Barbara Billingsley, mother on 'Leave It to Beaver,' dies at 94

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This Day in History

MommyMachine · Status: Offline

Oh I love love love this....Thank you Pammy!!!!!!!!

I look forward to these each day!

PMM2008 · Status: Offline

Your so welcome MM.

Your the #1 fan of my history thread. Thanks for a promise to read it each day.

roll

I will enjoy posting it very much.

Pam

TonyT · Status: Offline

Whoooooooo Hooooo!

I see my history teacher is backkkkkkkkk.

Thanks for the thread Pam.

Tony

PMM2008 · Status: Offline

Awww, Thanks Tony. Yes, The history lesson continues. hehe

I'm so glad you enjoy it as well.

I enjoy posting it so much. I learn something new everyday. roll

Pam

firebird39 · Status: Offline

awesome....teacher in a former life??

PMM2008 · Status: Offline

firebird39 wrote:

awesome....teacher in a former life??

hehehe, I'm not really a teacher firebird, nor have I ever been one. That's just what my friends call me as I bring the important history lesson each day to them, from now on, here at the forum. roll

Perhaps you'll read each day too. It is addicting once you start.

Pam

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On this day in 1957, the United States detonates a 1.7 kiloton nuclear weapon in an underground tunnel at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), a 1,375 square mile research center located 65 miles north of Las Vegas. The test, known as Rainier, was the first fully contained underground detonation and produced no radioactive fallout. A modified W-25 warhead weighing 218 pounds and measuring 25.7 inches in diameter and 17.4 inches in length was used for the test. Rainier was part of a series of 29 nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons safety tests known as Operation Plumbbob that were conducted at the NTS between May 28, 1957, and October 7, 1957.

On September 19, 1973, 26-year-old musician Gram Parsons dies of multiple drug use (morphine and tequila) in a California motel room. His death inspired one of the more bizarre automobile-related crimes on record: Two of his friends stashed his body in a borrowed hearse and drove it into the middle of the Joshua Tree National Park, where they doused it with gasoline and set it on fire.

On this day in 1985, a powerful earthquake strikes Mexico City and leaves 10,000 people dead, 30,000 injured and thousands more homeless.

Eighty days after a failed office seeker shot him in Washington, D.C., President James A. Garfield dies of complications from his wounds.

With the signing of the Electoral Bill by Governor Lord Glasgow, New Zealand becomes the first country in the world to grant national voting rights to women. The bill was the outcome of years of suffragette meetings in towns and cities across the country, with women often traveling considerable distances to hear lectures and speeches, pass resolutions, and sign petitions. New Zealand women first went to the polls in the national elections of November 1893.

On September 19, 1988, just one day after sustaining a head injury in a frightening accident, American diver Greg Louganis wins gold in the springboard competition at the Summer Olympics, in Seoul, South Korea. It was his second consecutive Olympic gold in the event.

On this day in 1941, as part of their offensive campaign in the Soviet Union, German bombers blast through Leningrad's antiaircraft defenses, and kill more than 1,000 Russians.

History.com

MommyMachine · Status: Offline

Thanks Ms. Pam!

Love it!!!

PMM2008 · Status: Offline

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On this day in 1973, in a highly publicized "Battle of the Sexes" tennis match, top women's player Billie Jean King, 29, beats Bobby Riggs, 55, a former No. 1 ranked men's player. Riggs (1918-1995), a self-proclaimed male chauvinist, had boasted that women were inferior, that they couldn't handle the pressure of the game and that even at his age he could beat any female player. The match was a huge media event, witnessed in person by over 30,000 spectators at the Houston Astrodome and by another 50 million TV viewers worldwide. King made a Cleopatra-style entrance on a gold litter carried by men dressed as ancient slaves, while Riggs arrived in a rickshaw pulled by female models. Legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell called the match, in which King beat Riggs 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. King's achievement not only helped legitimize women's professional tennis and female athletes, but it was seen as a victory for women's rights in general.

On this day in 1960, California hot rodder Mickey Thompson takes another shot at the world land-speed record. A few weeks earlier, Thompson had become the first American to travel faster than 400 mph on land when hed piloted his Challenger I (a car that he designed and built himself) across Utahs Bonneville Salt Flats at 406.6 mph. This drive had made Thompson the fastest man on wheels, but not officially: In order to win a place in the land-speed record books, racers must make a return pass within the hour, and Thompsons car broke down in the middle of his second run, necessitating a follow-up attempt.

An optimistic and upbeat President John F. Kennedy suggests that the Soviet Union and the United States cooperate on a mission to mount an expedition to the moon. The proposal caught both the Soviets and many Americans off guard.

A glacial avalanche in Russia buries a village on this day in 2002, killing more than 100 people.

On this day in 1806, after nearly two-and-a-half years spent exploring the western wilderness, the Corps of Discovery arrived at the frontier village of La Charette, the first white settlement they had seen since leaving behind the outposts of eastern civilization in 1804.

history.com

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On this day in 1780, during the American Revolution, American General Benedict Arnold meets with British Major John Andre to discuss handing over West Point to the British, in return for the promise of a large sum of money and a high position in the British army. The plot was foiled and Arnold, a former American hero, became synonymous with the word "traitor."

On September 21, 2002, Swedish engineer Nils Bohlin dies after a heart attack. Bohlin spent most of the 1950s developing ejection seats for Saab airplanes, and in 1958, he became the Volvo Car Corporations first safety engineer. At Volvo, he designed the first three-point safety belt--a seatbelt with one strap that crossed diagonally across the users chest and another that secured his or her hips. In a way, Bohlin said shortly before he died, my design works as much because the belt is comfortable for the user as it does because it is safer. The pilots I worked with in the aerospace industry were willing to put on almost anything to keep them safe in case of a crash, but regular people in cars dont want to be uncomfortable even for a minute.

An earthquake in Taiwan on this day in 1999 kills thousands of people, causes billions of dollars in damages and leaves an estimated 100,000 homeless. It was the worst earthquake to hit Taiwan since a 1935 tremor that killed 3,200 people.

Without warning, a powerful Category 3 hurricane slams into Long Island and southern New England, causing 600 deaths and devastating coastal cities and towns. Also called the Long Island Express, the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 was the most destructive storm to strike the region in the 20th century.

The Senate Armed Forces Committee unanimously confirms President George H. Bush's nomination of Army General Colin Powell as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Powell was the first African American to achieve the United States' highest military post.

On September 21, 1981, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Steve Carlton strikes out the 3,118th batter of his career to break Bob Gibsons National League record for career strikeouts. Despite Carltons 10 shutout innings and 12 strikeouts, the Phillies lost the marathon game to the Montreal Expos in the 17th inning, 1-0.

history.com

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On this day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issues a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which sets a date for the freedom of more than 3 million black slaves in the United States and recasts the Civil War as a fight against slavery.

In an important victory for his Cold War foreign policy, President John F. Kennedy signs legislation establishing the Peace Corps as a permanent government agency. Kennedy believed that the Peace Corps could provide a new and unique weapon in the war against communism.

An Amtrak train headed to Miami derails near Mobile, Alabama, killing 47 people on this day in 1993. The accident, the deadliest in Amtraks history, was caused by a negligent towboat operator and foggy conditions.

Long-standing border disputes and political turmoil in Iran prompt Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to launch an invasion of Iran's oil-producing province of Khuzestan. After initial advances, the Iraqi offense was repulsed. In 1982, Iraq voluntarily withdrew and sought a peace agreement, but the Ayatollah Khomeini renewed fighting. Stalemates and the deaths of thousands of young Iranian conscripts in Iraq followed. Population centers in both countries were bombed, and Iraq employed chemical weapons. In the Persian Gulf, a "tanker war" curtailed shipping and increased oil prices. In 1988, Iran agreed to a cease-fire.

It started with an offhand remark made by Bob Dylan during his performance at Live Aid, the massive fundraising concert held at Wembley Stadium, London, and JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, in the early summer of 1985. As television viewers around the world phoned in donations in support of African famine relief, Dylan said from the stage, "I hope that some of the money...maybe they can just take a little bit of it, maybe...one or two million, maybe...and use it, say, to pay the mortgages on some of the farms and, the farmers here, owe to the banks." Dylan would come under harsh criticism from Live Aid organizer Bob Geldof for his remarks ("It was a crass, stupid and nationalistic thing to say," Geldof would later write), but he planted a seed with several fellow musicians who shared his concern over the state of the American family farm. Less than one month later, Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp announced plans for "Farm Aid," a benefit concert for Americas farmers held in Champaign, Illinois, on this day in 1985

On this day in 1975, Sarah Jane Moore aims a gun at President Gerald Ford as he leaves the Saint Francis Hotel in San Francisco, California. The attempt on the presidents life came only 17 days after another woman had tried to assassinate Ford while he was on his way to give a speech to the California legislature in Sacramento.

On September 22, 1927, heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney, with help from a controversial long count, defeats former champ Jack Dempsey at Soldier Field in Chicago.

history.com

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On this day in 1875, Billy the Kid is arrested for the first time after stealing a basket of laundry. He later broke out of jail and roamed the American West, eventually earning a reputation as an outlaw and murderer and a rap sheet that allegedly included 21 murders.

Jack Henry Abbott is captured in the oil fields of Louisiana after a two-month long manhunt that began when he killed Richard Adan at the Binibon restaurant in New York City on July 18. At the time of the murder, Abbott had been out on parole largely through the efforts of author Norman Mailer, who convinced officials that he had a great writing talent.

Hurricane Jeanne slams into Haiti, killing thousands, on this day in 2004. Coming just days after Hurricane Ivan, Jeanne was part of a series of deadly storms to hit the region during the 2004 hurricane season.

On this day in 1972, "Baby Dont Get Hooked On Me" by singer-songwriter Mac Davis reached the top of the American pop charts. In a year that not only saw Congress pass the Equal Rights Amendment, but also saw Helen Reddy score a #1 hit with her feminist anthem "I Am Woman," "Baby Dont Get Hooked On Me" stands in rather stark contrast as one of the more blithely chauvinistic pop hits of all time.

Amid much public excitement, American explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark return to St. Louis, Missouri, from the first recorded overland journey from the Mississippi River to the Pacific coast and back. The Lewis and Clark Expedition had set off more than two years before to explore the territory of the Louisiana Purchase

German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle discovers the planet Neptune at the Berlin Observatory.

On September 23, 1908, a game between the New York Giants and Chicago Cubs ends in 1-1 tie after a controversial call at second base. The officials ruled that Giants first baseman Fred Merkle was out because he failed to touch second base, a call that has been disputed ever since.

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The Judiciary Act of 1789 is passed by Congress and signed by President George Washington, establishing the Supreme Court of the United States as a tribunal made up of six justices who were to serve on the court until death or retirement. That day, President Washington nominated John Jay to preside as chief justice, and John Rutledge, William Cushing, John Blair, Robert Harrison, and James Wilson to be associate justices. On September 26, all six appointments were confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

On this day, motorcycle builder Soichiro Honda incorporates the Honda Motor Company in Hamamatsu, Japan. In the 1960s, the company achieved worldwide fame for its motorcycles (in particular, its C100 Super Cub, which became the worlds best-selling vehicle); in the 1970s, it achieved worldwide fame for its affordable, fuel-efficient cars. Today, in large part because of its continued emphasis on affordability, efficiency and eco-friendliness (its internal motto is Blue skies for our children), the company is doing better than most.

The trial of the "Chicago Seven" begins before Judge Julius Hoffman. The defendants, including David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (MOBE); Rennie Davis and Tom Hayden of MOBE and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); and Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman of the Youth International Party (Yippies), were accused of conspiring to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Hurricane Inez slams into the islands of the Caribbean, killing hundreds of people, on this day in 1966. The storm left death and destruction in its wake from Guadeloupe to Mexico over the course of its nearly three-week run. Inez was the most destructive hurricane of the 1966 storm season.

On this day in 1996, blockbusting bestselling author Stephen King releases two new novels at once. The first, Desperation, was released under King's name, while the second, The Regulators, was published under his pseudonym, Richard Bachman

On this day in 1890, faced with the eminent destruction of their church and way of life, Mormon leaders reluctantly issue the "Mormon Manifesto" in which they command all Latter-day Saints to uphold the anti-polygamy laws of the nation. The Mormon leaders had been given little choice: If they did not abandon polygamy they faced federal confiscation of their sacred temples and the revocation of basic civil rights for all Mormons.

On this day in 1988, Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson runs the 100-meter dash in 9.79 seconds to win gold at the Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Johnsons triumph, however, was temporary: He tested positive for steroids three days later and was stripped of the medal.

On this day in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson receives a special commissions report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which had occurred on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.

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Under escort from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division, nine black students enter all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Three weeks earlier, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had surrounded the school with National Guard troops to prevent its federal court-ordered racial integration. After a tense standoff, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent 1,000 army paratroopers to Little Rock to enforce the court order.

On September 25, 2004, Chinese officials gather at the brand-new Shanghai International Circuit racetrack in anticipation of the next day's inaugural Formula One Chinese Grand Prix. Though Formula One racing was traditionally a European sport, the builders and boosters of the state-sponsored Shanghai track--part of an elaborate complex called the Shanghai International Auto City--hoped that they could help the sport catch on in Asia. In particular, they hoped their high-tech raceway would draw attention and investment to the fledgling Chinese auto industry. (China was an enormous untapped market for carmakers: In the year the Shanghai track opened, there were only 10 million cars for the countrys 1.3 billion people.)

A Pacific Southwest Airlines jet collides in mid-air with a small Cessna over San Diego, killing 153 people on this day in 1978. The wreckage of the planes fell into a populous neighborhood and did extensive damage on the ground.

The first Congress of the United States approves 12 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, and sends them to the states for ratification. The amendments, known as the Bill of Rights, were designed to protect the basic rights of U.S. citizens, guaranteeing the freedom of speech, press, assembly, and exercise of religion; the right to fair legal procedure and to bear arms; and that powers not delegated to the federal government were reserved for the states and the people.

Sandra Day O'Connor becomes the first female U.S. Supreme Court justice in history when she is sworn in by Chief Justice Warren Burger.

Unwilling to rest as a one-hit wonder when its first big hit, The Monkees,went off the air in 1968, the television production company Screen Gems wasted no time in trying to repeat its success. On this day in 1970, in the 8:30 p.m. time slot immediately following The Brady Bunch, ABC premiered a program that would give Screen Gems its second TV-to-pop-chart smash: The Partridge Family.

On this day in 1894, President Grover Cleveland issues a presidential proclamation pardoning Mormons who had previously engaged in polygamous marriages or habitation arrangements considered unlawful by the U.S. government. At the time, and to this day, plural marriages between one man and multiple women; one woman and multiple men; or multiple men and women are illegal in the United States.

On September 25, 1965, the Kansas City Athletics start ageless wonder Satchel Paige in a game against the Boston Red Sox. The 59-year-old Paige, a Negro League legend, proved his greatness once again by giving up only one hit in his three innings of play.

history.com

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For the first time in U.S. history, a debate between major party presidential candidates is shown on television. The presidential hopefuls, John F. Kennedy, a Democratic senator of Massachusetts, and Richard M. Nixon, the vice president of the United States, met in a Chicago studio to discuss U.S. domestic matters

On this day in 1928, work begins at Chicagos new Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. (The company had officially incorporated the day before.) In 1930, Galvin would introduce the Motorola radio, the first mass-produced commercial car radio. (The name had two parts: motor evoked cars and motion, while ola derived from Victrola and was supposed to make people think of music.)

A ferry from Senegal capsizes off the coast of Gambia on this day in 2002. Only 64 out of more than 1,000 passengers were rescued, making it one of the worst maritime disasters in history.

On September 26, 1957, West Side Story, composed by Leonard Bernstein, opens at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway. For the groundbreaking musical, Bernstein provided a propulsive and rhapsodic score that many celebrate as his greatest achievement as a composer. However, even without the triumph of West Side Story, Bernstein's place in musical history was firmly established. In addition to his work as a composer, the "Renaissance man of music" excelled as a conductor, a concert pianist, and a teacher who brought classical music to the masses.

On this day in 1969, American television audiences hear the soon-to-be-famous opening lyrics Heres the story of a lovely lady who was living with three very lovely girls as The Brady Bunch, a sitcom that will become an icon of American pop culture, airs for the first time. The show was panned by critics and, according to the Museum of Broadcast Communications, during its entire network run, the series never reached the top ten ranks of the Nielsen ratings. Yet, the program stands as one of the most important sitcoms of American 1970s television programming, spawning numerous other series on all three major networks, as well as records, lunch boxes, a cookbook, and even a stage show and feature film.

On this day in 1820 the great pioneering frontiersman Daniel Boone dies quietly in his sleep at his son's home near present-day Defiance, Missouri. The indefatigable voyager was 86.

On September 26, 1971, Baltimore Orioles pitcher Jim Palmer wins his 20th game of the year, becoming the fourth Orioles pitcher to win 20 games in the 1971 season. This made the 1971 Orioles pitching staff the first since that of the 1920 Chicago White Sox to field four 20-game winners.

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On this day in 1779, the Continental Congress appoints John Adams to travel to France as minister plenipotentiary in charge of negotiating treaties of peace and commerce with Great Britain during the Revolutionary War.

Sudden and heavy fog causes two ships to collide, killing 322 people off the coast of Newfoundland on this day in 1854.

On this day in 1996, the U.S. Postal Service issues an F. Scott Fitzgerald commemorative stamp.

On this day in 1938, President Franklin Roosevelt writes to German Chancellor Adolf Hitler regarding the threat of war in Europe. The German chancellor had been threatening to invade the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia and, in the letter, his second to Hitler in as many days, Roosevelt reiterated the need to find a peaceful resolution to the issue.

On this day in 1930, golfer Bobby Jones wins his fourth major tournament of the year, making him the first person ever to win the "Grand Slam" of golf. Jones beat Gene Homans in match play format, 8 and 7, meaning he was eight holes ahead with just seven holes left to play.

Zsa Zsa Gabor, on trial for slapping a police officer, storms out of the courtroom in the middle of the district attorney's closing argument. The prosecutor told the jury that Gabor "craves media attention . . . and abused two weeks of this process for her own self-aggrandizement." Although her attorney objected when the prosecutor said, "the defendant doesn't know the meaning of truth," Gabor was already running out in tears

history.com

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PMM2008 wrote:
Sudden and heavy fog causes two ships to collide, killing 322 people off the coast of Newfoundland on this day in 1854.

The wooden steamship Arctic sinks in foggy weather after colliding with the iron bow of the Vesta. When Captain James C. Luce orders women and children into the lifeboats, the crewmen rebel and take the boats for themselves. Of 435 on board, only 85 survive -- and none of them women or children. It is the first major ocean liner disaster in the Atlantic.

surprise

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Hi PSP, thanks for reading "This Day in History."

Here is the full story....

The Arctic was a luxury ship, built in 1850 to carry passengers across the Atlantic Ocean. It had a wooden hull and could reach speeds of up to 13 knots per hour, an impressive clip at that point in history. On September 20, the Arctic left Liverpool, England, for North America. Seven days later, just off of the Newfoundland coast, it came into a heavy fog. Unfortunately, the ships captain, James Luce, did not take the usual safety measures for dealing with foghe did not slow the Arctic, he did not sound the ships horn and he did not add extra watchmen.

At 12:15, the Arctic slammed into the steamer Vesta, an iron-hulled ship piloted by Captain Alphonse Puchesne. Since it was the Arctic that hit the Vesta, the crew of the Arctic initially directed their energy at helping the Vesta. They had not realized that the iron hull of the Vesta had actually done much more damage to the Arctic than vice versa.

Soon, the Arctic released lifeboats, but many capsized in the choppy waters. As the crew of the Arctic discovered that their ship was seriously damaged, Captain Luce decided to try to beach the ship. In doing so, he ran over several of the lifeboats, causing even more people to drown. The Arctic was too far from shore for the attempt to be successful and the action only increased the rate of flooding inside the ship.

General panic then ensued. Desperate Arctic crew members took lifeboats from women and children attempting to escape. When one of the ships high-ranking officers tried to stop this, the crew killed him. The final 70 people left on board crowded onto a makeshift raft as the Arctic sank. Reportedly only one member of this group survived

I try to only do the headlines of a subject as to save time for the reader. If people are interested in more about the subject, just let me know. roll

Pam

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On this day in 1941, the Boston Red Sox's Ted Williams plays a double-header against the Philadelphia Athletics on the last day of the regular season and gets six hits in eight trips to the plate, to boost his batting average to .406 and become the first player since Bill Terry in 1930 to hit .400. Williams, who spent his entire career with the Sox, played his final game exactly 19 years later, on September 28, 1960, at Bostons Fenway Park and hit a home run in his last time at bat, for a career total of 521 homeruns.

On September 28, 1938, inventor Charles Duryea dies in Philadelphia at the age of 76. Duryea and his brother Frank designed and built one of the first functioning gasoline buggies, or gas-powered automobiles, in the United States. For most of his life, however, Charles insisted on taking full credit for the brothers innovation. On the patent applications he filed for the Duryea Motor Wagon, for instance, Charles averred that he was the cars sole inventor; he also loftily proclaimed that his brother was simply a mechanic hired to execute Charles plans.

On this day in 1918, a Liberty Loan parade in Philadelphia prompts a huge outbreak of the flu epidemic in the city. By the time the epidemic ended, an estimated 30 million people were dead worldwide.

Upon landing in Egypt, Roman general and politician Pompey is murdered on the orders of King Ptolemy of Egypt.

On this day in 1994, 852 people die in one of the worst maritime disasters of the century when the Estonia, a large car-and-passenger ferry, sinks in the Baltic Sea.

On this day in 1901, Ed Sullivan, who will become the host of the long-running TV variety program The Ed Sullivan Show, is born in New York City. During the peak of its popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, Sullivans programshowcased a wide range of entertainers, including Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Rudolf Nureyev, Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope.

On September 28, 1991, jazz trumpet legend Miles Davis dies in a California hospital at the age of 65.

On September 28, 1918, in an incident that would go down in the lore of World War I historyalthough the details of the event are still unclearPrivate Henry Tandey, a British soldier serving near the French village of Marcoing, reportedly encounters a wounded German soldier and declines to shoot him, sparing the life of 29-year-old Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler.

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On this day in 2005, New York Times reporter Judith Miller is released from a federal detention center in Alexandria, Virginia, after agreeing to testify in the investigation into the leaking of the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame. Miller had been behind bars since July 6, 2005, for refusing to reveal a confidential source and testify before a grand jury that was looking into the so-called Plame Affair. She decided to testify after the source she had been protecting, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, signed a waiver giving her permission to speak.

On this day in 1913, Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the engine that bears his name, disappears from the steamship Dresden while traveling from Antwerp, Belgium to Harwick, England. On October 10, a Belgian sailor aboard a North Sea steamer spotted a body floating in the water; upon further investigation, it turned out that the body was Diesels. There was, and remains, a great deal of mystery surrounding his death: It was officially judged a suicide, but many people believed (and still believe) that Diesel was murdered.

Flight attendant Paula Prince buys a bottle of cyanide-laced Tylenol. Prince was found dead on October 1, becoming the final victim of a mysterious ailment in Chicago, Illinois. Over the previous 24 hours, six other people had suddenly died of unknown causes in northwest Chicago. After Prince's death, Richard Keyworth and Philip Cappitelli, firefighters in the Windy City, realized that all seven victims had ingested Extra-Strength Tylenol prior to becoming ill. Further investigation revealed that several bottles of the Tylenol capsules had been poisoned with cyanide

ohn Klang, the principal of Weston High School in Cazenovia, Wisconsin, is shot and killed by 15-year-old student Eric Hainstock on September 29, 2006. The incident takes place amidst a spate of school violence across North America, including a shooting rampage at a Canadian college on September 13 and a hostage situation at a Colorado high school on September 27.

A passenger train collides with an oil-tanker train in the Gambar province of western Pakistan, killing 300 people and seriously injuring another 150 on this day in 1957

Stacy Allison of Portland, Oregon, becomes the first American woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest, which at 29,035 feet above sea level is the highest point on earth. Allison, a member of the Northwest American Everest Expedition, climbed the Himalayan peak using the southeast ridge route

On September 29, 1954, Willie Mays, centerfielder for the New York Giants, makes an amazing over-the-shoulder catch of a fly ball hit by Cleveland Indians first baseman Vic Wertz to rob Wertz of extra bases in Game 1 of the 1954 World Series. The catch has gone down as one of the greatest in the history of baseball.

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On this day in 1955, movie star James Dean dies at age 24 in a car crash on a California highway. Dean was driving his Porsche 550 Spyder, nicknamed "Little Bastard," headed to a car race in Salinas, California, with his mechanic Rolf Wuetherich, when they were involved in a head-on collision with a car driven by a 23-year-old college student named Donald Turnaspeed. Dean was taken to Paso Robles War Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:59 p.m. Wuetherich, who was thrown from the car, survived the accident and Turnaspeed escaped with minor injuries. No charges were ever filed against him.

Large doses of radiation are released at Japans Tokaimura nuclear plant on this day in 1999. It was Japans worst nuclear accident, caused by a serious error made by workers at the plant. One person was killed, 49 were injured and thousands of others were forcibly confined to their homes for several days.

In Oxford, Mississippi, James H. Meredith, an African American, is escorted onto the University of Mississippi campus by U.S. Marshals, setting off a deadly riot. Two men were killed before the racial violence was quelled by more than 3,000 federal soldiers. The next day, Meredith successfully enrolled and began to attend classes amid continuing disruption.

On this day in 2005, Michael Eisner resigns as the chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Company. During Eisners 21-year tenure with Disney, he helped transform it into an entertainment industry giant whose properties included films, theme parks and a cruise line, television networks and sports teams. Eisner also presided over a golden age of animation, during which Disney produced such blockbuster films as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King and became a merchandising powerhouse

On this day in 1889, the Wyoming state convention approves a constitution that includes a provision granting women the right to vote. Formally admitted into the union the following year, Wyoming thus became the first state in the history of the nation to allow its female citizens to vote.

On this day in 1918, President Woodrow Wilson gives a speech before Congress in support of guaranteeing women the right to vote. Although the House of Representatives had approved a 19th constitutional amendment giving women suffrage, the Senate had yet to vote on the measure.

On September 30, 1927, Babe Ruth hits his 60th home run of the 1927 season and with it sets a record that would stand for 34 years.

On this day in 1938, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sign the Munich Pact, which seals the fate of Czechoslovakia, virtually handing it over to Germany in the name of peace. Upon return to Britain, Chamberlain would declare that the meeting had achieved "peace in our time."

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On this day in 1890, an act of Congress creates Yosemite National Park, home of such natural wonders as Half Dome and the giant sequoia trees. Environmental trailblazer John Muir (1838-1914) and his colleagues campaigned for the congressional action, which was signed into law by President Benjamin Harrison and paved the way for generations of hikers, campers and nature lovers, along with countless "Don't Feed the Bears" signs.

On October 1, 1908, the first production Model T Ford is completed at the company's Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit. Between 1908 and 1927, Ford would build some 15 million Model T cars. It was the longest production run of any automobile model in history until the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it in 1972.

An earthquake in Whittier, California, kills 6 people and injures 100 more on this day in 1987. The quake was the largest to hit Southern California since 1971, but not nearly as damaging as the Northridge quake that would devastate parts of Los Angeles seven years later.

On October 1, 1946, 12 high-ranking Nazis are sentenced to death by the International War Crimes Tribunal in Nuremberg. Among those condemned to death by hanging were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi minister of foreign affairs; Hermann Goering, founder of the Gestapo and chief of the German air force; and Wilhelm Frick, minister of the interior. Seven others, including Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler's former deputy, were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life. Three others were acquitted

On this day in 2005, suicide bombers strike three restaurants in two tourist areas on the Indonesian island of Bali, a popular resort area. The bombings killed 22 people, including the bombers, and injured more than 50 others. This was the second suicide-bombing incident to rock the island in less than three years. (In 2002, a series of three bombs killed 202 people, many of them foreign nationals in Bali on vacation, including 88 Australians.)

On this day in 1962, Johnny Carson takes over from Jack Paar as host of the late-night talk program The Tonight Show. Carson went on to host The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for three decades, becoming one of the biggest figures in entertainment in the 20th century.

In an 1888 novel called Looking Backward: 2000-1887, author Edward Bellamy imagined a scene in which a time-traveler from 1887 reacts to a technological advance from the early 21st century that he describes as, "An arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will." In Bellamy's imagination, this astonishing feat was accomplished by a vast network of wires connecting individual homes with centrally located concert halls staffed round-the-clock with live performers. As it turned out, this vision of the year 2000 would come to pass far sooner than Bellamy imagined, and without all the pesky wires. On this day in 1920, Scientific American magazine reported that the rapidly developing medium of radio would soon be used to broadcast music. A revolution in the role of music in everyday life was about to be born

On October 1, 1961, New York Yankee Roger Maris becomes the first-ever major-league baseball player to hit more than 60 home runs in a single season. The great Babe Ruth set the record in 1927; Maris and his teammate Mickey Mantle spent 1961 trying to break it. After hitting 54 homers, Mantle injured his hip in September, leaving Maris to chase the record by himself. Finally, in the last game of the regular season, Maris hit his 61st home run against the Boston Red Sox. (The league-champion Yanks won the game 1-0.)

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On this day in 1985, actor Rock Hudson, 59, becomes the first major U.S. celebrity to die of complications from AIDS. Hudson's death raised public awareness of the epidemic, which until that time had been ignored by many in the mainstream as a "gay plague."

On this day in 1948, the first American road race since World War II takes place in Watkins Glen, a tiny town near the Finger Lakes in New York. In 1961, the Watkins Glen event was added to the Formula One Grand Prix schedule and for the next 20 years it was a destination for the world's best drivers. Compared to Monte Carlo and other sophisticated stops on the Formula One circuit, Watkins Glen was scarcely even on the map (Sports Illustratedpoked fun at its "courage and cornpone, sophistication with straw in its teeth"), but the race was named the best Grand Prix of the season more than once.

Charles Roberts enters the West Nickel Mines Amish School in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, where he fatally shoots five female students and wounds five more before turning his gun on himself and committing suicide.

On this day in 1963, Hurricane Flora crashes into Haiti, killing thousands of people. This huge storm, which also killed large numbers of people in Cuba and wreaked havoc elsewhere in the Caribbean, was one of the most deadly hurricanes in history.

On this day in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson, who had just cut short a tour of the country to promote the formation of the League of Nations, suffers a stroke.

On October 2, 1968, St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson strikes out 17 Detroit Tigers in the first game of the World Series, breaking Sandy Koufaxs record for the most strikeouts in a Series game. Though the Cards ended up losing the Series in seven games, Gibson pitched three and struck out an unprecedented 35 batters.

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At the end of a sensational trial, former football star O.J. Simpson is acquitted of the brutal 1994 double murder of his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. In the epic 252-day trial, Simpson's "dream team" of lawyers employed creative and controversial methods to convince jurors that Simpson's guilt had not been proved "beyond a reasonable doubt," thus surmounting what the prosecution called a "mountain of evidence" implicating him as the murderer.

Less than one year after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, East and West Germany come together on what is known as "Unity Day." Since 1945, when Soviet forces occupied eastern Germany, and the United States and other Allied forces occupied the western half of the nation at the close of World War II, divided Germany had come to serve as one of the most enduring symbols of the Cold War. Some of the most dramatic episodes of the Cold War took place there. The Berlin Blockade (June 1948--May 1949), during which the Soviet Union blocked all ground travel into West Berlin, and the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 were perhaps the most famous. With the gradual waning of Soviet power in the late 1980s, the Communist Party in East Germany began to lose its grip on power. Tens of thousands of East Germans began to flee the nation, and by late 1989 the Berlin Wall started to come down. Shortly thereafter, talks between East and West German officials, joined by officials from the United States, Great Britain, France, and the USSR, began to explore the possibility of reunification. Two months following reunification, all-German elections took place and Helmut Kohl became the first chancellor of the reunified Germany. Although this action came more than a year before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, for many observers the reunification of Germany effectively marked the end of the Cold War.

On this day in 2005, Hurricane Stan bears down on the Mexican coastline after passing over the Yucatan Peninsula. The storm brought torrential rains to Central America and caused a series of landslides over the next several days that buried several towns and killed more than 1,000 people. In Guatemala, the hardest-hit nation, two entire villages were turned into mass graves.

With the admission of Iraq into the League of Nations, Britain terminates its mandate over the Arab nation, making Iraq independent after 17 years of British rule and centuries of Ottoman rule.

On October 3, 1967, Woody Guthrie, godfather of the 1950s folk revival movement, dies.

On this day in 1863, expressing gratitude for a pivotal Union Army victory at Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln announces that the nation will celebrate an official Thanksgiving holiday on November 26, 1863

On October 3, 1951, third baseman Bobby Thomson hits a one-out, three-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to win the National League pennant for the New York Giants. Thomsons homer wrapped up an amazing come-from-behind run for the Giants and knocked the Brooklyn Dodgers, the Giants hated inter-borough rivals, out of their spot in the World Series. The Giants went on to lose the Series to the Yankees, but Thomsons miraculous homer remains one of the most memorable moments in sports history.

At Camp Evans, 11 miles north of Hue, 24 U.S. military personnel die when a U.S. Army CH-47 helicopter collides with an American C-7 Caribou transport aircraft. All aboard both aircrafts perished. Meanwhile, U.S. planes severed roads in more than 20 places, destroying over 75 supply vehicles in the heaviest raids over North Vietnam since July 2.

On October 3, 1917, six months after the United States declared war on Germany and began its participation in the First World War, the U.S. Congress passes the War Revenue Act, increasing income taxes to unprecedented levels in order to raise more money for the war effort.

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The Soviet Union inaugurates the "Space Age" with its launch of Sputnik, the world's first artificial satellite. The spacecraft, named Sputnik after the Russian word for "satellite," was launched at 10:29 p.m. Moscow time from the Tyuratam launch base in the Kazakh Republic. Sputnik had a diameter of 22 inches and weighed 184 pounds and circled Earth once every hour and 36 minutes. Traveling at 18,000 miles an hour, its elliptical orbit had an apogee (farthest point from Earth) of 584 miles and a perigee (nearest point) of 143 miles. Visible with binoculars before sunrise or after sunset, Sputnik transmitted radio signals back to Earth strong enough to be picked up by amateur radio operators. Those in the United States with access to such equipment tuned in and listened in awe as the beeping Soviet spacecraft passed over America several times a day. In January 1958, Sputnik's orbit deteriorated, as expected, and the spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere.

Televangelist Jim Bakker is indicted on federal charges of mail and wire fraud and of conspiring to defraud the public. The case against the founder of Praise the Lord (PTL) Ministries and three of his aides exploded in the press when it was revealed that Bakker had sex with former church secretary Jessica Hahn.

A cargo plane crashes into an apartment building near an airport in Amsterdam, Holland, on this day in 1992. Four people aboard the plane and approximately 100 more in the apartment building lost their lives in the disaster.

Pope Paul VI arrives at Kennedy International Airport in New York City on the first visit by a reigning pope to the United States. During his packed one-day American visit--limited entirely to New York City--Pope Paul VI visited St. Patrick's Cathedral and Cardinal Francis Spellman's residence, met with President Lyndon Johnson at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations, attended a public Mass at Yankee Stadium, visited the Vatican Exhibit at the New York World's Fair, and then flew to Rome from Kennedy Airport. During less than 14 hours in the United States, the pope was seen in person by one million people and on television by an another 100 million.

In the summer of 1966, Janis Joplin was a drifter; four years later, she was a rock-and-roll legend. She'd gone from complete unknown to generational icon on the strength of a single, blistering performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival in the summer of 1967, and she'd followed that up with three years of touring and recording that cemented her status as, in the words of one critic, "second only to Bob Dylan in importance as a creator/recorder/embodiment of her generation's history and mythology."

On this day in 1927, sculpting begins on the face of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills National Forest of South Dakota. It would take another 12 years for the impressive granite images of four of Americas most revered and beloved presidentsGeorge Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt--to be completed.

On October 4, 1955, the Brooklyn Dodgers win the World Series at last, beating the New York Yankees 2-0. Theyd lost the championship seven times already, and theyd lost five times just to the Yanks--in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953. But in 1955, thanks to nine brilliant innings in the seventh game from 23-year-old lefty pitcher Johnny Podres, they finally managed to beat the Bombers for the first (and last) time.

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On this day in 1947, President Harry Truman (1884-1972) makes the first-ever televised presidential address from the White House, asking Americans to cut back on their use of grain in order to help starving Europeans. At the time of Truman's food-conservation speech, Europe was still recovering from World War II and suffering from famine. Truman, the 33rd commander in chief, worried that if the U.S. didn't provide food aid, his administration's Marshall Plan for European economic recovery would fall apart. He asked farmers and distillers to reduce grain use and requested that the public voluntarily forgo meat on Tuesdays, eggs and poultry on Thursdays and save a slice of bread each day. The food program was short-lived, as ultimately the Marshall Plan succeeded in helping to spur economic revitalization and growth in Europe. In 1947, television was still in its infancy and the number of TV sets in U.S. homes only numbered in the thousands (by the early 1950s, millions of Americans owned TVs); most people listened to the radio for news and entertainment. However, although the majority of Americans missed Truman's TV debut, his speech signaled the start of a powerful and complex relationship between the White House and a medium that would have an enormous impact on the American presidency, from how candidates campaigned for the office to how presidents communicated with their constituents. Each of Truman's subsequent White House speeches, including his 1949 inauguration address, was televised. In 1948, Truman was the first presidential candidate to broadcast a paid political ad. Truman pioneered the White House telecast, but it was President Franklin Roosevelt who was the first president to appear on TV--from the World's Fair in New York City on April 30, 1939. FDR's speech had an extremely limited TV audience, though, airing only on receivers at the fairgrounds and at Radio City in Manhattan.

On October 5, 1919, a young Italian car mechanic and engineer named Enzo Ferrari takes part in his first car race, a hill climb in Parma, Italy. He finished fourth. Ferrari was a good driver, but not a great one: In all, he won just 13 of the 47 races he entered. Many people say that this is because he cared too much for the sports cars he drove: He could never bring himself to ruin an engine in order to win a race.

The Dalton gang attempts to rob two banks simultaneously in Coffeyville, Kansas, but meets resistance from townspeople, who wind up killing four of the five bandits. Emmett Dalton, the sole survivor, returned to the site of the crime nearly 40 years later and offered a caution to would-be thieves: "The biggest fool on earth is the one who thinks he can beat the law, that crime can be made to pay. It never paid and it never will and that was the one big lesson of the Coffeyville raid."

On this day in 1930, a British dirigible crashes in Beauvais, France, killing 49 people. The blimp, which was Great Britains biggest, had first been launched about a year earlier.

American David Kunst completes the first round-the-world journey on foot, taking four years and 21 pairs of shoes to complete the 14,500-mile journey across the land masses of four continents. He left his hometown of Waseca, Minnesota, on June 20, 1970. Near the end of his journey in 1974 he explained the reasons for his epic trek: "I was tired of Waseca, tired of my job, tired of a lot of little people who don't want to think, and tired of my wife." During the long journey, he took on sponsors and helped raise money for UNICEF.

On October 5, 1953, the New York Yankees defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers to win their fifth World Series in a row. It was a record-breaking championship: Joe McCarthys legendary 1936-1939 Yanks had won four in a row, but no team had ever won five. The Bombers had squeaked by the Bums in Game 7 the previous year, and everyone thought that the Brooklyn team--powered by amazing pitching and a taste for revenge--would be back to claim the title. But instead, they lost for the seventh time in as many chances, and their cross-town rivals made World Series history.

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On this day in 1866, the Reno gang carries out the first robbery of a moving train in the U.S., making off with over $10,000 from an Ohio & Mississippi train in Jackson County, Indiana. Prior to this innovation in crime, holdups had taken place only on trains sitting at stations or freight yards

Islamic extremists assassinate Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt, as he reviews troops on the anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. Led by Khaled el Islambouli, a lieutenant in the Egyptian army with connections to the terrorist group Takfir Wal-Hajira, the terrorists, all wearing army uniforms, stopped in front of the reviewing stand and fired shots and threw grenades into a crowd of Egyptian government officials. Sadat, who was shot four times, died two hours later. Ten other people also died in the attack

On this day in 1972, a train carrying religious pilgrims derails near Saltillo, Mexico, killing more than 200 people and injuring hundreds of others.

Encouraged by William Penn's offer of 5,000 acres of land in the colony of Pennsylvania and the freedom to practice their religion, the first Mennonites arrive in America aboard the Concord. They were among the first Germans to settle in the American colonies

President John F. Kennedy, speaking on civil defense, advises American families to build bomb shelters to protect them from atomic fallout in the event of a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union. Kennedy also assured the public that the U.S. civil defense program would soon begin providing such protection for every American. Only one year later, true to Kennedy's fears, the world hovered on the brink of full-scale nuclear war when the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted over the USSR's placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba. During the tense 13-day crisis, some Americans prepared for nuclear war by buying up canned goods and completing last-minute work on their backyard bomb shelters.

On October 6, 1926, Yankee slugger Babe Ruth hits a record three homers against the St. Louis Cardinals in the fourth game of the World Series. The Yanks won the game 10-5, but despite Ruths unprecedented performance, they lost the championship in the seventh game. In 1928, in the fourth game of another Yanks-Cards World Series, Ruth tied his own record, knocking three more pitches out of the same park.

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10/07...

On this day in 2003, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger is elected governor of California, the most populous state in the nation with the world's fifth-largest economy. Despite his inexperience, Schwarzenegger came out on top in the 11-week campaign to replace Gray Davis, who had earlier become the first United States governor to be recalled by the people since 1921. Schwarzenegger was one of 135 candidates on the ballot, which included career politicians, other actors, and one adult-film star.

In the second of four televised debates, Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon turn their attention to foreign policy issues. Three Cold War episodes, in particular, engendered spirited confrontations between Kennedy and Nixon. The first involved Cuba, which had recently come under the control of Fidel Castro. Nixon argued that the island was not "lost" to the United States, and that the course of action followed by the Eisenhower administration had been the best one to allow the Cuban people to "realize their aspirations of progress through freedom." Kennedy fired back that it was clear that Castro was a communist, and that the Republican administration failed to use U.S. resources effectively to prevent his rise to power. He concluded that, "Today Cuba is lost for freedom."

Four Palestinian terrorists board the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro shortly after it left Alexandria, Egypt, in order to hijack the luxury liner. The well-armed men, who belonged to the Popular Front for the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), the terrorist wing of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) led by Abu Abbas, easily took control of the vessel since there was no security force on board.

The most devastating fire in United States history is ignited in Wisconsin on this day in 1871. Over the course of the next day, 1,200 people lost their lives and 2 billion trees were consumed by flames. Despite the massive scale of the blaze, it was overshadowed by the Great Chicago Fire, which began the next day about 250 miles away.

For the first time, Henry Ford's entire Highland Park, Michigan automobile factory is run on a continuously moving assembly line when the chassis--the automobile's frame--is assembled using the revolutionary industrial technique. A motor and rope pulled the chassis past workers and parts on the factory floor, cutting the man-hours required to complete one "Model T" from 12-1/2 hours to six. Within a year, further assembly line improvements reduced the time required to 93 man-minutes. The staggering increase in productivity effected by Ford's use of the moving assembly line allowed him to drastically reduce the cost of the Model T, thereby accomplishing his dream of making the car affordable to ordinary consumers

Less than five months after Great Britain, the United States, and France established the Federal Republic of Germany in West Germany, the Democratic Republic of Germany is proclaimed within the Soviet occupation zone. Criticized by the West as an un-autonomous Soviet creation, Wilhelm Pieck was named East Germany's first president, with Otto Grotewohl as prime minister

On this day in 2001, a U.S.-led coalition begins attacks on Taliban-controlled Afghanistan with an intense bombing campaign by American and British forces. Logistical support was provided by other nations including France, Germany, Australia and Canada and, later, troops were provided by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance rebels. The invasion of Afghanistan was the opening salvo in the United States "war on terrorism" and a response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

On this day in 1975, a New York State Supreme Court judge reverses a deportation order for John Lennon, allowing him to remain legally in his adoptive home of New York City.

On October 7, 1984, Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton becomes the NFLs all-time rushing leader, breaking the record Clevelands Jim Brown set in 1965. In front of 53,752 people at Soldier Field, Payton carried the ball 154 yards and finished the game with a new career rushing record--12,400 yards, 88 more than Brown

On this day in 1943, Rear Adm. Shigematsu Sakaibara, commander of the Japanese garrison on the island, orders the execution of 96 Americans POWs, claiming they were trying to make radio contact with U.S. forces.

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On this day in 1871, flames spark in the Chicago barn of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, igniting a 2-day blaze that kills between 200 and 300 people, destroys 17,450 buildings,leaves 100,000 homeless and causes an estimated $200 million (in 1871 dollars; $3 billion in 2007 dollars) in damages. Legend has it that a cow kicked over a lantern in the O'Leary barn and started the fire, but other theories hold that humans or even a comet may have been responsible for the event that left four square miles of the Windy City, including its business district, in ruins. Dry weather and an abundance of wooden buildings, streets and sidewalks made Chicago vulnerable to fire. The city averaged two fires per day in 1870; there were 20 fires throughout Chicago the week before the Great Fire of 1871. Despite the fire's devastation, much of Chicago's physical infrastructure, including its water, sewage and transportation systems, remained intact. Reconstruction efforts began quickly and spurred great economic development and population growth, as architects laid the foundation for a modern city featuring the world's first skyscrapers. At the time of the fire, Chicago's population was approximately 324,000; within nine years.

The first transcontinental air race in the United States begins, with 63 planes competing in the round-trip aerial derby between California and New York. As 15 planes departed the Presidio in San Francisco, California, 48 planes left Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York.

On this day in 2005, a massive 7.6-magnitude earthquake strikes the Kashmir border region between India and Pakistan. An estimated 70,000 peoplenearly half of them childrenwere killed and 70,000 more were injured. More than 3 million were left homeless and without food and basic supplies.

Jerry Lee Lewis was not the only early rock-and-roller from a strict Christian background who struggled to reconcile his religious beliefs with the moral implications of the music he created. He may have been the only one to have one of his religious crises caught on tape, howeverin between takes on one of his legendary hit songs. It was on October 8, 1957, that bible-school dropout Jerry Lee Lewis laid down the definitive version of "Great Balls Of Fire," amidst a losing battle with his conscience and with the legendary Sam Phillips, head of Sun Records.

On this day in 1998, the U.S. House of Representatives votes to proceed toward impeaching President Bill Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. By December 1998, the Republican-led House had gathered enough information from an investigation committee to vote in favor of impeachment, which in turn sent the case to the Senate.

On October 8, 1956, New York Yankees right-hander Don Larsen pitches the first no-hitter in the history of the World Series. Even better, it was a perfect game--that is, there were no runs, no hits and no errors, and no batter reached first base. Larsens performance anchored his teams third-straight win against their cross-town rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Yanks ended up winning the championship, the last all-New York World Series until 2000, in seven games.

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10/09

On this day in 1967, socialist revolutionary and guerilla leader Che Guevara, age 39, is killed by the Bolivian army. The U.S.-military-backed Bolivian forces captured Guevara on October 8 while battling his band of guerillas in Bolivia and assassinated him the following day. His hands were cut off as proof of death and his body was buried in an unmarked grave. In 1997, Guevara's remains were found and sent back to Cuba, where they were reburied in a ceremony attended by President Fidel Castro and thousands of Cubans.

On this day in 1992, 18-year-old Michelle Knapp is watching television in her parents' living room in Peekskill, New York when she hears a thunderous crash in the driveway. Alarmed, Knapp ran outside to investigate. What she found was startling, to say the least: a sizeable hole in the rear end of her car, an orange 1980 Chevy Malibu; a matching hole in the gravel driveway underneath the car; and in the hole, the culprit: what looked like an ordinary, bowling-ballsized rock. It was extremely heavy for its size (it weighed about 28 pounds), shaped like a football and warm to the touch; also, it smelled vaguely of rotten eggs. The next day, a curator from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City confirmed that the object was a genuine meteorite.

Chicago bootlegger Roger "The Terrible" Touhy escapes from Illinois' Stateville Prison by climbing the guard's tower. Touhy, who had been framed for kidnapping by his bootlegging rivals with the help of corrupt Chicago officials, was serving a 99-year sentence for a kidnapping he did not commit. He was recaptured a couple of months later.

On this day in 1963, a landslide in Italy leads to the deaths of more than 2,000 people when it causes a sudden and massive wave of water to overwhelm a dam

On this day in 1936, harnessing the power of the mighty Colorado River, Hoover Dam begins sending electricity over transmission lines spanning 266 miles of mountains and deserts to run the lights, radios, and stoves of Los Angeles.

On October 9, 1934, the St. Louis Cardinals defeat the Detroit Tigers in the seventh game of the World Series. No one seems to know exactly who was the first to call that years Cards the "Gashouse Gang," but everyone agrees that the nickname had to do with the teams close resemblance to the rowdy, dirt-streaked assemblage of thugs who hung around the Gashouse District on Manhattans East Side. In any case, the matchup between St. Louis disheveled, brawl-prone Gang and the ace Tigers remains, as legendary sportswriter Grantland Rice predicted it would, "one of the most interesting post-season championships ever played."

In the United States, the National Guard is called in as demonstrations continue in Chicago protesting the trial of the "Chicago Eight."The trial had begun on September 24 and involved charges against David Dellinger, Rennie Davis, Thomas Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Lee Weiner, John Froines, and Bobby Seale for conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to cause a riot. These charges stemmed from the violent antiwar demonstrations in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

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10/10

The hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro reaches a dramatic climax when U.S. Navy F-14 fighters intercept an Egyptian airliner attempting to fly the Palestinian hijackers to freedom and force the jet to land at a NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily. American and Italian troops surrounded the plane, and the terrorists were taken into Italian custody.

Former U.S. postal worker Joseph Harris shoots two former co-workers to death at the post office in Ridgewood, New Jersey. The night before, Harris had killed his former supervisor, Carol Ott, with a three-foot samurai sword, and shot her fiance, Cornelius Kasten, in their home. After a four-hour standoff with police at the post office, Harris was arrested. His violent outburst was one of several high-profile attacks by postal workers that resulted in the addition of the phrase "going postal" to the American lexicon.

A powerful storm slams the islands of the West Indies, killing more than 20,000 people, on this day in 1780. Known as the Great Hurricane of 1780, it was the deadliest storm ever recorded.

The United States Naval Academy opens in Annapolis, Maryland, with 50 midshipmen students and seven professors. Known as the Naval School until 1850, the curriculum included mathematics and navigation, gunnery and steam, chemistry, English, natural philosophy, and French. The Naval School officially became the U.S. Naval Academy in 1850, and a new curriculum went into effect, requiring midshipmen to study at the academy for four years and to train aboard ships each summer--the basic format that remains at the academy to this day.

On this day in 2004, the actor Christopher Reeve, who became famous for his starring role in four Superman films, dies from heart failure at the age of 52 at a hospital near his home in Westchester County, New York. Reeve, who was paralyzed in a 1995 horse-riding accident, was a leading advocate for spinal cord research.

On this day in 1877, the U.S. Army holds a West Point funeral with full military honors for Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Killed the previous year in Montana by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Custer's body had been returned to the East for burial on the grounds of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, where Custer had graduated in 1861-at the bottom of his class.

On this day in 1951, President Harry S. Truman signs the Mutual Security Act, announcing to the world, and its communist powers in particular, that the U.S. was prepared to provide military aid to "free peoples." The signing of the act came after the Soviet Union exploded their second nuclear weapon in a test on October 3.

On October 10, 1957, the Milwaukee Braves defeat the New York Yankees to win their first World Series since 1914. (They played in Boston then; the team moved to Wisconsin in 1953.) No one expected the Braves to beat the Bombers: After all, the New York team had already won the championship 21 times. Their manager, Casey Stengel, was the winningest in postseason history, and their lineup was spangled with superstars like Yogi Berra and Mickey Mantle. But the Braves had outfielder Hank Aaron, whod hit 44 home runs and batted .322 that season, and a pitching staff that included the greats Bob Buhl, Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette.

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-- Edited by PMM2008 on Sunday 10th of October 2010 08:22:39 AM

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10/11

On this day in 2002, former President Jimmy Carter wins the Nobel Peace Prize "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development."

On this day in 2008, a man from Belgium named Luc Costermans sets a new world speed record for blind drivers: 192 mph. Costermans set the record in a borrowed Lamborghini Gallardo on a long, straight stretch of airstrip near Marseilles, France. He was accompanied by a carload of sophisticated navigational equipment as well as a human co-pilot, who gave directions from the Lamborghini's passenger seat.

Three men blow up the mail car of a Southern Pacific train carrying passengers through southern Oregon in a botched robbery attempt. Just as the train entered a tunnel, two armed men jumped the engineer. A third man appeared with a bomb that the thieves intended to use to open the mail car. However, the explosives were too powerful and the entire mail car was blown to bits, killing the clerk inside. In the ensuing chaos, the train robbers shot the train's engineer, fireman, and brakeman, and then fled. They left behind the detonator and some clothes, but bloodhounds were unable to track them.

The death toll from a yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia hits 100 on this day in 1793. By the time it ended, 5,000 people were dead.

Pope John XXIII convenes an ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Churchthe first in 92 years. In summoning the ecumenical councila general meeting of the bishops of the churchthe pope hoped to bring spiritual rebirth to Catholicism and cultivate greater unity with the other branches of Christianity.

Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission, is launched with astronauts Walter M. Schirra, Jr.; Donn F. Eisele; and Walter Cunningham aboard. Under the command of Schirra, the crew of Apollo 7 conducted an 11-day orbit of Earth, during which the crew transmitted the first live television broadcasts from orbit.

On this day in 1975, Saturday Night Live (SNL), a topical comedy sketch show featuring Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin and Laraine Newman, makes its debut on NBC; it will go on to become the longest-running, highest-rated show on late-night television. The 90-minute program, which from its inception has been broadcast live from Studio 8H in the GE Building at Rockefeller Center, includes a different guest host and musical act each week. The opening sketch of each show ends with one actor saying, Live from New York, its Saturday Night!

At a meeting of the National Security Council, President John F. Kennedy is asked by his advisers to accept "as our real and ultimate objective the defeat of the Vietcong." The Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that 40,000 U.S. troops could clean up "the Vietcong threat" and another 120,000 could cope with possible North Vietnamese or Chinese Communist intervention. Kennedy wanted to prevent the fall of South Vietnam to the Communist insurgents, but decided to send General Maxwell Taylor to Vietnam to study the situation. Ultimately, Kennedy would send advisers, helicopters, and other military support to South Vietnam to aid President Ngo Dinh Diem in his fight against the Viet Cong.

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Hi Gang:

"This Day in History" is a little shorter today due to the site having technical difficulties. Will try to finish it later today.

Pam

After sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, Italian explorer Christopher Columbus sights a Bahamian island, believing he has reached East Asia. His expedition went ashore the same day and claimed the land for Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, who sponsored his attempt to find a western ocean route to China, India, and the fabled gold and spice islands of Asia.

General Robert Edward Lee, the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, dies peacefully at his home in Lexington, Virginia. He was 63 years old.

A massive forest fire rages through Minnesota on this day in 1918, killing hundreds of people and leaving thousands homeless. The fire burned at least 1,500 square miles.

Bavarian Crown Prince Louis, later King Louis I of Bavaria, marries Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. The Bavarian royalty invited the citizens of Munich to attend the festivities, held on the fields in front of the city gates. These famous public fields were named Theresienwiese"Therese's fields"in honor of the crown princess; although locals have since abbreviated the name simply to the "Wies'n." Horse races in the presence of the royal family concluded the popular event, celebrated in varying forms all across Bavaria.

The Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1 into orbit around Earth, with cosmonauts Vladamir Komarov, Konstantin Feoktistov, and Boris Yegorov aboard. Voskhod 1 was the first spacecraft to carry a multi-person crew, and the two-day mission was also the first flight performed without space suits.

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10/13

The cornerstone is laid for a presidential residence in the newly designated capital city of Washington. In 1800, President John Adams became the first president to reside in the executive mansion, which soon became known as the "White House" because its white-gray Virginia freestone contrasted strikingly with the red brick of nearby buildings.

On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress authorizes construction and administration of the first American naval forcethe precursor to the United States Navy.

The world's first art museum on wheelsan "inspiration for the nation," says a representative from the Smithsonian--opens today in Fredericksburg, Virginia. It was called the Artmobile. At the dedication ceremony, the state's governor declared that the project "initiates something new in the cultural and spiritual life of the Commonwealth which has never been done before anywhere."

The Colorado grand jury investigating the case of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, who was murdered in December 1996, is dismissed and the Boulder County district attorney announces no indictments will be made due to insufficient evidence

A jet crashes in Moscow due to poor weather on this day in 1972, killing 176 people

The Continental Congress authorizes construction and administration of the first American naval forcethe precursor of the United States Navy.

Four Palestinians hijack a Lufthansa airliner and demand the release of 11 imprisoned members of Germany's Baader-Meinhof terrorist group, also known as the Red Army Faction. The Red Army Faction was a group of ultra-left revolutionaries who terrorized Germany for three decades, assassinating more than 30 corporate, military, and government leaders in an effort to topple capitalism in their homeland.

On October 13, 1967, the Anaheim Amigos lose to the Oakland Oaks, 134-129, in the inaugural game of the American Basketball Association. In its first season, the ABA included 11 teams: the Pittsburgh Pipers, Minnesota Muskies, Indiana Pacers, Kentucky Colonels and New Jersey Americans played in the Eastern Division, and the New Orleans Buccaneers, Dallas Chaparrals, Denver Rockets, Houston Mavericks, Anaheim Amigos and Oakland Oaks played in the Western. Until it folded in 1976, the league offered players and fans a freewheeling alternative to the stodgy NBA. "It was a looser atmosphere," one fan remembered. "We could do a lot of things [the NBA] wont let us do"; these days, basketball games are "supposed to be family entertainment."

On this day in 1943, the government of Italy declares war on its former Axis partner Germany and joins the battle on the side of the Allies.history.com

-- Edited by PMM2008 on Wednesday 13th of October 2010 07:00:17 AM

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10/14

U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.

On October 14, 1857, engineer and inventor Elwood Haynes is born in Portland, Indiana. Haynes designed one of the very first American automobiles, the Haynes "Pioneer." He was also an accomplished metallurgist: He patented stainless steel, stellite and a cobalt-chromium alloy that was used to make sharp dental and surgical tools. Haynes died of influenza in 1925.

The Cuban Missile Crisis begins on October 14, 1962, bringing the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear conflict. Photographs taken by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane offered incontrovertible evidence that Soviet-made medium-range missiles in Cubacapable of carrying nuclear warheadswere now stationed 90 miles off the American coastline.

Ronald DeFeo Jr. goes on trial for the killings of his parents and four siblings in their Amityville, New York, home on October 14, 1975. The familys house was later said to be haunted and served as the inspiration for the Amityville Horror book and movies.

On this day in 1913, 439 workers die in a massive coal-mine explosion in Wales. The incident was one of Britains worst-ever mining disasters.

Before a campaign speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Theodore Roosevelt, the presidential candidate for the Progressive Party, is shot at close range by saloonkeeper John Schrank while greeting the public in front of the Gilpatrick Hotel. Schrank's .32-caliber bullet, aimed directly at Roosevelt's heart, failed to mortally wound the former president because its force was slowed by a glasses case and a bundle of manuscript in the breast pocket of Roosevelt's heavy coat--a manuscript containing Roosevelt's evening speech. Schrank was immediately detained and reportedly offered as his motive that "any man looking for a third term ought to be shot."

African American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his nonviolent resistance to racial prejudice in America. At 35 years of age, the Georgia-born minister was the youngest person ever to receive the award.

Harmony singing was a part of rock and roll right from the beginning, but the three- and four-part harmonies of doo-wop, derived from black gospel and blues traditions, would never have given us Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles or the Byrds. To get those groups, you first had to have the Everly Brothers, whose ringing, close-harmony style introduced a whole new sound into the rock-and-roll vocabulary: the sound of Appalachia set to hard-driving acoustic guitars and a subtle backbeat rhythm. One of the most important and influential groups in the history of rock and roll, the Everly Brothers burst onto the music scene in 1957 with their first big hit, "Bye Bye Love," which was quickly followed with their first #1 song, "Wake Up Little Susie," which topped the Billboard pop chart on this day in 1957.

On this day in 1890, future President Dwight D. Eisenhower is born near Abilene, Texas.

On October 14, 2003, a Chicago Cubs fan named Steve Bartman plucks a fly ball out of the air before outfielder Moises Alou can catch ita catch that would have been a crucial outin the sixth game of the league championship series against the Florida Marlins. As a result of Bartmans interference, the Cubs lost their momentum and the game. Bartman was escorted from Wrigley Field by security guards as bloodthirsty fans hurled beer cans and other debris at his head. The next day, he went into hidingbut not before he told the press that "Ive been a Cub fan all my life and fully understand the relationship between my actions and the outcome of the gamI am so truly sorry from the bottom of this Cubs fans broken heart."

Among the German wounded in the Ypres Salient in Belgium on October 14, 1918, is Corporal Adolf Hitler, temporarily blinded by a British gas shell and evacuated to a German military hospital at Pasewalk, in Pomerania.

On this day in 1944, German Gen. Erwin Rommel, nicknamed "the Desert Fox," is given the option of facing a public trial for treason, as a co-conspirator in the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, or taking cyanide. He chooses the latter.

history.com

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10/15

Mata Hari, the archetype of the seductive female spy, is executed for espionage by a French firing squad at Vincennes outside of Paris.

On this day in 2004, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration rules that hearse manufacturers no longer have to install anchors for child-safety seats in their vehicles. In 1999, to prevent parents from incorrectly installing the seats using only their cars' seat belts, the agency had required all carmakers to put the standardized anchors on every passenger seat in every vehicle they built. Though it seemed rather odd, most hearse-builders complied with the rule and many thousands of their vehicles incorporated baby-seat latches on their front and back passenger seats.

The C.S.S. Hunley, the first successful submarine, sinks during a test run, killing its inventor and seven crewmembers.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in ending Cold War tensions. Since coming to power in 1988, Gorbachev had undertaken to concentrate more effort and funds on his domestic reform plans by going to extraordinary lengths to reach foreign policy understandings with the noncommunist world.

Hurricane Hazel, the fourth major hurricane of 1954, hammers southern Ontario, Canada, on this day in 1954. Hazel hit hard from Jamaica to Canada, killing more than 400 people and causing over $1 billion in damages.

During a game against his old team, the Edmonton Oilers, Canadian ice hockey great Wayne Gretzky breaks Gordie Howe's National Hockey League career scoring record of 1,850 points.

The legendary composer and bandleader Duke Ellington was so famous for his poise and charm that it should be no surprise that he had a pithy story at the ready whenever he was asked about one of his most famous and enduring works, "Mood Indigo." Of the song he and his orchestra recorded for the very first time on this day in 1930, Ellington was fond of saying, "Well, I wrote that in 15 minutes while I was waiting for my mother to finish cooking dinner." As neatly as that version fit with his well-tended reputation for effortless sophistication, the true account of the song's development reflects the gifts for collaboration and adaptation that were always critical elements of Ellington's genius.

In a demonstration staged by the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, the first public burning of a draft card in the United States takes place.

On this day in 1946, Herman Goering, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, head of the Gestapo, prime minister of Prussia, chief forester of the Reich, chief liquidator of sequestered estates, supreme head of the National Weather Bureau, and Hitler's designated successor dies by his own hand.

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10/16

The embattled Chinese Communists break through Nationalist enemy lines and begin an epic flight from their encircled headquarters in southwest China. Known as Ch'ang Chengthe "Long March"the retreat lasted 368 days and covered 6,000 miles, nearly twice the distance from New York to San Francisco.

On October 16, 1958, Chevrolet begins to sell a car-truck hybrid that it calls the El Camino. Inspired by the Ford Ranchero, which had already been on the market for two years, the El Camino was a combination sedan-pickup truck built on the Impala body, with the same "cat's eye" taillights and dramatic rear fins. It was, ads trilled, "the most beautiful thing that ever shouldered a load!" "It rides and handles like a convertible," Chevy said, "yet hauls and hustles like the workingest thing on wheels."

A stampede of soccer fans before a World Cup qualifying match in Guatemala City kills 84 people and seriously injures more than 100 on this day in 1996.

George Jo Hennard drives his truck through a window in Lubys Cafeteria in Kileen, Texas, and then opens fire on a lunch crowd of over 100 people, killing 23 and injuring 20 more. Hennard then turned the gun on himself and committed suicide. The incident was one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history.

At Nuremberg, Germany, 10 high-ranking Nazi officials are executed by hanging for their crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes during World War II.

On this day in 1854, an obscure lawyer and Congressional hopeful from the state of Illinois named Abraham Lincoln delivers a speech regarding the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which Congress had passed five months earlier. In his speech, the future president denounced the act and outlined his views on slavery, which he called "immoral."

On October 16, 1912, New York Giants outfielder Fred Snodgrass drops an easy pop-up in the 10th inning of the tiebreaking eighth game of the World Series against the Red Sox. His error led to a two-run Boston rally and cost the Giants the championship

Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese diplomat Le Duc Tho are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the Paris peace accords. Kissinger accepted, but Tho declined the award until such time as "peace is truly established."

On this day in 1946, Alfred Rosenberg, the primary fabricator and disseminator of Nazi ideology, is hanged as a war criminal.

history.com

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10/17

On this day in 1931, gangster Al Capone is sentenced to 11 years in prison for tax evasion and fined $80,000, signaling the downfall of one of the most notorious criminals of the 1920s and 1930s.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) implements what it calls "oil diplomacy" on this day in 1973: It prohibits any nation that had supported Israel in its "Yom Kippur War" with Egypt, Syria and Jordan from buying any of the oil it sells. The ensuing energy crisis marked the end of the era of cheap gasoline and caused the share value of the New York Stock Exchange to drop by $97 billion. This, in turn, ushered in one of the worst recessions the United States had ever seen.

An earthquake hits the San Francisco Bay Area on this day in 1989, killing 67 people and causing more than $5 billion in damages. Though this was one of the most powerful and destructive earthquakes ever to hit a populated area of the United States, the death toll was quite small.

On this day in 1835, Texans approve a resolution to create the Texas Rangers, a corps of armed and mounted lawmen designed to "range and guard the frontier between the Brazos and Trinity Rivers."

On this day in 1974, President Gerald Ford explains to Congress why he had chosen to pardon his predecessor, Richard Nixon, rather than allow Congress to pursue legal action against the former president.

On October 17, 1968, Olympic gold medalist Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos are forced to return their awards because they raised their fists in a black-power salute during the medal ceremony. In a press conference the next day, International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage deplored the athletes "outrageous stance"it repudiated, he said, "the basic principles of the Olympic games." The AP photograph of the ceremony is one of the most familiar and enduring images of a tumultuous era.

history.com

Mben · Status: Offline

I skim through the daily history haps everyday and have come to a conclusion (not that I don't appreciate being educated, Pam) that history is depressing. At least what is being posted. Disasters, people dying, recession, medals being stripped away etc., etc., etc.

Is there anything uplifting in our history? There would be if it was herstory! lol JK

PMM2008 · Status: Offline

Hi Mben:

You know? Your right, much of our history is a depressing fact. Ecspecially lately, as I go to the history site each day, I felt the same way about it being depressing.

Can you believe there are actually some I wont post? Yes, they are so sad, that I will purposely leave them out.

It does seem the worst things that have happened in our past, are the ones that seem to still draw the publicity, instead of the more happier times in our history.

I think I will begin to look at other sites that perhaps are a bit more uplifting than the current site is, as far as our history goes. Plenty of wonderful things have happened in our history too, and I would like to focus on those times as well.

Thanks for the post. roll

Pam

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10/18

On this day in 1867, the U.S. formally takes possession of Alaska after purchasing the territory from Russia for $7.2 million, or less than two cents an acre. The Alaska purchase comprised 586,412 square miles, about twice the size of Texas, and was championed by William Henry Seward, the enthusiasticly expansionist secretary of state under President Andrew Johnson.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono are arrested for drug possession at their home near Montagu Square in London, England. The arrests came at a tempestuous time for the couple. Only days earlier, an announcement was made that Ono was pregnant, creating a scandal because both Lennon and Ono were still married to other people. Her pregnancy ended in a miscarriage a few days after the arrest.

On this day in 1998, a pipeline explosion in Jesse, Nigeria, kills 700 people. The resulting fire burned for nearly a week.

Only one year after Spain granted Puerto Rico self-rule, American troops raise the U.S. flag over the Caribbean nation, formalizing U.S. authority over the island's one million inhabitants.

Thomas Alva Edison, one of the most prolific inventors in history, dies in West Orange, New Jersey, at the age of 84.

On this day in 1988, Roseanne, a television sitcom about a blue-collar American family starring the comedienne Roseanne Barr, premieres on ABC. The show was considered groundbreaking for its realistic portrayal of a working-class family and the issues they faced. Barrs portrayal of the loud, abrasive, overweight Roseanne Conner was a sharp contrast to the stereotypical TV housewife in the mold of Leave It to Beavers June Cleaver and The Brady Bunchs Carol Brady. The show was an instant ratings hit, airing for nine seasons, collecting numerous awards and turning Barr into a big star.

On this day in 1962, President John F. Kennedy records his impression of the days meetings regarding the recently discovered presence of Soviet ballistic missiles on the island of Cuba. The ensuing Cuban Missile Crisis brought America to the brink of nuclear war.

On October 18, 1977, in the sixth game of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees outfielder Reggie Jackson hits three home runs in a row off of three consecutive pitches from three different pitchers. Only the great Babe Ruth had ever hit three homers in a single World Series game (and he did it twice, once in 1926 and once in 1928) but he didnt do it on consecutive pitches or even consecutive at-bats. Jacksons amazing home-run streak helped the Yankees win the game and the series, the teams first since 1962.

history.com

Mben · Status: Offline

PMM2008 wrote:
10/18

On this day in 1988, Roseanne, a television sitcom about a blue-collar American family starring the comedienne Roseanne Barr, premieres on ABC. The show was considered groundbreaking for its realistic portrayal of a working-class family and the issues they faced. Barrs portrayal of the loud, abrasive, overweight Roseanne Conner was a sharp contrast to the stereotypical TV housewife in the mold of Leave It to Beavers June Cleaver and The Brady Bunchs Carol Brady. The show was an instant ratings hit, airing for nine seasons, collecting numerous awards and turning Barr into a big star.

The timing .........................

Barbara Billingsley, mother on 'Leave It to Beaver,' dies at 94

As June Cleaver, Billingsley was the model 1950s mom, clad in dresses, high heels and pearls even while vacuuming. 'She was the ideal mother,' Billingsley said of her character.

October 17, 2010|By Dennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times

Barbara Billingsley, who played June Cleaver, the quintessential 1950s sitcom mom on "Leave It to Beaver," and later did a memorable send-up of her white-bread image playing the "jive-talking" passenger in the hit comedy "Airplane!," has died. She was 94.

Billingsley, who played small parts in B movies and appeared on television before achieving sitcom immortality, died Saturday at her home in Santa Monica of the rheumatoid disorder polymyalgia, said publicist Judy Twersky.

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10/19

On October 19, 1982, the automaker John Z. DeLorean is arrested and charged with conspiracy to obtain and distribute 55 pounds of cocaine. DeLorean was acquitted of the drug charges in August 1984, but his legal woes were only beginning. He soon went on trial for fraud and over the next two decades was forced to pay millions of dollars to creditors and lawyers. Nevertheless, DeLorean occupies an important place in automotive history: Thanks to its starring role in the 1985 film "Back to the Future," his gull-wing sports car is one of the most famous cars in the world.

Hopelessly trapped at Yorktown, Virginia, British General Lord Cornwallis surrenders 8,000 British soldiers and seamen to a larger Franco-American force, effectively bringing an end to the American Revolution.

On this day in 1991, a fire begins in the hills of Oakland, California. It went on to burn thousands of homes and kill 25 people. Despite the fact that fires had ravaged the same area three times earlier in the century, people continued to build homes there.

On this day in 1985, the first Blockbuster video-rental store opens, in Dallas, Texas. At a time when most video stores were small-scale operations featuring a limited selection of titles, Blockbuster opened with some 8,000 tapes displayed on shelves around the store and a computerized check-out process. The first store was a success and Blockbuster expanded rapidly, eventually becoming one of the worlds largest providers of in-home movies and game entertainment.

On this day in 1869, the famous Prussian-born mining engineer, Adolph Sutro, begins work on one of the most ambitious western engineering projects of the day: a four-mile-long tunnel through the solid rock of the Comstock Lode mining district.

On October 19, 1957, Maurice "Rocket" Richard of the Montreal Canadiens becomes the first N.H.L. player to score 500 goals in his career when he slaps a 20-foot shot past Chicago Blackhawks goalie Glenn Hall. Richard was one of the most consistent and intimidating goal-scorers in pro hockey history: In all, he scored 544 regular-season and 82 post-season goals. "When he came flying toward you with the puck on his stick," Hall remembered, "his eyes were all lit up, flashing and gleaming like a pinball machine. It was terrifying."

history.com

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10/20

On October 20, 1947, the notorious Red Scare kicks into high gear in Washington, as a Congressional committee begins investigating Communist influence in one of the world's richest and most glamorous communities: Hollywood.

At 3 p.m. on October 20, 1965, the very last PV-series Volvo drives off the assembly line in Lundby, Sweden. The car, a zippy black Sport PV544 with red interior trim, went straight to the Volvo Museum in Gothenburg. PV-series Volvos had been in production, first as the PV444 and then as the PV544, since 1947 and 440,000 sold in all. By the end of its run, the PV was old-fashionedlookingthe company had made very few cosmetic changes in the two decades the car had been on the marketbut it remained a good, solid automobile. "Above all," Road &Trackmagazine said in 1963, "the Volvo PV544 is such a practical car. Volvo's most attractive appeal lies in its solidity and its quality in every single respect. There is nothing slapdash or under-dimensioned about any part of the car and that is more than enough to compensate for any perceived lack of glamour."

Two liquid gas tanks explode in Cleveland, Ohio, killing 130 people, on this day in 1944. It took all of the city's firefighters to bring the resulting industrial fire under control.

After 15 years of construction, the Sydney Opera House is dedicated by Queen Elizabeth II. The $80 million structure, designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon and funded by the profits of the Opera House Lotteries, was built on Bennelong Point, in Sydney, Australia. Famous for its geometric roof shells, the structure contains several large auditoriums and presents an average of 3,000 events a year to an estimated two million people. The first performance in the complex was the Australian Opera's production of Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace, which was held in the 1,547-seat Opera Theatre. Today, the Opera House remains Sydney's best-known landmark.

On this day in 1994, Burt Lancaster, a former circus performer who rose to fame as a Hollywood leading man with some 70 movies to his credit, including From Here to Eternity and Atlantic City, in a career that spanned more than four decades, dies of a heart attack at the age of 80 in Century City, California.

In the summer of 1977, members of the rock band Aerosmith inspected an airplane they were considering chartering for their upcoming toura Convair 240 operated out of Addison, Texas. Concerns over the flight crew led Aerosmith to look elsewherea decision that saved one band but doomed another. The aircraft in question was instead chartered by the band Lynyrd Skynyrd, who were just setting out that autumn on a national tour that promised to be their biggest to date. On this day in 1977, however, during a flight from Greenville, South Carolina, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Lynyrd Skynyrd's tour plane crashed in a heavily wooded area of southeastern Mississippi during a failed emergency landing attempt, killing band-members Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines and Cassie Gaines as well as the band's assistant road manager and the plane's pilot and co-pilot. Twenty others survived the crash.

A series of incidents and charges bring relations between Cambodia, South Vietnam, and the United States to a low point. Cambodia under Prince Norodom Sihanouk had tried to maintain its neutrality in the growing conflict between Saigon and the Communists in Vietnam, but the country became a sanctuary for Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces fighting the Saigon government. Sihanouk, not strong enough to prevent the Communists from using his territory, came under increasing political and military pressure from the United States and South Vietnam.

history.com

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10/21

On this day in 1959, on New York City's Fifth Avenue, thousands of people line up outside a bizarrely shaped white concrete building that resembled a giant upside-down cupcake. It was opening day at the new Guggenheim Museum, home to one of the world's top collections of contemporary art.

On this day in 1929, the 50th birthday of the incandescent light bulb, Henry Ford throws a big party to celebrate the dedication of his new Thomas Edison Institute in Dearborn, Michigan. Everybody who was anybody was there: John D. Rockefeller Jr., Charles Schwab, Otto H. Kahn, Walter Chrysler, Marie Curie, Will Rogers, President Herbert Hooverand, of course, the guest of honor, Thomas Edison himself. At the time, the Edison Institute was still relatively small. It consisted of just two buildings, both of which Henry Ford had moved from Menlo Park, New Jersey and re-constructed to look just as they had in 1879: Edison's laboratory and the boarding-house where he had lived while he perfected his invention. By the time the Institute opened to the public in 1933, however, it had grown much more elaborate and today the Henry Ford Museum (renamed after Ford's death in 1947) is one of the largest and best-known museums in the country.

In Washington, D.C. nearly 100,000 people gather to protest the American war effort in Vietnam. More than 50,000 of the protesters marched to the Pentagon to ask for an end to the conflict. The protest was the most dramatic sign of waning U.S. support for President Lyndon Johnson's war in Vietnam. Polls taken in the summer of 1967 revealed that, for the first time, American support for the war had fallen below 50 percent

A massive explosion destroys the Los Angeles Times building in the city's downtown area, killing 21 and injuring many more. Since Los Angeles Times publisher Harrison Otis, a virulent opponent of unions, believed that the bomb was directed at him, he hired the nation's premier private detective, William J. Burns, to crack the case. In addition to printing numerous editorials against unions, Otis was the leader of the Merchants and Manufacturing Association, a powerful group of business owners with extensive political connections.

On this day in 1966, an avalanche of mud and rocks buries a school in Aberfan, Wales, killing 148 people, mostly young students. The elementary school was located below a hill where a mining operation dumped its waste.

The USS Constitution, a 44-gun U.S. Navy frigate built to fight Barbary pirates off the coast of Tripoli, is launched in Boston Harbor. The vessel performed commendably during the Barbary conflicts, and in 1805 a peace treaty with Tripoli was signed on the Constitution's deck.

An iconic figure in the history of jazz music who was instantly recognizable even to millions of non-jazz fans by his puffed-out cheeks and his trademark trumpet, with its horn bent upwards at a 45-degree angle, John Birks Gillespiebetter known as "Dizzy"was born on this day in 1917 in Cheraw, South Carolina.

On October 21, 1975, Boston Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk hits a homer off the left-field pole to beat the Cincinnati Reds in the sixth game of the World Series. The Sox went on to lose the championship, of course. Still, even 30 years later, the films and photos of Fisk urgently trying to wave the ball into fair territory provide some of the games most enduring and exciting images. As team president Larry Lucchino pointed out, "the appeal of baseball at its best was illustrated that night."

history.com

Mben · Status: Offline

PMM2008 wrote:
10/21
On this day in 1929, the 50th birthday of the incandescent light bulb, Henry Ford throws a big party to celebrate the dedication of his new Thomas Edison Institute in Dearborn, Michigan.

The light bulb is 131 years old today! Yippie!

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10/22

In a televised speech of extraordinary gravity, President John F. Kennedy announces that U.S. spy planes have discovered Soviet missile bases in Cuba. These missile sitesunder construction but nearing completionhoused medium-range missiles capable of striking a number of major cities in the United States, including Washington, D.C. Kennedy announced that he was ordering a naval "quarantine" of Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from transporting any more offensive weapons to the island and explained that the United States would not tolerate the existence of the missile sites currently in place. The president made it clear that America would not stop short of military action to end what he called a "clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace."

On October 22, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Highway Beautification Act, which attempts to limit billboards and other forms of outdoor advertising, as well as with junkyards and other unsightly roadside messes, along America's interstate highways. The act also encouraged "scenic enhancement" by funding local efforts to clean up and landscape the green spaces on either side of the roadways. "This bill will enrich our spirits and restore a small measure of our national greatness," Johnson said at the bill's signing ceremony. "Beauty belongs to all the people. And so long as I am President, what has been divinely given to nature will not be taken recklessly away by man."

Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd is shot by FBI agents in a cornfield in East Liverpool, Ohio. Floyd, who had been a hotly pursued fugitive for four years, used his last breath to deny his involvement in the infamous Kansas City Massacre, in which four officers were shot to death at a train station. He died shortly thereafter.

A coal mine explosion in Dawson, New Mexico, kills more than 250 workers on this day in 1913. A heroic rescue effort saved 23 others, but also cost two more people their lives.

The first parachute jump of note is made by André-Jacques Garnerin from a hydrogen balloon 3,200 feet above Paris.

On October 22, 1992, Red Barberthe legendary announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers, with a voice that one sportswriter called "a spoonful of sugar drifting through a glass of iced tea"dies. He was 84 years old. In an era when almost every major league baseball team had a distinct voiceMel Allen for the Yankees, Curt Gowdy for the Red Sox, Harry Caray for the CardsBarbers erudite-but-homespun Mississippi twang was the Dodgers. He pioneered a colorful, reportorial style of play-by-play narration that generations of broadcasters have imitated: He gave his listeners a scrupulously detailed but carefully nonpartisan version of the events on the field, so that they could feel like they were sitting in the stands themselves.

U.S. military personnel suffer their first casualties in the war when 13 Americans are wounded in three terrorist bombings of Military Assistance Advisory Group and U.S. Information Service installations in Saigon. The rising tide of guerrilla activity in South Vietnam reached an estimated 30 terrorist incidents by the end of the year and at least 75 local officials were assassinated or kidnapped in the last quarter of 1957.

On this day in 1952, the actor Jeff Goldblum, who will become known for his roles in such movies as The Big Chill, The Fly and Jurassic Park, is born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

history.com

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10/23

On this day in 1925, John William Carson, who will become known to most of America as the longtime host of the popular late-night TV program The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, is born in Corning, Iowa. As host of the highly rated Tonight Show, which aired on NBC from 1962 to 1992, Carson became a bona fide American institution and entertainment icon.

On October 23, 1993, Toronto Blue Jay Joe Carter does what every kid dreams ofhe wins the World Series for his team by whacking a ninth-inning home run over the SkyDomes left-field wall. It was the first time the World Series had ended with a home run since Pittsburghs Bill Mazeroski homered to break a 9-9 tie with the Yankees in the seventh game of the 1960 series, and it was the first time in baseball history that a team won the championship with a come-from-behind home run.

On October 23, 1921, in the French town of Chalons-sur-Marne, an American officer selects the body of the first "Unknown Soldier" to be honored among the approximately 77,000 United States servicemen killed on the Western Front during World War I.

On this day, a suicide bomber drives a truck filled with 2,000 pounds of explosives into a U.S. Marine Corps barracks at the Beirut International Airport. The explosion killed 220 Marines, 18 sailors and three soldiers. A few minutes after that bomb went off, a second bomber drove into the basement of the nearby French paratroopers' barracks, killing 58 more people. Four months after the bombing, American forces left Lebanon without retaliating.

On this day in 1989, 23 people die in a series of explosions sparked by an ethylene leak at a factory in Pasadena, Texas. The blasts, which took place at a Phillips Petroleum Company plant, were caused by inadequate safety procedures.

history.com

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10/25

Pablo Picasso, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, is born in Malaga, Spain.

President Ronald Reagan, citing the threat posed to American nationals on the Caribbean nation of Grenada by that nation's Marxist regime, orders the Marines to invade and secure their safety. There were nearly 1,000 Americans in Grenada at the time, many of them students at the island's medical school. In little more than a week, Grenada's government was overthrown.

Susan Smith reports that she was carjacked in South Carolina by a man who took her two small children in the backseat of her car. Although authorities immediately began searching for three-year-old Michael and one-year-old Alex, they could find no trace of them or of Smith's car. After nine days of intense national media attention, Smith finally confessed that the carjacking tale was false and that she had driven her Mazda into the John D. Long Lake in order to drown her children.

On October 25, 1980, AC/DC earn their first pop Top 40 hit with "You Shook Me All Night Long."

The White House orders a suspension of bombing above the 20th parallel as a signal of U.S. approval of recent North Vietnamese concessions at the secret peace talks in Paris.

On this day in 1944, during the Battle of the Leyte Gulf, the Japanese deploy kamikaze ("divine wind") suicide bombers against American warships for the first time. It will prove costly--to both sides.

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Mben · Status: Offline

PMM2008 wrote:
10/25

On October 25, 1980, AC/DC earn their first pop Top 40 hit with "You Shook Me All Night Long."
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Rock On AC/DC!!

PMM2008 · Status: Offline

FINALLY......some good history.... lol

PMM2008 · Status: Offline

On this day in 1881, the Earp brothers face off against the Clanton-McLaury gang in a legendary shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.

At Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda, California, Dr. Leonard L. Bailey performs the first baboon-to-human heart transplant, replacing a 14-day-old infant girl's defective heart with the healthy, walnut-sized heart of a young baboon

The Erie Canal opens, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River. Governor DeWitt Clinton of New York, the driving force behind the project, led the opening ceremonies and rode the canal boat Seneca Chief from Buffalo to New York City.

Talent, good looks and connections in high placesthat's a combination that might spell success for almost any aspiring pop star, and Whitney Houston had all three. Both beautiful and talented, Houston was the daughter of soul singer Cissy Houston and niece of pop star Dionne Warwick, and she parlayed her hereditary gifts and the professional nurturing of her well-connected family into superstardom of a kind rarely matched before or since. A near-unknown prior to the release of her debut album Whitney Houston, she shot to stardom when her first chart-topping hit, "Saving All My Love For You," hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on this day in 1985.

On this day in 2001, President George W. Bush signs the Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law drawn up in response to the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

In the wee hours of the morning on October 26, 1986, Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner lets an easy ground ball dribble between his legs and roll down the right-field line. It was just a routine fielding error, but it was a disaster for the Boston Red Sox: It was the 10th inning of the sixth game of the World Series; the game was tied; and, thanks to Buckners mistake, the runner on third had time to score, winning the game for the Mets and forcing a tiebreaking seventhwhich, in the final innings, the Mets also won. Even though Game 6 was tied because Bostons pitchers couldnt hold a two-run, two-out lead, and even though the Sox managed to fritter away a three-run lead in Game 7, people still blame Buckner for losing the championship. "I cant remember the last time I missed a ball like that," he said, "but Ill remember this one."

A fire breaks out on board the 42,000-ton U.S. aircraft carrier Oriskany in the Gulf of Tonkin. The accident occurred when a locker filled with night illumination magnesium flares burst into flame. The fire spread quickly through most of the ship, resulting in 35 officers and eight enlisted men killed and a further 16 injured. The loss of life would have been much higher except for the valor of crewmen who pushed 300 500-pound, 1,000-pound, and 2,000-pound bombs that lay within reach of the flames on the hangar deck overboard. The fire destroyed four fighter-bombers and two helicopters, but it was brought under control after three hours. The fallen were returned to the United States for burial.

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trishobryan · Status: Offline

Wow, this is quite a day for history, but very well-rounded! Something for everyone, lol.
Really cool Pam!!!

PMM2008 · Status: Offline

Thanks for reading Trish..... roll

I appreciate it very much....

Pam

jheckrocks · Status: Offline

Yeah, and I bet your poor kids are hiding too! With Chucky? Scary man/woman! lol confuse

MommyMachine · Status: Offline

huh?

PMM2008 · Status: Offline

10/27...

At 2:35 on the afternoon of October 27, 1904, New York City Mayor George McClellan takes the controls on the inaugural run of the city's innovative new rapid transit system: the subway.

On October 27, 2006, the last Ford Taurus rolls off the assembly line in Hapeville, Georgia. The keys to the silver car went to 85-year-old Truett Cathy, the founder of the Chick-fil-A fast-food franchise, who took it straight to his company's headquarters in Atlanta and added it to an elaborate display that included 19 other cars, including one of the earliest Fords. "I do have this disease of collecting cars," Cathy told a reporter. "I was very sorry [the workers at the Ford plant] lost their jobs," he said, but "since I was gonna get the keys, I was glad for that."

Complicated and tension-filled negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union finally result in a plan to end the two-week-old Cuban Missile Crisis. A frightening period in which nuclear holocaust seemed imminent began to come to an end.

An unusually large avalanche buries homes and kills 20 people in Flateyri, Iceland, on this day in 1995. This disaster was the second deadly avalanche in the region that year

Theodore Roosevelt, the future 26th president of the United States, is born in New York City. A dynamic and energetic politician, Theodore Roosevelt is credited with creating the modern presidency.

The U.S. Justice Department announces that the U.S. prison population has topped one million for the first time in American history. The figure1,012,851 men and women were in state and federal prisonsdid not even include local prisons, where an estimated 500,000 prisoners were held, usually for short periods. The recent increase, due to tougher sentencing laws, made the United States second only to Russia in the world for incarceration rates.

From the late 1950s to the mid 1960s, it was common for original cast recordings of successful Broadway musicals to find their way up near the top of the pop album charts. Hit shows like West Side Story, The Sound of Music and Funny Girl, among several others, all spun off million-selling albums during this era, but by the late 1960s, the pop album charts had been decisively taken over by rock. It was in this environment that a young British composer and his lyricist partner managed to achieve a massive success by precisely reversing the old formula. On this day in 1970, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, who would go on to become the most successful composer-lyricist team in modern theater history, released a double-LP "concept" album called Jesus Christ Superstar, which only later would become the smash-hit Broadway musical of the same name.

On this day in 1873, a De Kalb, Illinois, farmer named Joseph Glidden submits an application to the U.S. Patent Office for his clever new design for a fencing wire with sharp barbs, an invention that will forever change the face of the American West.

On October 27, 2004, the Boston Red Sox win the World Series for the first time since 1918, finally vanquishing the so-called "Curse of the Bambino" that had plagued them for 86 years. "This is for anyone who has ever rooted for the Red Sox," the teams GM told reporters after the game. "This is for all of Red Sox Nation, past and present."

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10/28

On this day in 1965, construction is completed on the Gateway Arch, a spectacular 630-foot-high parabola of stainless steel marking the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial on the waterfront of St. Louis, Missouri.

On this day, Duluth, Minnesota mayor Gary Doty cuts the ribbon at the mouth of the brand-new, 1,480-footlong Leif Erickson Tunnel on Interstate 35. With the opening of the tunnel, that highwaywhich stretches 1,593 miles, from Mexico all the way to Canadawas finished at last. As a result, the federal government announced, the Interstate Highway System itself was 99.7 percent complete.

The Cuban Missile crisis comes to a close as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agrees to remove Russian missiles from Cuba in exchange for a promise from the United States to respect Cuba's territorial sovereignty. This ended nearly two weeks of anxiety and tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union that came close to provoking a nuclear conflict. The consequences of the crisis were many and varied. Relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union were on shaky ground for some time after Khrushchev's removal of the missiles, as Fidel Castro accused the Russians of backing down from the Americans and deserting the Cuban revolution. European allies of the United States were also angered, not because of the U.S. stance during the crisis, but because the Kennedy administration kept them virtually in the dark about negotiations that might have led to an atomic war.

The second so-called "Apache trial" begins for rock-and-roller Chuck Berry. Although his earlier conviction for transporting a minor across state lines for immoral purposes in violation of the Mann Act was thrown out on appeal, the prosecution decided to retry Berry.

The Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States, is dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland.

Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto. The Volstead Act provided for the enforcement of the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, also known as the Prohibition Amendment.

According to an ABC news report, it was none other than the pop icon Prince himself who happened upon a 29-second home video of a toddler cavorting to a barely audible background soundtrack of his 1984 hit "Let's Go Crazy" and subsequently instigated a high-profile legal showdown involving YouTube, the Universal Music Group and a Pennsylvania housewife named Stephanie Lenz. Like the lawsuits that eventually shut down Napster, the case involved a piece of federal legislation that has helped establish a legal minefield surrounding the use of digital music in the age of the Internet. That legislation, called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on this day in 1998.

On October 28, 1922, hundreds of young men gather around radios in Western Union offices, speakeasies and a Princeton University physics lab to hear the first-ever cross-country broadcast of a college football game. Telephone lines carried a play-by-play of the matchupbetween Coach Amos Alonso Staggs formidable Chicago Maroons (frequent Big Ten champs in those days) and the well-regarded Princeton Tigersfrom Chicagos Stagg Field to radio receivers up and down the East Coast. After Princetons unlikely victory, her fans were just as unruly as they would have been if theyd seen the game for themselves: They thronged the towns main street, lit bonfires and stole into Nassau Hall to ring the Universitys bell, a celebration usually reserved for victories over Princetons Big Three rivals Harvard and Yale.

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10/29

Nearly four decades after he became the first American to orbit the Earth, Senator John Hershel Glenn, Jr., is launched into space again as a payload specialist aboard the space shuttle Discovery. At 77 years of age, Glenn was the oldest human ever to travel in space. During the nine-day mission, he served as part of a NASA study on health problems associated with aging.

Duane Allman, a slide guitarist and the leader of the Allman Brothers Band, is killed on this day in 1971 when he loses control of his motorcycle and drives into the side of a flatbed truck in Macon, Georgia. He was 24 years old. After Allman's death, his band continued to tour and record and it is still together today. In 2004, Rolling Stonedeclared that the Allman Brothers were the 52nd-greatest rock band of all time.

Killer smog continues to hover over Donora, Pennsylvania, on this day in 1948. Over a five-day period, the smog killed about 20 people and made thousands more seriously ill.

Black Tuesday hits Wall Street as investors trade 16,410,030 shares on the New York Stock Exchange in a single day. Billions of dollars were lost, wiping out thousands of investors, and stock tickers ran hours behind because the machinery could not handle the tremendous volume of trading. In the aftermath of Black Tuesday, America and the rest of the industrialized world spiraled downward into the Great Depression.

On this day in 1947, the actor Richard Dreyfuss, who will rise to fame in Hollywood in the 1970s with starring roles in such movies as American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and The Goodbye Girl, is born in Brooklyn, New York.

On this day in 1858, the first store opens in a small frontier town in Colorado Territory that a month later will take the name of Denver in a shameless ploy to curry favor with Kansas Territorial Gover nor James W. Denver.

On October 29, 1948, featherweight boxers Sandy Saddler and Willie Pep meet for the first time in the ring at Madison Square Garden. Saddler, a strong puncher, knocked out the diminutive Pep in the fourth round. The two fought four times in allSaddler won threeand the matchups were increasingly bitter. The last one, in 1951, disintegrated into such a melee that both men were suspended from boxing for months.

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10/30

Orson Welles causes a nationwide panic with his broadcast of "War of the Worlds"a realistic radio dramatization of a Martian invasion of Earth. Orson Welles was only 23 years old when his Mercury Theater company decided to update H.G. Wells' 19th-century science fiction novel War of the Worlds for national radio. Despite his age, Welles had been in radio for several years, most notably as the voice of "The Shadow" in the hit mystery program of the same name. "War of the Worlds" was not planned as a radio hoax, and Welles had little idea of the havoc it would cause.

On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress appoints seven members to serve on an administrative naval committee tasked with the acquisition, outfitting and manning of a naval fleet to be used in defense against the British. Almost two weeks earlier, on October 13, 1775, Congress had authorized the construction and arming of vessels for the country's first navy.

On October 30, 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower formally approves National Security Council Paper No. 162/2 (NSC 162/2). The top secret document made clear that America's nuclear arsenal must be maintained and expanded to meet the communist threat. It also made clear the connection between military spending and a sound American economy.

Oakland, California, enacts a law against opium, morphine, and cocaine. The new regulations allowed only doctors to prescribe these drugs, which, until then, had been legal for cures or pain relief. Reflecting a general trend at the time, Oakland was only one of the jurisdictions across the country that began to pass criminal laws against the use of mind-altering substances.

On this day in 1991, the so-called "perfect storm" hits the North Atlantic producing remarkably large waves along the New England and Canadian coasts. Over the next several days, the storm spread its fury over the ocean off the coast of Canada. The fishing boat Andrea Gail and its six-member crew were lost in the storm. The disaster spawned the best-selling book The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger and a blockbuster Hollywood movie of the same name.

On this day in 1945, Henry Winkler, a classically trained actor who will become best known for his role as one of the most popular TV characters of the 1970sthe leather-clad ladies man Arthur Fonzie Fonzarelli on the long-running sitcom Happy Daysis born in New York City. From 1974 to 1984, Winkler played The Fonz, a motorcycle-riding auto mechanic whose catchphrases included Heyyy and Sit on it and who was considered by his many fans to be the epitome of cool.

On this day in 1864, the town of Helena, Montana, is founded by four gold miners who struck it rich at the appropriately named "Last Chance Gulch."

On this day in 1735, John Adams, the son of a farmer and a descendant of Plymouth Rock pilgrims, is born in Braintree, Massachusetts. He enrolled in Harvard University at16 and went on to teach school and study law before becoming America's second president.

On October 30, 1974, 32-year-old Muhammad Ali becomes the heavyweight champion of the world for the second time when he knocks out 25-year-old champ George Foreman in the eighth round of the "Rumble in the Jungle," a match in Kinshasa, Zaire. Seven years before, Ali had lost his title when the government accused him of draft-dodging and the boxing commission took away his license. His victory in Zaire made him only the second dethroned champ in history to regain his belt.

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10/31....

On October 31, 1957, the Japanese car company Toyota establishes its U.S. headquarters in an old Rambler dealership in Hollywood, California. Toyota executives hoped to saturate the American second-car market with their small and relatively inexpensive Toyopet Crown sedans. Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. sold its first Toyopet at the beginning of 1958; by the end of the year, it had sold 286 more, along with one behemoth Land Cruiser. Toyota cars were slow to catch on in the United Statesit took until the mid-1960s for the company to gain a respectable chunk of the American marketbut when they did, they did so with a bang. In 1972, thanks in large part to its success in the United States, Toyota sold its 1 millionth car, and three years later Toyota became the best-selling import brand in the United States.

Hurricane Hattie strikes Belize on this day in 1961, killing more than 400 people and leaving thousands homeless. Almost half of Belize City was demolished by the storm

Harry Houdini, the most celebrated magician and escape artist of the 20th century, dies of peritonitis in a Detroit hospital. Twelve days before, Houdini had been talking to a group of students after a lecture in Montreal when he commented on the strength of his stomach muscles and their ability to withstand hard blows. Suddenly, one of the students punched Houdini twice in the stomach. The magician hadn't had time to prepare, and the blows ruptured his appendix. He fell ill on the train to Detroit, and, after performing one last time, was hospitalized. Doctors operated on him, but to no avail. The burst appendix poisoned his system, and on October 31 he died.

On this day in 1993, the 23-year-old actor River Phoenix, who appeared in such films as Stand by Me and My Own Private Idaho, dies of a drug overdose outside a Hollywood nightclub. At the time of his death, Phoenix was considered one of the most promising actors of his generation and had received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his performance in 1988s Running on Empty.

On this day, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle, is published. The book was the first collection of Holmes stories, which Conan Doyle had been publishing in magazines since 1887.

In the autumn of 1963, Beatlemania was a raging epidemic in Britain, and it was rapidly spreading across the European continent. But in the United States, where the likes of Bobby Vinton and Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs sat atop the pop charts, John, Paul, George and Ringo could have walked through Grand Central Terminal completely unnoticed. It wasn't Grand Central that the Beatles were trying to walk through on this day in 1963, howeverit was Heathrow Airport, London, where they'd just returned from a hugely successful tour of Sweden. Also at Heathrow that particular day, after a talent-scouting tour of Europe, was the American television impresario Ed Sullivan. The pandemonium that Sullivan witnessed as he attempted to catch his flight to New York would play a pivotal role in making the British Invasion possible.

On this day in 1864, anxious to have support of the Republican-dominated Nevada Territory for President Abraham Lincoln's reelection, the U.S. Congress quickly admits Nevada as the 36th state in the Union.

On October 31, 1950, 21-year-old Earl Lloyd becomes the first African-American to play in an NBA game when he takes the court in the season opener for the Washington Capitols.

Halloween, celebrated each year on October 31, is a mix of ancient Celtic practices, Catholic and Roman religious rituals and European folk traditions that blended together over time to create the holiday we know today. Straddling the line between fall and winter, plenty and paucity and life and death, Halloween is a time of celebration and superstition. Halloween has long been thought of as a day when the dead can return to the earth, and ancient Celts would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off these roaming ghosts. The Celtic holiday of Samhain, the Catholic Hallowmas period of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day and the Roman festival of Feralia all influenced the modern holiday of Halloween. In the 19th century, Halloween began to lose its religious connotation, becoming a more secular community-based children's holiday. Although the superstitions and beliefs surrounding Halloween may have evolved over the years, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people can still look forward to parades, costumes and sweet treats to usher in the winter season.

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-- Edited by PMM2008 on Sunday 31st of October 2010 08:28:29 AM

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11/01

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, one of Italian artist Michelangelo's finest works, is exhibited to the public for the first time.

On this day in 1930, President Herbert Hoover turns a telegraphic "golden key" in the White House to mark the opening of the 5,160-foot-long Detroit-Windsor Tunnel between the U.S. city of Detroit, Michigan, and the Canadian city of Windsor, Ontario. The tunnel opened to regular traffic on November 3. The first passenger car it carried was a 1929 Studebaker.

The United States detonates the world's first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific. The test gave the United States a short-lived advantage in the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Following the successful Soviet detonation of an atomic device in September 1949, the United States accelerated its program to develop the next stage in atomic weaponry, a thermonuclear bomb. Popularly known as the hydrogen bomb, this new weapon was approximately 1,000 times more powerful than conventional nuclear devices. Opponents of development of the hydrogen bomb included J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the fathers of the atomic bomb. He and others argued that little would be accomplished except the speeding up of the arms race, since it was assumed that the Soviets would quickly follow suit.The opponents were correct in their assumptions. The Soviet Union exploded a thermonuclear device the following year and by the late 1970s, seven nations had constructed hydrogen bombs. The nuclear arms race had taken a fearful step forward.

On this day, Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempt to assassinate President Harry S. Truman at the Blair House in Washington, D.C. Truman escaped unscathed.

A devastating earthquake hits Lisbon, Portugal, killing as many as 50,000 people, on this day in 1755. The city was virtually rebuilt from scratch following the widespread destruction.

Fans by the millions pledged their allegiance to Boston back when the group's debut album and their massive hit single, "More Than A Feeling," ruled the airwaves in America's bicentennial year. But then the once-great nation of Boston fans waitedand waitedwhile their favorite band managed just one more album over the next 10 years. Not one to be rushed, producer and lead guitarist Tom Scholz, an MIT-educated perfectionist, tinkered with Boston's third album for the better part of a decade before finally releasing it in 1986. Late though it may have been in coming, Boston's Third Stage blasted straight to the top of the pop album charts, reaching the #1 spot on the Billboard 200 on this day in 1986.

On this day in 1800, President John Adams, in the last year of his only term as president, moved into the newly constructed President's House, the original name for what is known today as the White House.

On November 1, 1959, Montreal Canadien Jacques Plante becomes the first NHL goaltender to wear a full facemask. Montreal Maroon Clint Benedict had worn a leather half-mask for a brief time in 1930, after an errant puck smashed his nose and cheekbonebut it blocked his vision, he said, and he took it off after only a few games. By contrast, Plante wore his mask from then on. A few seasons later, his idea began to catch on, and soon almost every keeper in the league wore a mask.

On this day in 1941, President Roosevelt announces that the U.S. Coast Guard will now be under the direction of the U.S. Navy, a transition of authority usually reserved only for wartime.

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11/02

The Hughes Flying Boatthe largest aircraft ever builtis piloted by designer Howard Hughes on its first and only flight. Built with laminated birch and spruce, the massive wooden aircraft had a wingspan longer than a football field and was designed to carry more than 700 men to battle.

Engineer Andrew Riker delivers the first four-cylinder, gas-powered Locomobilea $4,000, 12-horsepower Model Cto a buyer in New York City on this day in 1902. The Locomobile Company had been known for building heavy, powerful steam cars, but by the turn of the century it was clear that the future of the automobileand thus of the Locomobilelay in the internal-combustion engine. Until it went out of business in 1929, the company built elegant, luxurious touring-cars and streamlined racers for wealthy patrons. A Locomobile, ads crowed, was the "Best Built Car in America."

On this day in 1982, a truck explodes in the Salang Tunnel in Afghanistan, killing an estimated 3,000 people, mostly Soviet soldiers traveling to Kabul.

In the greatest upset in presidential election history, Democratic incumbent Harry S. Truman defeats his Republican challenger, Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York, by just over two million popular votes. In the days preceding the vote, political analysts and polls were so behind Dewey that on election night, long before all the votes were counted, the Chicago Tribune published an early edition with the banner headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN."

President Ronald Reagan signs a bill in the White House Rose Garden designating a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr., to be observed on the third Monday of January.

Almost from its beginnings, television showed a remarkable ability to influence the pop charts, and not only by giving exposure to popular musical artists on programs like American Bandstand and The Ed Sullivan Show. Many television programs also launched legitimate pop hits in the form of their theme songssongs like "The Peter Gunn Theme," "Welcome Back" and "Theme from S.W.A.T." But prior to 1985, no television program had ever launched a smash-hit, movie-style soundtrack album. The first one to do so was NBC's Miami Vice, a show that not only altered the landscapes of television and fashion, but also sent the soundtrack album of the same name to the top of the Billboard 200 on this day in 1985a spot it would hold for the next 11 weeks

On November 2, 1986, Norwegian distance runner Grete Waitz wins her eighth New York City marathon. She finished the 26-mile, 385-yard course in 2:28.6, more than a mile ahead of the second- and third-place women in the race. Waitz had won her first marathon in New York in 1978setting a world record--and she won the NYC marathon again in 1979, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1984 and 1985. In 1988, she won it for the ninth timesomething no runner had ever done in any marathon.

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11/03

On this day in 1964, residents of the District of Columbia cast their ballots in a presidential election for the first time. The passage of the 23rd Amendment in 1961 gave citizens of the nation's capital the right to vote for a commander in chief and vice president. They went on to help Democrat Lyndon Johnson defeat Republican Barry Goldwater in 1964, the next presidential election.

In one of the most crushing victories in the history of U.S. presidential elections, incumbent Lyndon Baines Johnson defeats Republican challenger Barry Goldwater, Sr. With over 60 percent of the popular vote, Johnson turned back the conservative senator from Arizona to secure his first full term in office after succeeding to the presidency after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963.

On this day in 1974, a fire rages out of control in a hotel in South Korea, killing 88 people, most of whom were enjoying a late-night party in a club on the hotel's top floor.

With the support of the U.S. government, Panama issues a declaration of independence from Colombia. The revolution was engineered by a Panamanian faction backed by the Panama Canal Company, a French-U.S. corporation that hoped to connect the Atlantic and Pacific oceans with a waterway across the Isthmus of Panama

The Soviet Union launches the first animal into spacea dog name Laikaaboard the Sputnik 2 spacecraft.

On this day in 1976, Carrie, a horror film starring Sissy Spacek and based on Stephen Kings 1974 best-selling first novel, opens in theaters around the United States. Directed by Brian De Palma, the film tells the story of high school outcast Carrie White, who uses her telekinetic powers to exact a violent revenge on her teenage tormenters on prom night. In addition to Spacek, who received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance in the title role, the films cast included Piper Laurie, Amy Irving, William Katt, Nancy Allen and a then relatively unknown John Travolta. Carrie became a classic of the horror genre and is considered by many critics to be one of the best big-screen adaptations of Stephen Kings work.

On this day in 1948, the Chicago Tribune jumps the gun and mistakenly declares New York Governor Thomas Dewey the winner of his presidential race with incumbent Harry S. Truman in a front-page headline: "Dewey Defeats Truman."

On this day in 1941, the Combine Japanese Fleet receive Top-Secret Order No. 1: In 34 days time, Pearl Harbor is to be bombed, along with Mayala, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines.

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Mben · Status: Offline

I love "Carrie"! You know that famous scene where she is on stage and the bucket of ................ well, you all know! lol There are some scenes from classics that you will never forget.

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11/04.....

On this day in 1979, hundreds of Iranian students storm the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking more than 60 American hostages. The students, supporters of the conservative Muslim cleric Ayatollah Khomeini, were demanding the return of Iran's deposed leader, the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi, who had fled to Egypt in January 1979 and by November was receiving cancer treatment in the United States. After the student takeover, President Jimmy Carter ordered a complete embargo of Iranian oil.

The Democrats gain seats in Northern elections, especially at the state level. President Lincoln's Republican Party maintained control of the House of Representatives and gained seats in the Senatea sign of endorsement of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation.

Arnold Rothstein, New York's most notorious gambler, is shot and killed during a poker game at the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan. After finding Rothstein bleeding profusely at the service entrance of the hotel, police followed his trail of blood back to a suite where a group of men were playing cards. Reportedly, Rothstein had nothing good in his final hand. From an early age, Rothstein had a talent for playing numbers. As a teenager, he built a small fortune gambling in craps and poker games, and by age 20 he owned and operated his own casino. Rothstein became a legendary figure in New York because of his unparalleled winning streak in bets and card games. However, it is believed that he usually won by fixing the events. The most famous instance of this was in 1919 when the World Series was fixed. Abe Attell, a friend and employee of Rothstein, paid some of the key players on the Chicago White Sox to throw the games. When the scandal was uncovered, Rothstein fiercely denied any involvement to a grand jury and escaped indictment. In private, however, Rothstein never denied his role, preferring to enjoy the outlaw image. In the 1920's, Rothstein began purchasing nightclubs, racehorses, and brothels. He had such a formidable presence in the criminal underworld that he was reportedly once paid half a million dollars to mediate a gang war. As Rothstein's fortune grew to an estimated $50 million, he became a high-level loan shark, liberally padding the pockets of police and judges to evade the law. He is fabled to have carried around $200,000 in pocket money at all times. Rothstein's luck finally ran out in 1928 when he encountered an unprecedented losing streak. At a poker game in September with "Hump" McManus, "Nigger Nate" Raymond, and "Titanic" Thompson, Rothstein lost a cool $320,000 and then refused to pay on the grounds that the game had been rigged. Two months later, McManus invited Rothstein to play what would be his final poker game. Asked who had shot him before dying, Rothstein reportedly put his finger to his lips, keeping the gangsters' code of silence. McManus was later tried and acquitted of the crime.

British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discover a step leading to the tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.When Carter first arrived in Egypt in 1891, most of the ancient Egyptian tombs had been discovered, though the little-known King Tutankhamen, who had died when he was 18, was still unaccounted for. After World War I, Carter began an intensive search for "King Tut's Tomb," finally finding steps to the burial room hidden in the debris near the entrance of the nearby tomb of King Ramses VI in the Valley of the Kings. On November 26, 1922, Carter and fellow archaeologist Lord Carnarvon entered the interior chambers of the tomb, finding them miraculously intact.Thus began a monumental excavation process in which Carter carefully explored the four-room tomb over several years, uncovering an incredible collection of several thousand objects. The most splendid architectural find was a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, which was made out of solid gold, was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for more than 3,000 years. Most of these treasures are now housed in the Cairo Museum.

On this day in 1990, Dances with Wolves, a film about an American Civil War-era soldier and a group of Sioux Indians that stars Kevin Costner and also marks his directorial debut, premieres in Los Angeles. The film, which opened across the United States on November 21, 1990, was a surprise box-office success and earned 12 Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor for Costner. Dances with Wolves took home seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, and solidified Costners place on Hollywoods A-list.

Disco was at the absolute zenith of its popularity in 1978, and with the likes of even Barbra Streisand, Frankie Valli and Rod Stewart falling under its intoxicating spell, the party showed no signs of letting up. But then along came Anne Murray, a Canadian balladeer whose sincere pop-country sensibility offered a rather stark musical counterpoint to the prevailing mood. In a year generally associated with artists like Chic and Donna Summer, Anne Murray achieved the biggest hit of her long pop career when "You Needed Me" hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on this day in 1978.

On this day in 1842, struggling lawyer Abraham Lincoln marries Mary Anne Todd, a Kentucky native, at her sister's home in Springfield, Illinois.

On November 4, 2001, just two outs away from their fourth championship in a row, the New York Yankees lose to the Arizona Diamondbacks in the seventh game of a hard-fought World Series. "You saw the light at the end of the tunnel," Yankee reliever Mike Stanton lamented after the game, "and it was taken away."

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GO DIAMONDBACKS!!! This was a great day in history for the state of Arizona! Any day the Spank Me's don't win or even make it to the World Series is a GREAT day in history!!! tongue

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British archaeologist Howard Carter and his workmen discover a step leading to the tomb of King Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.When Carter first arrived in Egypt in 1891, most of the ancient Egyptian tombs had been discovered, though the little-known King Tutankhamen, who had died when he was 18, was still unaccounted for. After World War I, Carter began an intensive search for "King Tut's Tomb," finally finding steps to the burial room hidden in the debris near the entrance of the nearby tomb of King Ramses VI in the Valley of the Kings. On November 26, 1922, Carter and fellow archaeologist Lord Carnarvon entered the interior chambers of the tomb, finding them miraculously intact.Thus began a monumental excavation process in which Carter carefully explored the four-room tomb over several years, uncovering an incredible collection of several thousand objects. The most splendid architectural find was a stone sarcophagus containing three coffins nested within each other. Inside the final coffin, which was made out of solid gold, was the mummy of the boy-king Tutankhamen, preserved for more than 3,000 years. Most of these treasures are now housed in the Cairo Museum.

This is what I found interesting for today. I have watched many programs on the subject, and have always kept up to date with the new information when it becomes available. Can you say ...."Solid Gold?" Wow..... This guy went out in style. lol.

Thanks as always for reading everyday Mben... roll

Pam

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11/05

On this day in 1994, George Foreman, age 45, becomes boxing's oldest heavyweight champion when he defeats 26-year-old Michael Moorer in the 10th round of their WBA fight in Las Vegas. More than 12,000 spectators at the MGM Grand Hotel watched Foreman dethrone Moorer, who went into the fight with a 35-0 record. Foreman dedicated his upset win to "all my buddies in the nursing home and all the guys in jail."

On November 5, 1895, Rochester attorney George Selden wins U.S. Patent No. 549,160 for an "improved road engine" powered by a "liquid-hydrocarbon engine of the compression type." With that, as far as the government was concerned, George Selden had invented the car--though he had never built a single one.

Winning one of the closest elections in U.S. history, Republican challenger Richard Nixon defeats Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Because of the strong showing of third-party candidate George Wallace, neither Nixon nor Humphrey received more than 50 percent of the popular vote; Nixon beat Humphrey by less than 500,000 votes. Nixon campaigned on a platform designed to reach the "silent majority" of middle class and working class Americans. He promised to "bring us together again," and many Americans, weary after years of antiwar and civil rights protests, were happy to hear of peace returning to their streets. Foreign policy was also a major factor in the election. Humphrey was saddled with a Democratic foreign policy that led to what appeared to be absolute futility and agony in Vietnam. Nixon promised to find a way to "peace with honor" in Vietnam, though he was never entirely clear about how this was to be accomplished. The American people, desperate to find a way out of the Vietnam quagmire, were apparently ready to give the Republican an opportunity to make good on his claim.During his presidency, Nixon oversaw some dramatic changes in U.S. Cold War foreign policy, most notably his policy of detente with the Soviet Union and his 1972 visit to communist China. His promise to bring peace with honor in Vietnam, however, was more difficult to accomplish. American troops were not withdrawn until 1973, and South Vietnam fell to communist forces in 1975.

On this day in 1991, Tropical Storm Thelma causes severe and massive floods in the Philippines, killing nearly 3,000 people. It is the second major disaster of the year for the island nation, as it comes on the heels of the violent June 12 eruption of Mount Pinatubo.

On this day in 2007, members of the Writers Guild of America, East, and Writers Guild of America, Westlabor organizations representing television, film and radio writersgo on strike in Los Angeles and New York after negotiations break down with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), a trade group that represents TV and film producers in the United States, including CBS, NBC Universal, Walt Disney Company, Paramount Pictures, News Corp., Sony Pictures Entertainment, MGM and Warner Brothers. The strike caused production to shut down on more than 60 TV shows and resulted in a loss of $3 billion, by some estimates, to the Los Angeles economy alone.

On this day in 1940, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is re-elected for an unprecedented third term as president of the United States.

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11/06....

On this day in 1962, the United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution condemning South Africa's racist apartheid policies and calling on all its members to end economic and military relations with the country.

On this day in 1789, Pope Pius VI appoints John Carroll bishop of Baltimore, making him the first Catholic bishop in the United States.

On November 6, 1998, President Bill Clinton declares that part of Detroit will become an "Automobile National Heritage Area." The designation restricted land use and drew attention to what Michigan Congressman John Dingell called "the automobile's contribution to our history and economic strength and the role of organized labor in that history."

On this day in 1977, the Toccoa Falls Dam in Georgia gives way and 39 people die in the resulting flood.

Abraham Lincoln is elected the 16th president of the United States over a deeply divided Democratic Party, becoming the first Republican to win the presidency. Lincoln received only 40 percent of the popular vote but handily defeated the three other candidates: Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge, Constitutional Union candidate John Bell, and Northern Democrat Stephen Douglas, a U.S. senator for Illinois.

On this day, the Spanish conquistador Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is shipwrecked on a low sandy island off the coast of Texas. Starving, dehydrated, and desperate, he is the first European to set foot on the soil of the future Lone Star state.

On November 6, 1995, the owner of the Cleveland Browns football team announces that he is moving the team to Baltimore. The team owner, Art Modell, had purchased the Browns in October 1960 for $4 million. He loved his team and the fans, he said, but Cleveland Stadium was a mess and the city, after building a new baseball stadium and a new basketball arena, didnt seem inclined to fix it. "They took me for granted," Modell said, "until I had to pull the trigger."

On this day in 1906, President Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt embarks on a 17-day trip to Panama and Puerto Rico, becoming the first president to make an official diplomatic tour outside of the continental United States.

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11/07

On this day in 1991, basketball legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson stuns the world by announcing his sudden retirement from the Los Angeles Lakers, after testing positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. At the time, many Americans viewed AIDS as a gay white man's disease. Johnson (1959- ), who is African American and heterosexual, was one of the first sports stars to go public about his HIV-positive status.

On November 7, 1965, a drag racer from Ohio named Art Arfons sets the land-speed recordan average 576.553 miles per hourat Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats. (Record speeds are the average of two runs, one out and one back, across a measured mile.) Arfons drove a jet-powered machine, known as the Green Monster, which he'd built himself out of surplus parts. Between 1964 and 1965a period that one reporter called "The Bonneville Jet Wars" because so many drivers were competing for the titleArfons held the land-speed record three different times. He lost it for good on November 15, 1965, when a Californian named Craig Breedlove coaxed his car, the Spirit of America, to an average speed of 600.601 miles per hour.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapses due to high winds on this day in 1940.

At a remote spot called Craigellachie in the mountains of British Columbia, the last spike is driven into Canada's first transcontinental railway.

In New York, former Manhattan borough president David Dinkins, a Democrat, is elected New York City's first African American mayor, while in Virginia, Lieutenant Governor Douglas Wilder, also a Democrat, becomes the first elected African American state governor in American history.

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11/08.....

On this day in 1895, physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen (1845-1923) becomes the first person to observe X-rays, a significant scientific advancement that would ultimately benefit a variety of fields, most of all medicine, by making the invisible visible. Rontgen's discovery occurred accidentally in his Wurzburg, Germany, lab, where he was testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass when he noticed a glow coming from a nearby chemically coated screen. He dubbed the rays that caused this glow X-rays because of their unknown nature.

On this day in 1962, the famous Ford Rotunda stands in Dearborn, Michigan for the last time: the next day, it is destroyed in a massive fire. Some 1.5 million people visited the Rotunda each year, making it the fifth most popular tourist attraction in the U.S. (behind Niagara Falls, Smokey Mountain National Park, the Smithsonian, and the Lincoln Memorial).

Northern voters overwhelmingly endorse the leadership and policies of President Lincoln when they elect him to a second term. With his reelection, the fate of the Confederacy was sealed and any hope for a negotiated settlement vanished.

John F. Kennedy becomes the youngest man ever to be elected president of the United States, narrowly beating Republican Vice President Richard Nixon. He was also the first Catholic to become president.

The storm that would become Hurricane Gordon forms in the Gulf of Mexico east of Costa Rica on this day in 1994. Although it spent far more time as a tropical storm than as a hurricane, Gordon went on to kill as many as a thousand people in Central America, the Caribbean and South Florida.

On this day in 1847, Bram Stoker, author of the horror novel Dracula, is born in Clontarf, Dublin, Ireland. Stokers villainous, blood-sucking creation, the vampire Count Dracula, became a pop-culture icon and has been featured in hundreds of movies, books, plays and other forms of entertainment.

If you had made a friendly wager back in 1974 as to which recent or current pop-music figure might go on to serve in the United States Congress in 20 years' time, you might have picked someone with an apparent political agenda, like Joan Baez, or at least one who was associated with some kind of cause, like nature-lover John Denver. You almost certainly wouldn't have placed your bet on Sonny Bono, a singer of arguably limited talents who appeared content to stand, literally and figuratively, in the shadow of his far more popular wife, Cher. It was indeed Salvatore "Sonny" Bono, however, who had a future in elective politicsa future that included his election to the United States House of Representatives from California's 44th Congressional District on this day in 1994

On November 8, 1951, Yankees catcher Yogi Berra is voted the American Leagues most valuable player for the first time in his career. St. Louis Browns ace pitcher and slugger Ned Garver almost won the award--in fact, a representative from the Baseball Writers Association of America phoned him and told him that he had won it--but after a recount it turned out that Berra had edged Garver out by a nose. "Its great to be classed with fellows like DiMaggio and Rizzuto who have won the award," Berra told reporters that night. "I sure hope I can win it a couple of more times, like Joe did." He went on to be the league MVP twice more, in 1954 and 1955.

On this day in 1939, on the 16th anniversary of Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch, a bomb explodes just after Hitler has finished giving a speech. He was unharmed.history.com

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11/09

On this day in 1938, in an event that would foreshadow the Holocaust, German Nazis launch a campaign of terror against Jewish people and their homes and businesses in Germany and Austria. The violence, which continued through November 10 and was later dubbed "Kristallnacht," or "Night of Broken Glass," after the countless smashed windows of Jewish-owned establishments, left approximately 100 Jews dead, 7,500 Jewish businesses damaged and hundreds of synagogues, homes, schools and graveyards vandalized. An estimated 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, many of whom were then sent to concentration camps for several months; they were released when they promised to leave Germany. Kristallnacht represented a dramatic escalation of the campaign started by Adolf Hitler in 1933 when he became chancellor to purge Germany of its Jewish population.

On this day in 1960, Robert McNamara becomes the president of the Ford Motor Company. He would hold the job for less than a month, heading to Washington in December to join President John F. Kennedy's cabinet. McNamara served as the secretary of defense under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson until he resigned in 1968. That year, he became the president of the World Bank, a job he held until 1981.

East German officials today opened the Berlin Wall, allowing travel from East to West Berlin. The following day, celebrating Germans began to tear the wall down. One of the ugliest and most infamous symbols of the Cold War was soon reduced to rubble that was quickly snatched up by souvenir hunters.

On this day in 1872, a fire in Boston destroys hundreds of buildings and kills 14 people. In the aftermath, the city established an entirely new system of firefighting and prevention. The fire also led to the creation of Boston's financial district.

At dusk, the biggest power failure in U.S. history occurs as all of New York state, portions of seven neighboring states, and parts of eastern Canada are plunged into darkness. The Great Northeast Blackout began at the height of rush hour, delaying millions of commuters, trapping 800,000 people in New York's subways, and stranding thousands more in office buildings, elevators, and trains. Ten thousand National Guardsmen and 5,000 off-duty policemen were called into service to prevent looting.

On this day in 2001, the 3,400-seat Kodak Theatre, which was designed as the permanent home of the Academy Awards, opens in Hollywood. The Oscars were held at the Kodak Theatre for the first time on March 24, 2002. During the show, which was hosted by Whoopi Goldberg, A Beautiful Mind was named Best Picture, Halle Berry won Best Actress for her performance in Monsters Ball and Denzel Washington collected the Best Actor award for Training Day. Berry and Washingtons wins marked the first time in Oscar history that African-American performers had triumphed in both the Best Actress and Best Actor categories.

"We try to work with taxpayers," Internal Revenue Service spokeswoman Valerie Thornton told The New York Times in the autumn of 1991, "[a]nd if we have to come up with some creative payment plan, that's what we're going to do, because it's in everyone's best interest." The creative payment plan to which Ms. Thornton was referring in her statement to the Times involved a unique revenue-sharing agreement negotiated between the IRS and the beloved country singer Willie Nelson, who was then struggling to repay a $16.7 million dollar tax debt that had led the federal government to seize all of his assets one year earlier, on this day in 1990

On November 9, 1946, the second-ranked Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the first-ranked Army Cadets play to a historic 0-0 tie at Yankee Stadium in New York. Notre Dame-Army was college footballs biggest rivalry, and more than 74,000 people crowded the stands. At a time when football tickets typically cost $1 to $5, many fans had paid scalpers as much as $250 for their seats. The game had been sold out since June.

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11/10.....

On this day in 1969, "Sesame Street," a pioneering TV show that would teach generations of young children the alphabet and how to count, makes its broadcast debut. "Sesame Street," with its memorable theme song ("Can you tell me how to get/How to get to Sesame Street"), went on to become the most widely viewed children's program in the world. It has aired in more than 120 countries.

During the American Revolution, the Continental Congress passes a resolution stating that "two Battalions of Marines be raised" for service as landing forces for the recently formed Continental Navy. The resolution, drafted by future U.S. president John Adams and adopted in Philadelphia, created the Continental Marines and is now observed as the birth date of the United States Marine Corps.

On this day, the patent office awards U.S. Patent No. 743,801 to a Birmingham, Alabama woman named Mary Anderson for her "window cleaning device for electric cars and other vehicles to remove snow, ice or sleet from the window." When she received her patent, Anderson tried to sell it to a Canadian manufacturing firm, but the company refused: The device had no practical value, it said, and so was not worth any money. Though mechanical windshield wipers were standard equipment in passenger cars by around 1913, Anderson never profited from the invention.

On this day in 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks in Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew members on board. It was the worst single accident in Lake Superior's history.

On this day in 1932, Roy Scheider, the actor best known for his role as the police chief of a community terrorized by a killer shark in director Steven Spielbergs breakthrough movie, Jaws (1975), is born in Orange, New Jersey. In addition to Jaws, Scheider, a prominent Hollywood leading man during the 1970s, starred in such Academy Award-winning films as The French Connection (1971)and All That Jazz (1979).

Between 1965 and his death in 1993, the legendary Conway Twitty placed an astonishing 40 #1 hits on the country-music charts. Indeed, no performer in the history of country music, including Garth Brooks, ever put together a stretch as dominant as Twitty did during the peak years of his career between 1974 and 1982, when 24 out of 33 consecutively released singles became country #1s. But those who know Conway Twitty only through such country hits as "Hello Darlin'" (1970) and "Tight Fittin' Jeans" (1981) may be surprised to learn that a man known as the "High Priest of Country Music" began his career as a bona fide rock-and-roller. On this day in 1958fully 10 years before his first country chart-topperConway Twitty scored his very first #1 hit on the pop charts, with the rock-and-roll ballad "It's Only Make Believe."

On this day in 2001, in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President George W. Bush addresses the United Nations to ask for the international community's help in combating terrorism around the world. He also pledged to take the fight against terrorism to any place where terrorists were harbored.

On November 10, 1984, the University of Marylands backup quarterback Frank Reich throws six touchdown passes against the University of Miami in the second half of the Orange Bowl. The Terrapins, who had been losing 31-0 at the half, ended up winning the game 42-40. "In the first half, everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong," one of Reichs teammates said. "In the second half, everything that could possibly go right, went right."

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11/11.........

VETERANS DAY.........

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, was declared between the Allied nations and Germany in the First World War, then known as "the Great War." Commemorated as Armistice Day beginning the following year, November 11th became a legal federal holiday in the United States in 1938. In the aftermath of World War II and the Korean War, Armistice Day became Veterans Day, a holiday dedicated to American veterans of all wars.

At the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ends. At 5 a.m. that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. The First World War left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.

On this day in 1978, a stuntman on the Georgia set of "The Dukes of Hazzard"launches the show's iconic automobile, a 1969 Dodge Charger named the General Lee, off a makeshift dirt ramp and over a police car. That jump, 16 feet high and 82 feet long (its landing totaled the car), made TV history. Although more than 300 different General Lees appeared in the series, which ran on CBS from 1979 until 1985, this first one was the only one to play a part in every episode: That jump over the squad car ran every week at the end of the show's opening credits.

A cable car taking skiers to a glacier in Austria catches fire on this day in 2000 as it passes through a mountain tunnel; 156 people die. Only 11 people managed to survive the fire, which was caused by an illegal space heater.

Exactly three years after the end of World War I, the Tomb of the Unknowns is dedicated at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia during an Armistice Day ceremony presided over by President Warren G. Harding.

On this day in 1994, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, the big-screen adaptation of Anne Rices best-selling 1976 novel, opens in theaters around the United States.

A powerful wind strips the topsoil from desiccated farmlands in South Dakota, one of a series of disastrous windstorms that year. The drought-ridden land of the Southern Plains became known as the Dust Bowl; it was useless to farmers, and only exacerbated the economic problems of the Great Depression. Within two days, dust from the South Dakota storm had reached all the way to Albany, New York.

On November 11, 1981, Rookie of the Year Fernando Valenzuela wins the National Leagues Cy Young Award, becoming the first player in baseball history to win both prizes in the same season.

On this day in 1942, Congress approves lowering the draft age to 18 and raising the upper limit to age 37.history.com

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11/12

On this day in 1954, Ellis Island, the gateway to America, shuts it doors after processing more than 12 million immigrants since opening in 1892. Today, an estimated 40 percent of all Americans can trace their roots through Ellis Island, located in New York Harbor off the New Jersey coast and named for merchant Samuel Ellis, who owned the land in the 1770s.

On this day in 1965, brothers Bill and Bob Summers set a world land-speed record409.277 miles per houron the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. They did it in an amazing, hemi-powered hot rod they called the Goldenrod. (The car got its name from the '57 Chevy gold paint the brothers used.) Today, the Goldenrod is on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

On this day in 2004, Scott Peterson is convicted of murdering his wife Laci and their unborn son. A jury of six men and six women delivered the verdict 23 months after Laci Peterson, who was pregnant, disappeared on Christmas Eve from Modesto, California. The case captivated millions across America and saturated national media coverage for almost two years.

When initially questioned about his wife s whereabouts, Peterson claimed that Laci had disappeared sometime after leaving the house to walk their dog and after he left on a fishing trip to nearby San Francisco Bay. About one month later, Amber Frey, a 28-year-old massage therapist from Fresno, California, came forward to tell police that she d had an affair with Scott Peterson, shattering his image as a devoted husband to his pretty and pregnant wife. As police continued to search for Laci and clues that might explain her disappearance, Scott Peterson sold her sports-utility vehicle, leading to suspicions that he might be trying to get rid of evidence.

An American Airlines flight out of John F. Kennedy (JFK) Airport in New York City crashes into a Queens neighborhood after takeoff on this day in 2001, killing 265 people. Although some initially speculated that the crash was the result of terrorism, as it came exactly two months after the September 11 attacks, the cause was quickly proven to be a combination of pilot error and wind conditions.

Andrew Ellicott Douglass, an early American astronomer born in Vermont, witnesses the Leonids meteor shower from a ship off the Florida Keys. Douglass, who later became an assistant to the famous astronomer Percival Lowell, wrote in his journal that the "whole heaven appeared as if illuminated with sky rockets, flying in an infinity of directions, and I was in constant expectation of some of them falling on the vessel. They continued until put out by the light of the sun after day break." Douglass' journal entry is the first known record of a meteor shower in North America.

Country singer Toby Keith's sixth album Shock'n Y'all, his third-straight #1 country album, became his second-straight #1 pop album when it topped the Billboard 200 album chart on this day in 2003. (The title of the album was a pun on the so-called "Shock and Awe" bombing campaign that preceded the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003).

On this day in 1979, President Jimmy Carter responds to a potential threat to national security by stopping the importation of petroleum from Iran.

On November 12, 1892, William "Pudge" Heffelfinger becomes the first professional football player when Pittsburghs Allegheny Athletic Association pays him $500 to play as a ringer in a game against its rival Pittsburgh Athletic Club. Before Heffelfinger, players had traded their services on the field for expense money, "double expenses," or trinkets that players could pawn back to the team--but no one had ever openly accepted a cash payment to play football. (Baseball, on the other hand, had been frankly professional for almost 25 years.) For his part, Heffelfinger never acknowledged that hed taken the payment. He went on to become a prominent insurance executive and congressman from Minnesota.

President Richard Nixon sets February 1, 1972, as the deadline for the withdrawal of an additional 45,000 U.S. troops. U.S. troop withdrawals had begun in the fall of 1969. After the February withdrawals were complete, the total U.S. force strength in South Vietnam was 139,000. Nixon said that most offensive activities were now being undertaken entirely by the South Vietnamese and that U.S. ground forces were "now in defensive positions." He further stated that 80 percent of the forces that were in Vietnam when he took office had come home, and that American casualties had dropped to less than 10 a week.history.com

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11/13......

Near the end of a weeklong national salute to Americans who served in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is dedicated in Washington after a march to its site by thousands of veterans of the conflict. The long-awaited memorial was a simple V-shaped black-granite wall inscribed with the names of the 57,939 Americans who died in the conflict, arranged in order of death, not rank, as was common in other memorials

On this day in 1974, 28-year-old Karen Silkwood is killed in a car accident near Crescent, Oklahoma, north of Oklahoma City. Silkwood worked as a technician at a plutonium plant operated by the Kerr-McGee Corporation, and she had been critical of the plant's health and safety procedures. In September, she had complained to the Atomic Energy Commission about unsafe conditions at the plant (a week before her death, plant monitors had found that she was contaminated with radioactivity herself), and the night she died, she was on her way to a meeting with a union representative and a reporter for The New York Times, reportedly with a folder full of documents that proved that Kerr-McGee was acting negligently when it came to worker safety at the plant. However, no such folder was found in the wreckage of her car, lending credence to the theory that someone had forced her off the road to prevent her from telling what she knew.

An immense tidal wave and storm surge caused by a powerful cyclone kills over 200,000 people in East Pakistan, now known as Bangladesh, on this day in 1970. The delta area where the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers flow into the Bay of Bengal is particularly vulnerable to this type of storm. In fact, this was at least the third disaster in the region to kill 200,000 people.

Nevado del Ruiz, the highest active volcano in the Andes Mountains of Colombia, suffers a mild eruption that generates a series of lava flows and surges over the volcano's broad ice-covered summit. Flowing mixtures of water, ice, pumice, and other rock debris poured off the summit and sides of the volcano, forming "lahars" that flooded into the river valleys surrounding Ruiz. The lahars joined normal river channels, and massive flooding and mudslides was exacerbated by heavy rain. Within four hours of the eruption, the lahars traveled over 60 miles, killing more than 23,000 people, injuring over 5,000, and destroying more than 5,000 homes. Hardest hit was the town of Armero, where three quarters of the 28,700 inhabitants died.

The volcano first began showing signs of an imminent eruption a full year before, and most of the river valley's residents would have survived had they have moved to higher ground.

On this day in 1955, the actress, comedian and talk-show host Whoopi Goldberg is born in New York City. Goldberg earned an Oscar nomination for her Hollywood feature debut in Steven Spielbergs The Color Purple (1985) and went on become the first-ever solo female host of the Academy Awards.

On November 13, 1979, in the middle of a game at the Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Philadelphia 76ers center Darryl Dawkins leaps over Kansas City Kings forward Bill Robinzine and slam-dunks the basketball, shattering the fiberglass backboard. The result, according to people who were at the game, was a sound like a bomb going off in the middle of the court. Shards of glass were everywhere: They nicked Robinzine all over his legs and arms and gotten stuck in Dr. Js Afro. "It wasnt really a safe thing to do," Dawkins chuckled later, "but it was a Darryl Dawkins thing to do."

In Washington, as a prelude to the second moratorium against the war scheduled for the following weekend, protesters stage a symbolic "March Against Death." The march began at 6 p.m. and drew over 45,000 participants, each with a placard bearing the name of a soldier who had died in Vietnam. The marchers began at Arlington National Cemetery and continued past the White House, where they called out the names of the dead. The march lasted for two days and nights. This demonstration and the moratorium that followed did not produce a change in official policy--although President Nixon was deeply angered by the protests, he publicly feigned indifference and they had no impact on his prosecution of the war.history.com

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11/14.....

On this day in 1851, Moby-Dick, a novel by Herman Melville about the voyage of the whaling ship Pequod, is published by Harper & Brothers in New York. Moby-Dick is now considered a great classic of American literature and contains one of the most famous opening lines in fiction: "Call me Ishmael." Initially, though, the book about Captain Ahab and his quest for a giant white whale was a flop.

On November 14, 2006, state officials close the last two of Texas' famed Pig Stand restaurants, the only remaining pieces of the nation's first drive-in restaurant empire. The restaurants' owners were bankrupt, and they owed the Texas comptroller more than $200,000 in unpaid sales taxes.

On this day in 1985, a volcano erupts in Colombia, killing well over 20,000 people as nearby towns are buried in mud, ice and lava.

Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the moon, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Charles Conrad, Jr.; Richard F. Gordon, Jr.; and Alan L. Bean aboard. President Richard Nixon viewed the liftoff from Pad A at Cape Canaveral. He was the first president to attend the liftoff of a manned space flight.

On November 14, 1970, a chartered jet carrying most of the Marshall University football team clips a stand of trees and crashes into a hillside just two miles from the Tri-State Airport in Kenova, West Virginia. The team was returning from that days game, a 17-14 loss to East Carolina University. Thirty-seven Marshall football players were aboard the plane, along with the teams coach, its doctors, the university athletic director and 25 team boosters--some of Huntington, West Virginias most prominent citizens--who had traveled to North Carolina to cheer on the Thundering Herd. "The whole fabric," a citizen of Huntington wrote later, "the whole heart of the town was aboard."

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11/15.....

On this day in 1867, the first stock ticker is unveiled in New York City. The advent of the ticker ultimately revolutionized the stock market by making up-to-the-minute prices available to investors around the country. Prior to this development, information from the New York Stock Exchange, which has been around since 1792, traveled by mail or messenger.

On November 15, 1965 at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, 28-year-old Californian Craig Breedlove sets a new land-speed record600.601 miles per hourin his car, the Spirit of America, which cost $250,000 and is powered by a surplus engine from a Navy jet. He actually drove across the desert twice that day, since international world-record rules require a car to make two timed one-mile runs in one hour; officials log the average speed of the two trips. During his first trip, Breedlove zoomed across the flats at 593.178 mph; during his second, the first time any person had officially gone faster than 600 mph, he managed to push the car up to 608.201 mph. "That 600 is about a thousand times better than 599," he said afterward. "Boy, it's a great feeling."

In a long and rambling interview with an American reporter, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev claims that the Soviet Union has missile superiority over the United States and challenges America to a missile "shooting match" to prove his assertion. The interview further fueled fears in the United States that the nation was falling perilously behind the Soviets in the arms race.

"Baby Fae," a month-old infant who had received a baboon-heart transplant, dies at Loma Linda University Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

On this day in 1956, Love Me Tender, featuring the singer Elvis Presley in his big-screen debut, premieres in New York City at the Paramount Theater. Set in Texas following the American Civil War, the film, which co-starred Richard Egan and Debra Paget, featured Elvis as Clint Reno, the younger brother of a Confederate soldier. Originally titled The Reno Brothers, the movie was renamed Love Me Tender before its release, after a song of the same name that Reno sings during the film.Presley, who became one of the biggest icons in entertainment history, sang in the box-office hit Love Me Tender as well as the majority of the 33 movies (31 features and two theatrically released concert documentaries) he made in his career. Despite the commercial success of his films, many were considered formulaic and forgettable, and critics have argued that Elvis never achieved his full potential as an actor.

On this day in 1859, Charles Dickens' serialized novel, A Tale of Two Cities, comes to a close, as the final chapter is published in Dickens' circular, All the Year Round.

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11/16.....

On November 16, 1901, a spare, low-slung car called the "Torpedo Racer"basically a square platform on bicycle wheelsbreaks the world speed record for electric cars in Coney Island, New York. The car's builder and pilot, an engineer named Andrew Riker, managed to coax his machine one mile down the straight dirt track in just 63 seconds (that's about 57 mph; today, by contrast, the world speed record for an electric vehicle is about 245 mph). The battery-powered Torpedo Racer held onto its record for ten years.

Construction begins on a giant bonfire at Texas A&M University on this day in 1999, the continuation of a tradition that began 90 years earlier. Two days later, the bonfire collapsed, killing 12 students and injuring another 27.

On this day in 2001, the British author J.K. Rowlings star creation--bespectacled boy wizard Harry Potter--makes his big-screen debut in Harry Potter and the Sorcerers Stone, which opens in movie theaters across the United States. Based on the mega-best-selling fantasy novel of the same name, the film, which starred Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, went on to become one of the highest-grossing movies in history.

On November 16, 1957, Notre Dame beats Oklahoma 7-0, ending the Sooners 47-game, 1,512-day college football winning streak. The game also marked the first time in more than 120 games that Oklahoma didnt score a single point. Sooners fans were stunned. Some cried; some sat in the stadium for more than an hour after the game was over. But, as Sooners coach Bud Wilkinson said in the locker room after the game, "There wasnt anything mysterious about it. We just got beat."

On this day in 1973, President Richard Nixon declares that America's energy requirements have outpaced its production capacity and urges Congress to pass Senate Bill 1081, which would authorize the construction of a pipeline to access oil from the North Slope of Alaska.history.com

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11/17.....

On this day in 1421, a storm in the North Sea batters the European coastline. Over the next several days, approximately 10,000 people in what is now the Netherlands died in the resulting floods.

Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi's first opera, Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio, debuts in Milan. The premiere was held at La Scala, Italy's most prestigious theater. Oberto was received favorably, and the next day the composer was commissioned by Bartolomeo Merelli, the impresario at La Scala, to write three more operas. In 1842, after some personal and professional setbacks, the opera Nabucco made Verdi an overnight celebrity. He would go on to compose such classic operas as Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, La Traviata, Aída, and Otello.

The Suez Canal, connecting the Mediterranean and the Red seas, is inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony attended by French Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III.

On this day in 2003, the actor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger is sworn in as the 38th governor of California at the State Capitol in Sacramento. Schwarzenegger, who became a major Hollywood star in the 1980s with such action movies as Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator, defeated Governor Gray Davis in a special recall election on October 7, 2003. Prior to Schwarzenegger, another famous actor, Ronald Reagan, served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 to 1975 before going on to become the nations 40th president in 1980.

On November 17, 1958, the Kingston Trio's "Tom Dooley" hits #1 on the Billboard pop chart.

On this day in 1973, in the midst of the Watergate scandal that eventually ended his presidency, President Richard Nixon tells a group of newspaper editors gathered at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, that he is "not a crook."

On November 17, 1968, the Oakland Raiders score two touchdowns in nine seconds to beat the New York Jets--and no one sees it, because theyre watching the movie Heidi instead. With just 65 seconds left to play, NBC switched off the game in favor of its previously scheduled programming, a made-for-TV version of the childrens story about a young girl and her grandfather in the Alps. Viewers were outraged, and they complained so vociferously that network execs learned a lesson theyll never forget: "Whatever you do," one said, "you better not leave an NFL football game."

On this day in 1998, the brand-new DaimlerChrysler began trading its shares on the New York Stock Exchange. The company had formed five days earlier, when the American Chrysler Corporation merged with the German conglomerate Daimler-Benz AG. As a result of the merger, DaimlerChrysler became the world's fifth-largest automaker (behind General Motors, Ford, Toyota and Volkswagen).history.com

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11/18.....

Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon free Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite after more than four years of captivity. Waite, looking thinner and his hair grayer, was freed along with American educator Thomas M. Sutherland after intense negotiations by the United Nations.

On this day in 1996, a revolutionary new Volkswagen factory opens in Resende, Brazil. The million-square-meter Resende factory did not have an ordinary assembly line staffed by Volkswagen workers: In fact, the only people on Volkswagen's payroll were the quality-control supervisors. Independent subcontractors were responsible for putting together every part of the trucks and buses that the factory produced. This process, which Volkswagen called the "modular consortium," reduced the company's labor costs considerably by making them someone else's problem: The company simply purchased its labor from the lowest bidder. Eventually, Volkswagen hoped to export this new system to all of its factories in developing countries.

A fire in a London subway station kills 30 commuters and injures scores of others on this day in 1987. It is the worst fire in the history of the city's underground rail system.

People's Temple leader Jim Jones leads hundreds of his followers in a mass murder-suicide at their agricultural commune in remote northwestern Guyana. The few cult members who refused to take the cyanide-laced fruit-flavored concoction were either forced to do so at gunpoint or shot as they fled. The final death toll was 913, including 276 children.

At just 16, William Martin Joel of Hicksville, Long Island, got his first taste of chart success playing piano on the Shangri-Las' #1 hit "Leader of the Pack,". At 18, he dropped out of high school to pursue a full-time career as a professional musician. After several years moving from band to band, he released his first solo album at age 22 in 1971, and then four more in quick succession after that, with ever-increasing success. Finally, on this day in 1978, Billy Joel earned his first #1 album when his sixth release, 52nd Street, hit the top of the Billboard pop chart

At exactly noon on this day, American and Canadian railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands of local times. The bold move was emblematic of the power shared by the railroad companies

1936 Main span of Golden Gate Bridge joined

1970 Linus Pauling declares large doses of Vitamin C could ward off colds

1970 Russia lands self propelled rover on Moon

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11/19.....

On November 19, 1863, at the dedication of a military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln delivers one of the most memorable speeches in American history. In just 272 words, Lincoln brilliantly and movingly reminded a war-weary public why the Union had to fight, and win, the Civil War.

On this day in 1993, Toyota and General Motors sign an historic agreement: Beginning in 1996, GM will offer its bestselling Chevy Cavalier, refitted with right-hand drive, for sale in Japan. The Cavalier was one of the first American automobiles to hit the Japanese market.

For the first time in eight years, the leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States hold a summit conference. Meeting in Geneva, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev produced no earth-shattering agreements. However, the meeting boded well for the future, as the two men engaged in long, personal talks and seemed to develop a sincere and close relationship.
The meeting came as somewhat of a surprise to some in the United States, considering Reagan's often incendiary rhetoric concerning communism and the Soviet Union, but it was in keeping with the president's often stated desire to bring the nuclear arms race under control. For Gorbachev, the meeting was another clear signal of his desire to obtain better relations with the United States so that he could better pursue his domestic reforms.
Little of substance was accomplished. Six agreements were reached, ranging from cultural and scientific exchanges to environmental issues. Both Reagan and Gorbachev, however, expressed satisfaction with the summit, which ended on November 21. The next summit was held in October 1986 in Reykjavik and ended somewhat disastrously, with Reagan's commitment to the Strategic Defense Initiative (the so-called "Star Wars" missile defense system) providing a major obstacle to progress on arms control talks. However, by the time of their third summit in Washington, D.C. in 1987, both sides made concessions in order to achieve agreement on a wide range of arms control issues.

Patricia Campbell Hearst, a granddaughter of the legendary publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, is released on bail pending the appeal of her conviction for participating in a 1974 San Francisco bank robbery that was caught on camera.

Brazilian soccer great Pele scores his 1,000th professional goal in a game, against Vasco da Gama in Rio de Janeiro's Maracana stadium. It was a major milestone in an illustrious career that included three World Cup championships.

On this day in 1975, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, a film about a group of patients at a mental institution, opens in theaters. Directed by Milos Forman and based on a 1962 novel of the same name by Ken Kesey, the film starred Jack Nicholson and was co-produced by the actor Michael Douglas. One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest went on to become the first film in four decades to win in all five of the major Academy Award categories: Best Actor (Nicholson), Best Actress (Louise Fletcher, who played Nurse Ratched), Best Director, Best Screenplay (Adapted) and Best Picture.

Rumors had swirled around Michael Jackson since the first public allegations of sexual misconduct with a minor child were aired amidst a 1993 civil lawsuit that was eventually settled out of court. A decade later, on November 19, 2003, an embattled Jackson prepared to face criminal charges of a similar nature when a warrant was issued for his arrest on charges of child molestation. Though he would be acquitted two years later of each criminal count on which he was eventually tried, the erstwhile King of Pop suffered many blows to his already damaged reputation and finances while facing the charges filed on this day in 2003.

On November 19, 1966, in college football, first-ranked Notre Dame and second-ranked Michigan State play to a 10-10 tie at Spartan Stadium. The Irish, per coach Ara Parseghian's instructions, ran out the clock at the end of the game instead of passing to score and risking an interception. After the game, Parseghian defended his decision. "We'd fought hard to come back and tie it up," he told reporters in the locker room. "After all that, I didn't want to risk giving it to them cheap."

1965 Kellogg's Pop Tarts pastries created

1895 Frederick E. Blaisdell patents the pencil

1959 Ford cancels Edsel

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11/20......

Twenty-four high-ranking Nazis go on trial in Nuremberg, Germany, for atrocities committed during World War II.

On this day in 1923, the U.S. Patent Office grants Patent No. 1,475,074 to 46-year-old inventor and newspaperman Garrett Morgan for his three-position traffic signal. Though Morgan's was not the first traffic signal (that one had been installed in London in 1868), it was an important innovation nonetheless: By having a third position besides just "Stop" and "Go," it regulated crossing vehicles more safely than earlier signals had.

Methane gas explosions in a West Virginia coal mine kill 78 men on this day in 1968. The damage to the mine was so extensive that it had to be sealed with the bodies of the men still inside.

In a lavish wedding ceremony at Westminster Abbey in London, Princess Elizabeth marries her distant cousin, Philip Mountbatten, a dashing former prince of Greece and Denmark who renounced his titles in order to marry the English princess.

Princess Elizabeth, heir to the British throne, was 21 years old. Philip Mountbatten, age 26, had fought as a British naval officer during World War II and was made the duke of Edinburgh on the eve of his wedding to Elizabeth. The celebrations surrounding the wedding of the popular princess lifted the spirits of the people of Britain, who were enduring economic difficulties in the aftermath of World War II.

On February 6, 1952, the death of King George VI sent Elizabeth to the throne, and Philip ended his naval career to concentrate on his new duties as consort of the British monarch. Elizabeth and Philip eventually had four children--Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew, and Prince Edward.

On this day in 2003, Phil Spector, the influential, eccentric music producer who worked with a long list of performers including The Righteous Brothers, The Ronettes, Ike and Tina Turner, John Lennon and the Ramones, is indicted in the murder of actress Lana Clarkson. Spector pled not guilty to the charges.

Born Ellas Otha Bates in McComb, Mississippi, in 1928, the man better known as Bo Diddley introduced himself and his namesake beat to the world on this day in 1955 with his television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show.

On November 20, 1982, the Cal football team wins an improbable last-second victory over Stanford when they complete five lateral passes around members of the Cardinals marching band, who had wandered onto the field a bit early to celebrate the upset they were sure their team had won, and score a touchdown. After catching the last pass of the series, Cals Kevin Moen careened through the confused horn section and made it safely to the end zone. Then he slammed into trombone player Gary Tyrell. (A photograph from the Oakland Tribune of the jubilant Moen and the terrified Tyrell in the moment just before the collision is still displayed triumphantly all over Berkeley.)

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11/21......

On this day in 1980, 350 million people around the world tune in to television's popular primetime drama "Dallas" to find out who shot J.R. Ewing, the character fans loved to hate. J.R. had been shot on the season-ending episode the previous March 21, which now stands as one of television's most famous cliffhangers. The plot twist inspired widespread media coverage and left America wondering "Who shot J.R.?" for the next eight months. The November 21 episode solved the mystery, identifying Kristin Shepard, J.R.'s wife's sister and his former mistress, as the culprit.

On this day in 1927, Time magazine puts the week-old Holland Tunnel on its cover. The tunnel, which runs under the Hudson River between New York City and Jersey City, New Jersey, had opened to traffic the week before, at the stroke of midnight on November 13. (Earlier that day, President Calvin Coolidge had ceremonially opened the tunnel from his yacht on the Potomac by turning the same key that had "opened" the Panama Canal in 1915Time called it "the golden lever of the Presidential telegraphic instrument"which rang a giant brass bell at the tunnel's entrances.) On that first day, 51,694 vehicles traveled through the tunnel.

National Security Council staff member Oliver North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, begin shredding documents that would have exposed their participation in a range of illegal activities regarding the sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of the proceeds to a rebel Nicaraguan group. On November 25, North was fired but Hall continued to sneak documents to him by stuffing them in her skirt and boots. The Iran-Contra scandal, as it came to be known, became an embarrassment and a sticky legal problem for the Reagan administration.

The Britannic, sister ship to the Titanic, sinks in the Aegean Sea on this day in 1916, killing 30 people. More than 1,000 others were rescued.

The American inventor announces his invention of the phonograph, a way to record and play back sound. Edison stumbled on one of his great inventions--the phonograph--while working on a way to record telephone communication at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. His work led him to experiment with a stylus on a tinfoil cylinder, which, to his surprise, played back the short song he had recorded, "MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB". Public demonstrations of the phonograph made the Yankee inventor world famous, and he was dubbed the "Wizard of Menlo Park."

On this day in 1976, Rocky, starring Sylvester Stallone as the underdog prizefighter Rocky Balboa, debuts in New York City. The movie, which opened in theaters across the United States on December 3, 1976, was a huge box-office hit and received 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay for the then-little known Stallone. Rocky ultimately took home three Oscars, including one for Best Picture, and made Stallone one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

On November 21, 1931, the University of Southern California surprises Notre Dame with a last-minute game-winning field goal at the new Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend. The victory won USC the national championship and was, according to that years Trojan yearbook, "the biggest upset since Mrs. OLearys cow knocked over that lantern."

1989 Law banning smoking on most domestic flights signed by President Bush

1977 1st flight of Concorde, London to New York

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-- Edited by PMM2008 on Sunday 21st of November 2010 07:54:24 AM

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11/22....

John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, is assassinated while traveling through Dallas, Texas, in an open-top convertible.

First lady Jacqueline Kennedy rarely accompanied her husband on political outings, but she was beside him, along with Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, for a 10-mile motorcade through the streets of downtown Dallas on November 22. Sitting in a Lincoln convertible, the Kennedys and Connallys waved at the large and enthusiastic crowds gathered along the parade route. As their vehicle passed the Texas School Book Depository Building at 12:30 p.m., Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired three shots from the sixth floor, fatally wounding President Kennedy and seriously injuring Governor Connally. Kennedy was pronounced dead 30 minutes later at Dallas' Parkland Hospital. He was 46.

On this day in 1900, the first car to be produced under the Mercedes name is taken for its inaugural drive in Cannstatt, Germany. The car was specially built for its buyer, Emil Jellinek, an entrepreneur with a passion for fast, flashy cars. Jellinek had commissioned the Mercedes car from the German company Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft: it was lighter and sleeker than any car the company had made before, and Jellinek was confident that it would win races so handily that besotted buyers would snap it up. (He was so confident that he bought 36 of them.) In exchange for this extraordinary patronage, the company agreed to name its new machine after Jellinek's 11-year-old daughter, Mercedes.

Two Long Island Railroad (LIRR) commuter trains collide on this day in 1950, killing 79 people. Defective equipment caused this horrific rear-end collision, the worst in the history of the LIRR.

One of the most popular American pop groups of its time, KC and the Sunshine Band earned the second of their five #1 pop hits on this day in 1975 when "That's The Way (I Like It)" reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

On November 22, 1986, 20-year-old Mike Tyson knocks out 33-year-old Trevor Berbick in just five minutes and 35 seconds to become the youngest titleholder ever. "Im the youngest heavyweight boxing champion in history," Tyson told his manager after the fight, "and Im going to be the oldest."

1842 Mount St. Helens in Washington, erupts

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11/24.....

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, a groundbreaking scientific work by British naturalist Charles Darwin, is published in England. Darwin's theory argued that organisms gradually evolve through a process he called "natural selection." In natural selection, organisms with genetic variations that suit their environment tend to propagate more descendants than organisms of the same species that lack the variation, thus influencing the overall genetic makeup of the species.

John Froelich, the inventor of the first internal-combustion traction motor, or tractor, is born on this day in Girard, Iowa.

The crime lab that is now referred to as the FBI Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory officially opens in Washington, D.C., on this day in 1932. The lab, which was chosen because it had the necessary sink, operated out of a single room and had only one full-time employee, Agent Charles Appel. Agent Appel began with a borrowed microscope and a pseudo-scientific device called a helixometer. The helixometer purportedly assisted investigators with gun barrel examinations, but it was actually more for show than function. In fact, J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, provided the lab with very few resources and used the "cutting-edge lab" primarily as a public relations tool. But by 1938, the FBI lab added polygraph machines and started conducting controversial lie detection tests as part of its investigations. In its early days, the FBI Crime Lab worked on about 200 pieces of evidence a year. By the 1990s, that number multiplied to approximately 200,000. Currently, the FBI Crime Lab obtains 600 new pieces of criminal evidence everyday.

At 12:20 p.m., in the basement of the Dallas police station, Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, is shot to death by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner.

A hijacker calling himself D.B. Cooper parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 into a raging thunderstorm over Washington State. He had $200,000 in ransom money in his possession.

Ringo Starr becomes the third former Beatle to earn a solo #1 hit when "Photograph" tops the Billboard Hot 100 on November 24, 1973.

On November 24, 1960, Philadelphia Warrior Wilt Chamberlain snags 55 rebounds in a game against the Boston Celtics and sets an NBA record for the most rebounds in a single game.

Two days after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson confirms the U.S. intention to continue military and economic support to South Vietnam. He instructed Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, in Washington for consultations following South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem's assassination, to communicate his intention to the new South Vietnamese leadership. Johnson's first decision about Vietnam was effectively to continue Kennedy's policy.history.com

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11/25..........

"The Mousetrap," a murder-mystery written by the novelist and playwright Agatha Christie, opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. The crowd-pleasing whodunit would go on to become the longest continuously running play in history, with more than 10 million people to date attending its more than 20,000 performances in London's West End.

After a howling wind- and rainstorm on Thanksgiving Day, Washington state's historic floating Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge breaks apart and sinks to the bottom of Lake Washington, between Seattle and its suburbs to the east. Because the bridge's disintegration happened relatively slowly, news crews were able to capture the whole thing on camera, broadcasting it to a rapt audience across western Washington. "It looked like a big old battleship that had been hit by enemy fire and was sinking into the briny deep," said one observer. (He added: "It was awesome.")

The so-called "storm of the century" hits the eastern part of the United States, killing hundreds and causing millions of dollars in damages, on this day in 1950. Also known as the "Appalachian Storm," it dumped record amounts of snow in parts of the Appalachian Mountains.

Three days after his assassination in Dallas, Texas, John F. Kennedy is laid to rest with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

On November 25, 1980, Sugar Ray Leonard regains boxing's welterweight title when his opponent, reigning champ Roberto Duran, waves his arms and walks away from the fight in the eighth round. "No más, no más," Duran told the referee. "No more box." He'd had cramps in his stomach since the fifth, he said, and they'd gotten so bad he could barely stand up.

1957 President Eisenhower suffers a mild stroke, impairing his speech

1922 Archaeologist Howard Carter enters King Tut's tomb

1792 Farmer's Almanac 1st published

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11/26........

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill officially establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

A powerful early winter storm batters the New England coast on this day in 1898, killing at least 450 people in New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

In Egypt's Valley of the Kings, British archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first souls to enter King Tutankhamen's tomb in more than 3,000 years. Tutankhamen's sealed burial chambers were miraculously intact, and inside was a collection of several thousand priceless objects, including a gold coffin containing the mummy of the teenage king.

On this day in 1942, Casablanca, a World War II-era drama starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premieres in New York City; it will go on to become one of the most beloved Hollywood movies in history.

On this day in 1862, Oxford mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson sends a handwritten manuscript called Alice's Adventures Under Ground to 10-year-old Alice Liddell.

The television series MTV Unplugged, featuring stripped-down acoustical performances by a wide range of artists not usually known for such performances, makes its broadcast premiere on this day in 1989.

1983 Heathrow Airport, robbed of 6,800 gold bars worth $38.7 million

1979 International Olympic Committee votes to readmit China

1962 Fab Four have their 1st recording session under name Beatles

1941 Lebanon gains independence from France

1867 Refrigerated railroad car patented by J. B. Sutherland

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PMM2008 wrote:
In Egypt's Valley of the Kings, British archaeologists Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first souls to enter King Tutankhamen's tomb in more than 3,000 years. Tutankhamen's sealed burial chambers were miraculously intact, and inside was a collection of several thousand priceless objects, including a gold coffin containing the mummy of the teenage king.

This interests me so much! The ancient Egyptians, the Pyramids, everything about them. thumb

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11/27

On this day in 1940, the actor and martial-arts expert Bruce Lee is born in San Francisco, California. In his all-too-brief career, Lee became a film star in Asia, and a pop-culture icon, posthumously, in America.

Guitar legend Jimi Hendrix is born in Seattle. Hendrix grew up playing guitar, imitating blues greats like Muddy Waters as well as early rockers. He joined the army in 1959 and became a paratrooper but was honorably discharged in 1961 after an injury that exempted him from duty in Vietnam. In the early 1960s, Hendrix worked as a pickup guitarist, backing musicians including Little Richard, B.B. King, Ike and Tina Turner, and Sam Cooke. In 1964, he moved to New York and played in coffeehouses, where bassist Bryan Chandler of the British group the Animals heard him. Chandler arranged to manage Hendrix and brought him to London in 1966, where they created the Jimi Hendrix Experience with bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell. The band's first single, "Hey Joe," hit No. 6 on the British pop charts, and the band became an instant sensation.

On November 27, 1965, Detroit Red Wing Gordie Howe scores his 600th goal in a game against the Montreal Canadiens. He was the first (and the last, until Wayne Gretzky) NHL player to score 600 times in his career. Hed broken the previous record--544 goals, set by the legendary Canadien Maurice "Rocket" Richard--in November 1963. That games referee told reporters that "Gordie Howe can do more things better than anyone else. Thats just all there is to it."

1962 1st test flight of the Boeing 727 takes place

1960 Gordie Howe becomes 1st NHLer to score 1,000 points

1951 1st missle to intercept an airplane, White Sands, New Mexico

1910 New Yorks's Penn Station opens as world's largest train station

1895 Alfred Nobel establishes Nobel Prize

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11/28

After sailing through the dangerous straits below South America that now bear his name, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan enters the Pacific Ocean with three ships, becoming the first European explorer to reach the Pacific from the Atlantic.

A New Zealander sightseeing plane traveling over Antarctica crashes, killing all 257 people on board, on this day in 1979. It was the worst airplane accident in New Zealand's history.

On this day in 1582, William Shakespeare, 18, and Anne Hathaway, 26, pay a 40-pound bond for their marriage license in Stratford-upon-Avon. Six months later, Anne gives birth to their daughter, Susanna, and two years later, to twins.

Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, serving 15 consecutive life sentences for the brutal murders of 15 men, is beaten to death by a fellow inmate while performing cleaning duty in a bathroom at the Columbia Correctional Institute gymnasium in Portage, Wisconsin.

The Grand Ole Opry, one of the longest-lived and most popular showcases for western music, begins broadcasting live from Nashville, Tennessee. The showcase was originally named the Barn Dance, after a Chicago radio program called the National Barn Dance that had begun broadcasting the previous year.

During the early-60s girl-group explosion, the Shangri-Las score their first and only #1 hit on this day in 1964 with the famously melodramatic epic "Leader Of The Pack."

On November 28, 1895, Frank Duryea wins the first motor-car race in the United States, a 54-mile loop along the lakeshore from Chicago to Waukegan and back again. The race was a harrowing one--It was held during one of Chicagos great snowstorms, and the contestants cars got stuck in snowdrifts, slid into other vehicles and stalled repeatedly. Duryea, who completed the race in 10 hours and 23 minutes, traveled at an average speed of 5 1/4 miles per hour.

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Mben · Status: Offline

PMM2008 wrote:
On this day in 1582, William Shakespeare, 18, and Anne Hathaway, 26, pay a 40-pound bond for their marriage license in Stratford-upon-Avon. Six months later, Anne gives birth to their daughter, Susanna, and two years later, to twins.

I wonder if images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQL5d4JRw6qA0f7bgMs8P-FMJ-vOgxU3i1EfXNceJKYk5J0lDBGxQ

was named after

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTbmhqqf62MHtyrYcVdCwwRKX-hO_G8wHU3HMMbO0dqhjFxOk7ZWw

's wife ...................

images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRM-GzeVd1oVnUbOjxqICCGX00LttBVWfv8fjIVBRQsKwGLDw_l

Anne Hathaway.

PMM2008 · Status: Offline

11/29......

A massive car and truck collision in Coalinga, California, kills 17 people on this day in 1991. More than 100 vehicles were involved in the accident on Interstate 5, which was caused by a dust storm.

One week after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas, President Lyndon Johnson establishes a special commission, headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, to investigate the assassination.

On this day in 1981, the actress Natalie Wood, who starred in such movies as Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story, drowns in a boating accident near Californias Catalina Island. She was 43 years old.

On November 29, 1997, Grambling State University football coach Eddie Robinson coaches his last college football game. (Gramblings Tigers played the Southern University Jaguars at the Superdome in New Orleans; Southern won, 30-7.) Hed been coaching at Grambling, a historically black college near Shreveport, for 55 seasons. His career record--408-165-15--was the second-winningest in college football. (The recordholder, John Gagliardi of St. Johns University in Minnesota, won 443 games. He broke Robinsons record in 2003.) Robinsons Grambling team sent 220 players to the NFL and four to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. "Eddie Robinson molded as many great athletes as he recruited," a former player for a rival team remembered. "If you were good enough to play for Grambling, you were good enough to play in the NFL."

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Mben · Status: Offline

Natalie Wood was a beautiful woman. I can still remember about her drowning all those years ago.

PMM2008 · Status: Offline

11/30........

Richard Mallory, a storeowner in Palm Harbor, Florida, is last seen taking a ride with Aileen Wuornos. The following day, his carcontaining his wallet, some condoms, and an empty vodka bottlewas found abandoned in a remote area of Ormond Beach. Nearly two weeks later, his body turned up in a Daytona Beach junkyard with three bullets in his chest. Mallory's murder was the first of seven committed by Aileen Wuornos over the next year. Perhaps because she was one of the few women killers to gain widespread fame and notoriety, she was inaccurately dubbed "America's first female serial killer." Her case was heavily publicized through television talk show appearances and a documentary, The Selling of a Serial Killer.

Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, is born at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England.

The first modern instance of a meteorite striking a human being occurs at Sylacauga, Alabama, when a meteorite crashes through the roof of a house and into a living room, bounces off a radio, and strikes a woman on the hip. The victim, Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges, was sleeping on a couch at the time of impact. The space rock was a sulfide meteorite weighing 8.5 pounds and measuring seven inches in length. Mrs. Hodges was not permanently injured but suffered a nasty bruise along her hip and leg.

During a White House ceremony attended by James S. Brady, President Bill Clinton signs the Brady handgun-control bill into law. The law requires a prospective handgun buyer to wait five business days while the authorities check on his or her background, during which time the sale is approved or prohibited based on an established set of criteria.

On this day in 2004, after winning 74 straight games and more than $2.5 million--a record for U.S. game shows--Jeopardy! contestant Ken Jennings loses. Jennings' extended winning streak gave the game show a huge ratings boost and turned the software engineer from Salt Lake City, Utah into a TV hero and household name, at least temporarily. Barbara Walters named him one of the 10 most fascinating people of the year (along with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Republican operative Karl Rove and hotel heiress-socialite Paris Hilton, among others) and Jennings appeared on such shows as Late Night with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and even Sesame Street.

Samuel Clemens, later known as Mark Twain, is born in Florida, Missouri, on this day in 1835.

On November 30, 1931, legendary football coach Bill Walsh is born in Los Angeles, California. Though the young Walsh played on the Hayward High School football team, he was not a particularly gifted athlete; nor, for that matter, was he an especially good student. As a result, though he wanted to go to Cal or Stanford to play football, neither school would take him. He ended up playing quarterback for two years at a junior college in San Mateo, then playing receiver at San Jose State. He came back to San Jose for his masters degree and worked as the graduate assistant football coach--and there, for the first time, he began to shine. In Walshs personnel file, head coach Bob Bronzan wrote: "I predict Bill Walsh will become the outstanding football coach in the United States."

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-- Edited by PMM2008 on Tuesday 30th of November 2010 09:06:10 AM

PMM2008 · Status: Offline

12/2....

On this day in 2001, the Enron Corporation files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a New York court, sparking one of the largest corporate scandals in U.S. history.

On this day in 2002, Toyota delivers its first two "market-ready" hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles (FCHVs, in the company's shorthand) to researchers at the University of California at Irvine and the University of California at Davis. Since 1997, Toyota had been providing research money to UC scientists and engineers who studied the problems associated with "advanced transportation systems" like fuel-cell vehicles. With their new fleet of FCHVs, the researchers finally had a chance to test out their theories.

Opening testimony takes place in the highly publicized rape trial of William Kennedy Smith, a nephew of President John F. Kennedy and son of Jean Kennedy Smith, the presidents sister and a former ambassador to Ireland. Smith, then a 30-year-old medical student at Georgetown University, was accused of sexually assaulting a 29-year-old Florida woman in the early hours of March 30, 1991, at the Kennedy familys Palm Beach compound.

The Malpasset Dam in France collapses on this day in 1959 and the resulting flood kills more than 400 people. The city of Frejus, dating back to Caesar's time, was devastated by the massive flood.

On December 2, 1972, the Temptations earn the last of their four chart-topping hits when "Papa Was A Rollin' Stone" reaches #1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

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PMM2008 · Status: Offline

12/3.............

On December 3, 1979, the last Pacer rolls off the assembly line at the American Motors Corporation (AMC) factory in Kenosha, Wisconsin. When the car first came on the market in 1975, it was a sensation, hailed as the car of the future. "When you buy any other car," ads said, "all you end up with is today's car. When you get a Pacer, you get a piece of tomorrow." By 1979, however, sales had faded considerably. Today, polls and experts agree: the Pacer was one of the worst cars of all time.

Meeting off the coast of Malta, President George Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev issue statements strongly suggesting that the long-standing animosities at the core of the Cold War might be coming to an end. Commentators in both the United States and Russia went farther and declared that the Cold War was over.

An explosion at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, on this day in 1984, leads to the worst industrial accident in history. At least 2,000 people died and another 200,000 were injured when toxic gas enveloped the city.

On December 3, 1967, 53-year-old Lewis Washkansky receives the first human heart transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.

On this day in 1948, John Michael Ozzy Osbourne, the heavy-metal musician and star of the pioneering reality TV program The Osbournes, which originally aired from 2002 to 2005, is born in Birmingham, England.

The general-admission ticketing policy for rock concerts at Cincinnati's Riverfront Coliseum in the 1970s was known as "festival seating." That term and that ticketing policy would become infamous in the wake of one of the deadliest rock-concert incidents in history. Eleven people, including three high-school students, were killed on this day in 1979, when a crowd of general-admission ticket-holders to a Cincinnati Who concert surged forward in an attempt to enter Riverfront Coliseum and secure prime unreserved seats inside.

Illinois achieves full statehood on this day. Though Illinois presented unique challenges to immigrants unaccustomed to the soil and vegetation of the area, it grew to become a bustling and densely populated state.

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