with police, hitting two police officers, a paramedic and another person before being killed.

1994 - Sweden voted to join the European Union.

1995 - Greg Maddox (Atlanta Braves) became the first major league pitcher to win four consecutive Cy Young Awards.

1995 - Seven people, including five Americans are killed in a car bomb attack at a U.S. military headquarters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

1997 - Iraq expelled six U.N. arms inspectors that were U.S. citizens.

1998 - "The Wizard of Oz" was released on the big screen by Warner Bros. 59 years after its original release.

1998 - Monica Lewinsky signed a deal with St. Martin's Press for the North American rights to her story about her affair with U.S. President Bill Clinton.

1998 - U.S. President Clinton agreed to pay Paula Jones $850,000, without an apology or admission of guilt, to throw out her sexual harassment lawsuit.

2001 - U.S. President George W. Bush signed an executive order that would allow for military tribunals to try any foreigners captured with connections to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. It was the first time since World War II that a president had taken such action.

2009 - NASA announced that water had been discoved on the moon. The discovery came from the planned impact on the moon of the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS).

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