Post by farmgal on Nov 4, 2012 23:18:14 GMT -5
November 05 is the 310th day of this leap year in the Gregorian calendar.
There are 56 days remaining until the end of the year.
Days left until November 06, 2012: 2
Countdown until Obama leaves Office
www.obamaclock.org/
U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/
1439 Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy (1383–1451), in southeastern France, was elected Pope Felix V by one cardinal and eleven bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. Felix was the last of the church's “antipopes” (men whose election to the papal office has been traditionally viewed as irregular by Roman Catholic historians).
1492 Christopher Columbus learns of maize (corn) from the Indians of Cuba, Christopher Columbus wrote in his journal that, in the interior of Cuba, there was a great deal of land "sowed with a sort of beans and a sort of grain they call Mahiz, which was well tasted, baked, dried, and made into flour." Later, Spanish explorers found this plant being cultivated as the principal food crop in every land from New Mexico to Peru and Chile.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize
1677 Solomon Stoddard, Congregational minister, adopts the practice of open communion.
1732 New York Weekly Journal first published by John Peter Zenger, a colonial American printer and journalist. A year later, he was arrested on charges of libeling New York's royal governor.
1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the purpose of which is to adjust the boundary line between Indian lands and white settlements set forth in the Proclamation of 1763 in the Thirteen Colonies.
1775 Continental Army Commander in Chief General George Washington condemns his troops' planned celebration of the British anti-Catholic holiday, Guy Fawkes Night, as he was simultaneously struggling to win French-Canadian Catholics to the Patriot cause.
In his general orders for the day, Washington criticized "that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the Effigy of the Pope," part of the traditional Guy Fawkes celebration. He went on to express his bewilderment that there could be "Officers and Soldiers in this army so void of common sense" and berated the troops for their inability to recognize that "defence [sic] of the general Liberty of America" demanded expressions of "public thanks" to the Canadian Catholics who Washington believed to be necessary allies, and wrote that he found "monstrous" any actions, which might "be insulting their Religion."
On the night of November 5, 1605, the conspiracy by English Catholics to kill King James I and replace him with his Catholic daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was cut short by the arrest of Guy Fawkes, who had been charged with placing gunpowder under the Houses of Parliament. The plot involved digging a tunnel under the Palace of Westminster, filling it with gunpowder and then triggering a deadly explosion during the ceremonial opening of Parliament, which would have resulted in the death of not only James I, but also the leading Protestant nobility. From then on, November 5 was celebrated in Britain and its colonies with a bonfire burning either Guy Fawkes or the pope in effigy.
1780 French-American forces under Colonel LaBalme are defeated by Miami Chief Little Turtle.
1781 John Hanson elected first "President of the US in Congress assembled." The new country was actually formed on March 1, 1781 with the adoption of The Articles of Confederation. John Hanson assumed the Presidency on November 5, 1781, the first man to be elected under the new Articles of Confederation. Hanson was elected by an unanimous vote and all potential candidates refused to run against him because of his work during the revolution and influence in Congress. November 5, 1781 to November 4, 1782.
1824 The Renssalaer School was founded in Troy, N.Y., by Stephen van Renssalaer becoming the first engineering college in the U.S. It opened on 3 Jan 1825, with the purpose of instructing persons, who may choose to apply themselves, in the application of science to the common purposes of life." The first class of 10 students graduated on 26 Apr 1826. The first director and senior professor was Amos Eaton who served from Nov 1824 - 10 May 1842. The name of Renssalaer Institute was adopted on 26 Apr 1832, and Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute on 8 Apr 1861.
1831 Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia.
1852 The American Society of Civil Engineers and Architects was founded and was the first U.S. national civil engineering society. James Laurie was the first president, and the first secretary was Robert Bennett Gorsuch. The name was shortened later to the American Society of Civil Engineers. The purpose of the society was "the advancement of the sciences of engineering and architecture in their several branches, the professional improvement of its members, the encouragement of intercourse between men of practical science, and the establishment of a central point of reference and union for its members."
1862 300 Santee Sioux sentenced to hang in Minnesota On this day in Minnesota, more than 300 Santee Sioux are found guilty of raping and murdering Anglo settlers and are sentenced to hang. A month later, President Abraham Lincoln commuted all but 39 of the death sentences. One of the Indians was granted a last-minute reprieve, but the other 38 were hanged simultaneously on December 26 in a bizarre mass execution witnessed by a large crowd of approving Minnesotans.
The Santee Sioux were found guilty of joining in the so-called "Minnesota Uprising," which was actually part of the wider Indian wars that plagued the West during the second half of the nineteenth century. For nearly half a century, Anglo settlers invaded the Santee Sioux territory in the beautiful Minnesota Valley, and government pressure gradually forced the Indians to relocate to smaller reservations along the Minnesota River.
At the reservations, the Santee were badly mistreated by corrupt federal Indian agents and contractors; during July 1862, the agents pushed the Indians to the brink of starvation by refusing to distribute stores of food because they had not yet received their customary kickback payments. The contractors callously ignored the Santee's pleas for help.
Outraged and at the limits of their endurance, the Santee finally struck back, killing Anglo settlers and taking women as hostages. The initial efforts of the U.S. Army to stop the Santee warriors failed, and in a battle at Birch Coulee, Santee Sioux killed 13 American soldiers and wounded another 47 soldiers. However, on September 23, a force under the leadership of General Henry H. Sibley finally defeated the main body of Santee warriors at Wood Lake, recovering many of the hostages and forcing most of the Indians to surrender. The subsequent trials of the prisoners gave little attention to the injustices the Indians had suffered on the reservations and largely catered to the popular desire for revenge. However, President Lincoln's commutation of the majority of the death sentences clearly reflected his understanding that the Minnesota Uprising had been rooted in a long history of Anglo abuse of the Santee Sioux.
1862 A tortured relationship ends when President Lincoln removes General George B. McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan ably built the army in the early stages of the war but was a sluggish and paranoid field commander who seemed unable to muster the courage to aggressively engage General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
McClellan was a promising commander who served as a railroad president before the war. In the early stages of the conflict, troops under McClellan's command scored several important victories in the struggle for western Virginia. Lincoln summoned "Young Napoleon," as some called the general, to Washington to take control of the Army of the Potomac a few days after its humiliating defeat at the Battle of First Bull Run in July. Over the next nine months, McClellan capably built a splendid army, drilling his troops and assembling an efficient command structure. He also developed extreme contempt for the president, and he often dismissed Lincoln's suggestions out of hand. In 1862, McClellan led the army down Chesapeake Bay to the James Peninsula, southeast of the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. During this campaign, he exhibited the timidity and sluggishness that later doomed him. During the Seven Days' battles, McClellan was poised near Richmond but retreated when faced with a series of attacks by Lee. McClellan always believed that he was vastly outnumbered, though he actually had the numerical advantage. He spent the rest of the summer camped on the peninsula while Lincoln began moving much of his command to General John Pope's Army of Virginia.
After Lee defeated Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run in late August, he invaded Maryland. With the Confederates crashing into Union territory, Lincoln had no choice but to turn to McClellan to gather the reeling Yankee forces and stop Lee. On September 17, 1962, McClellan and Lee battled to a standstill along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg. Lee retreated back to Virginia and McClellan ignored Lincoln's constant urging to pursue him. For six weeks, Lincoln and McClellan exchanged angry messages, but McClellan stubbornly refused to march after Lee. In late October, McClellan finally began moving across the Potomac in feeble pursuit of Lee, but he took nine days to complete the crossing. Lincoln had seen enough. Convinced that McClellan could never defeat Lee, Lincoln notified the general on November 4 of his removal. A few days later, Lincoln named General Ambrose Burnside to be the commander of the Army of the Potomac.
After his removal, McClellan battled with Lincoln once more-for the presidency in 1864. McClellan won the Democratic nomination but was easily defeated by his old boss.
1867 The Susquehanna Synod was organized at Montoursville, Pennsylvania, from the Susquehanna Conference of the East Pennsylvania Synod.
cyclopedia.lcms.org/display.asp?t1=S&word=SUSQUEHANNASYNOD
1868 The Kansas Synod was organized at Topeka, Kansas.
1872 Susan B Anthony fined $100 for trying to vote for Ulysses S Grant.
1878 The second Lutheran Diet in America was held at Philadelphia.
1893 On this day, columns by the 20-year-old Willa Cather begin appearing in the Nebraska State Journal.
Cather was the first of seven children born to an old Virginia family dating back to colonial times. Her maternal grandfather served several terms in the Virginia House of Delegates. Her grandmother was a strong, courageous woman who had a powerful influence on Cather and served as the model for several of her characters.
Cather's family moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska, when she was a child and for the rest of her life wrote about the deep conflict she felt between East and West. While books like O Pioneers (1913) and My Antonia (1918) celebrated the spirit of the frontier, in other works, like The Song of the Lark (1915), she explored the stifling effects of small-town life on creative young minds.
After graduating form the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1895, Cather moved to Pittsburgh to be an editor for a family magazine. She later became an editor for the daily paper in Pittsburgh. In 1901, she became a teacher and stuck with it for several years while she published her first book of verse, April Twilights (1903), and her first collection of stories, The Troll Garden (1905). She moved to New York to take a job as managing editor of McClure's, a monthly magazine; she also began writing novels. Her first, Alexander's Bridge, appeared in 1912, but she didn't find her true voice until O Pioneers. Cather won a Pulitzer in 1922 for One of Ours. Her 1927 novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop, the story of two French-Canadian priests who build a cathedral in the wilds of New Mexico, was also well received. Cather lived most of her adult life in New York, writing novels until she died in 1947.
1894 The famous Election Day snowstorm occurred in Connecticut. As much as a foot of wet snow fell, and the snow and high winds caused great damage to wires and trees. Winds gusted to 60 mph at Block Island RI. (David Ludlum)
1895 First US patent granted for auto (George B Selden) of Rochester, New York, received the first U.S. patent for a gasoline-driven automobile. In the patent, which he had filed several years earlier, on May 8, 1879, he described not only the engine but also a complete automobile incorporating such features as a clutch, compressed air self-starter, and steering system. Seldon maintained that it was the combination of these elements, together with his engine, made the road-engine patentable. As a patent attorney, he knew to delay the issue of the patent by sending ammendments and other communications every two years. Meanwhile, others did the hard work of developing the automobile, and his patent became more valuable. Years of legal wrangling for profits followed.
1895 George B. Selden of Rochester, New York, received the first U.S. patent for a gasoline-driven automobile. In the patent, which he had filed several years earlier, on 8 May 1879, he described not only the engine but also a complete automobile incorporating such features as a clutch, compressed air self-starter, and steering system (No. 549,160). Seldon maintained that it was the combination of these elements, together with his engine, made the road-engine patentable. As a patent attorney, he knew to delay the issue of the patent by sending ammendments and other communications every two years. Meanwhile, others did the hard work of developing the automobile, and his patent became more valuable. Years of legal wrangling for profits followed.
1901 Henry Ford received a patent for a motor carriage.
1911 Calbraith Perry ("Cal") Rodgers, inexperienced 32-year-old pilot, completes first transcontinental airplane flight across the United States. Somewhat of a risk-taker, Rogers had taken only about 90 minutes of flying instruction from Orville Wright in June 1911, at the Wright School in Dayton, Ohio, before attempting a solo flight. J. Ogden Armour, a Chicago meat packer, was willing to sponsor Rodgers in return for advertising his new grape soft drink "Vin Fiz." Rodgers printed Vin Fiz on the rudder and under-wing areas of the plane, and Armour paid him three to five dollars for each mile flown, providing a total of $23,000. After leaving Sheepshead Bay, NY on September 17 (and many crashes later), Rogers reached Pasadena, California, on November 5, 1911.
1912 Democrat Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th president of the United States, with Thomas R. Marshall as vice president. In a landslide Democratic victory, Wilson won 435 electoral votes against the eight won by Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and the 88 won by Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt. The presidential election was the only one in American history in which two former presidents were defeated by another candidate.
Highlights of Wilson's two terms as president included his leadership during World War I, his 14-point proposal to end the conflict, and his championing of the League of Nations—an international organization formed to prevent future armed conflict.
1914 The men of Indian Expeditionary Force B (IEF B) evacuate the seaside town of Tanga in German East Africa after failing in their amphibious invasion of the region on behalf of the British navy in World War I.
As soon as the war broke out on the European continent in the summer of 1914, it quickly spread to Africa, where nearly all of the belligerent powers had significant colonial interests. For its part, Britain’s primary objective in Africa was to gain control of the entire coast of East Africa, the southern half of which was in German hands, through a purely naval operation. In early November, the British Admiralty chose as its first target the town of Tanga. The region’s busiest seaport, Tanga was also the northernmost point of the crucial Usambara railway line. Troops for the invasion would come from the principal garrison of the British colonial empire, India. As India’s best troops had already been sent to the war’s other fronts--France, Egypt and Mesopotamia--the task fell to the inadequately trained Indian Expeditionary Force B, under the command of General Arthur Aitken.
German forces in East Africa were led by the formidable General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, whose attentions at the time of the Tanga invasion were focused on preparing for the threat of a possible British invasion at the southern end of the railway line, near Mount Kilimanjaro. On November 2, then, when Aitken and the 8,000 members of IEF B launched their invasion, only one German company was left to defend Tanga. The expedition’s hesitant and blundering advance from their ships, however, allowed time for the Germans to regroup and for Lettow-Vorbeck to send seven companies by the morning of November 4, with two more scheduled to arrive that day.
Organized in efficient Prussian fashion and trained well in the methods of bush fighting, Lettow-Vorbeck’s still-outnumbered forces overwhelmed the British positions and forced them into a hasty retreat to their ships. By 3:20 p.m. on November 5, the evacuation was completed, marking the first—but not the last—British amphibious expedition to fail in German East Africa.
Lettow-Vorbeck’s campaign in East Africa would become Germany’s longest of World War I: He did not surrender until November 25, 1918, two weeks after the general armistice. Despite limited resources—British dominance of the seas meant that few German forces could be sent to reinforce their countrymen in Africa—the legendary general managed to engage his enemies along the coast of East Africa from Uganda to the Zambezi River without ever letting them catch him in defeat.
1916 The Everett Massacre takes place in Everett, Washington as political differences lead to a shoot-out between the Industrial Workers of the World organizers and local police.
1917 St. Tikhon of Moscow (1865–1925) was elected the Patriarch of Moscow and of the Russian Orthodox Church
1917 St. Tikhon of Moscow is elected the Patriarch of Moscow and of the Russian Orthodox Church.
1922 Tutankhamun's tomb discoveries. In 1922, Howard Carter excavated a further 11 steps and exposed a large part of a plastered and sealed doorway to Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, Egypt. (The first step had been discovered by a labourer the previous day). At the time, Carter recognized seal-impressions suggesting that the tomb belonged to somebody of high standing but did not yet know that it was occupied by Tutankhamun.
1927 Walter Hagen wins his 4th straight PGA championship. Hagen's greatest accomplishment was probably winning five PGA Championships, including four in a row, when it was a match-play tournament. He won in 1921, didn't play in 1922, lost to Gene Sarazen in the final in 1923, then won each year from 1924 through 1927. During those six years of competition, he lost just one match against the best professionals in the United States.
1930 "All Quiet on the Western Front" wins best picture at the 3rd Annual Academy Awards. In 1930, an American film of the novel was made, directed by Lewis Milestone. It starred Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy and Ben Alexander. The film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1930 for its producer Carl Laemmle Jr., and an Academy Award for Directing for Lewis Milestone. It was the first all-talking non-musical film to win the Best Picture Oscar. It also received two further nominations: Best Cinematography, for Arthur Edeson, and Best Writing Achievement for Abbott, Anderson and Andrews.
1930 Sinclair Lewis is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." Lewis, born in Sauk Center, Minnesota, was the first American to win the distinguished award.
Lewis established his literary reputation in the 1920s with a series of satirical novels about small-town life in the United States, including Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), and Elmer Gantry (1927). In these novels, his central characters strive to escape their emotionally and intellectually repressive environments, with varying degrees of success. In 1926, he turned down the Pulitzer Prize awarded him for Arrowsmith but in 1930 decided to accept Sweden's Nobel Prize.
1933 Chicago Bears 30 game unbeaten streak ends to Patriots (10-0)
1934 The first broadcast of "The Gumps" was heard on CBS radio. As one of the earliest continuity strips, "The Gumps" was extremely popular, with newspaper readers anxiously following the convoluted storylines. The Gumps were introduced to a radio audience on WGN in 1931. The series moved to CBS for a four-year run (1934-1937) with scripts by Irwin Shaw. Dorothy Denvir was heard as Min, with Agnes Moorehead, in her first radio role, portraying Min during the last two years of the series.
1935 The Cooperative General Association of Free Will Baptists (northern U.S.) and the General Conference of Free Will Baptists (southern U.S.) merged in Nashville, TN, to form the National Association of Free Will Baptists.
1935 Parker Brothers launches game of Monopoly. First marketed on a broad scale by Parker Brothers in 1935. A Standard Edition, with a small black box and separate board, and a larger Deluxe Edition with a box large enough to hold the board, were sold in the first year of Parker Brothers' ownership.
1935 The Cooperative General Association of Free Will Baptists (northern U.S.) and the General Conference of Free Will Baptists (southern U.S.) merged in Nashville, Tennessee, to form the National Association of Free Will Baptists.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Free_Will_Baptists
1937 Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting and states his plans for acquiring "living space" for the German people.
1938 Ottawa Roughriders score on 5-man, 4-lateral, 65-yard punt return.
1938 Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings receives its world premiere on NBC radio. The American composer Samuel Barber (born in 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania) was only 27 years old when he wrote the piece of music that would come to define his entire career. He would live to be 70, and he would win two Pulitzer Prizes for works composed during his final three decades, but even before he'd turned 40, he had responded to an interviewer's praise for his most famous work by saying, ""I wish you'd hear some new ones. Everyone always plays that." The piece to which Barber was referring was his Adagio for Strings, one of the most beautiful and recognizable works in the modern classical music canon. Submitted by Barber some nine months earlier for consideration by the great Italian conductor of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, Adagio for Strings made its world premiere on this day in 1938 to a live radio audience in the millions.
"Simplice e bella"—"simple and beautiful"—were the words that Toscanini reportedly used to describe Barber's piece after hearing the NBC orchestra's first rehearsal of the Adagio. This was high praise from a man who had become the single most important figure in classical music in America since his 1937 emigration from Italy, yet who almost never performed works by American composers. Toscanini chose two pieces by Barber, however, as the centerpieces of his November 5, 1938, program broadcast from Studio 8-H in Rockefeller Center.
Adagio for Strings had begun not as a freestanding piece, but as one movement of Barber's 1936 String Quartet No. 1, Opus 11. When that movement provoked a mid-composition standing ovation at its premiere performance, Barber decided to create the orchestral adaptation that he would soon send to Toscanini. In later years, the piece would be played at the state funerals of both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, taking its place as what one observer has called "the semi-official music of mourning."
The continued popularity of the Adagio for Stings—it ranks consistently among the most downloaded pieces of digital classical music and has been voted the world's "saddest piece of music" by BBC listeners—owes much to its prominent appearance in the soundtrack of the 1986 Oliver Stone film Platoon. But it was director David Lynch who preceded Stone in bringing Barber's Adagio to Hollywood, using it to beautiful effect in the final scene of his 1980 film The Elephant Man. "That piece of music is so beautiful," Lynch later said in an interview with National Public Radio, "that I'm surprised it's not in almost every film."
1940 President FDR (D) wins unprecedented 3rd term beating Wendell Willkie (R). Long before the 1940 Republican National Convention, held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the three "main" candidates for the nomination were considered to be Senators Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg and Thomas E. Dewey, a District Attorney from Manhattan. A Wall Street-based industrialist named Wendell Willkie, who had never before run for public office, emerged as the nominee. Willkie crusaded against the New Deal and the government's lack of military preparedness. During the election, Roosevelt preempted the military issue by expanding military contracts. Willkie then reversed his approach and accused Roosevelt of warmongering. On election day Roosevelt received 27 million votes to Willkie's 22 million, and in the Electoral College, Roosevelt defeated Willkie 449 to 82.
1942 The Second Battle of El Alamein is won by the British in El Alamein, Egypt.
1946 John F Kennedy (D-MA) elected to House of Representatives. In 1946, Kennedy ran successfully for a Boston-based seat in the U.S. House of Representatives; he was reelected in 1948 and 1950. As a congressman he backed social legislation that benefited his working-class constituents. Although generally supporting President Harry S. Truman's foreign policies, he criticized what he considered the administration's weak stand against the Communist Chinese.
1950 Billy Graham's "Hour of Decision" program was first broadcast over television.
1953 Paul Searls saws a 32" log in 86.4 seconds.Paul Searls was a champion log bucker for 30 years, and was featured on TV programs such as "You Asked For It" and others. The highlight of a dedication ceremony for California's famed Golden Gate Bridge in 1937 was a log bucking contest in which Searls sawed through a redwood log in two minutes, forty seven and two fifths seconds to defeat a champion from Idaho. He too was a guest performer on a number of TV shows.
1955 "Autumn Leaves" by Roger Williams topped the charts
1961 - Strong Santa Ana winds fanned the flames of the Bel Air and Brentwood fires in southern California destroying many homes. At 10 PM the Los Angeles Civic Center reported a temperature of 74 degrees along with a dew point of 5 degrees. On the 6th, Burbank reported a relative humidity of three percent. (The Weather Channel)
1963 Archaeologists found Viking ruins in Newfoundland predating Columbus by 500 years. Leif Ericson, Icelandic explorer, second son of Eric the Red, is believed by most historians to have been the first European to reach the North American mainland. About the year 1000 he landed at a place that he called Vinland. Vinland was identified as Newfoundland in 1963 when archaeologists uncovered the remains of a Viking-type settlement at L'Anse-aux-Meadows at the extreme northern tip of the island. His countryman, Bjarni Herjólfsson, had earlier sighted North America and reported that the land was rich in timber. Thus, Ericson had a clear economic motive for his journey. Icelanders needed wood for houses and ships, but their country is entirely treeless.
1966 "Last Train to Clarksville" by the Monkees topped the charts, written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, a songwriting team who came up with many songs for the Monkees. They also wrote songs for Chubby Checker and Jay And The Americans. Boyce and Hart wrote this as a protest to the Vietnam War. They had to keep this quiet in order to get it recorded, but it is about a guy who gets drafted and goes to fight in the war. The train is taking him to an army base, and he knows he may die in Vietnam. At the end of the song he states, "I don't know if I'm ever coming home."
1967 ATS-3 launched by US to take first pictures of full Earth disk. The goals for ATS-3 included investigations of spin stabilization techniques and VHF and C-band communications experiments. In addition to fulfilling its primary mission, it also provided regular communications service to sites in the Pacific basin and Antarctica, provided emergency commications links during the 1987 Mexican earthquake and the Mt. St. Helens disaster, and supported the Apollo Moon landings. The satellite also provided the first color images from space as well as regular cloud cover images for meteorological studies.
1968 First AL pitcher to win MVP, Denny McLain. Recording a 31-6 record with a 1.96 ERA, he earned MVP and Cy Young honors. His 280 strikeouts - as opposed to only 63 walks - also contributed to Detroit's first pennant since 1945. He was the last 30-game winner of the 20th century.
1968 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.
1970 Vietnam War: The United States Military Assistance Command in Vietnam reports the lowest weekly American soldier death toll in five years (24).
1971 NBA's Los Angeles Lakers starts a 33 game consecutive victory streak
1974 Ella Grasso (CT) elected first woman US govenor not related to previous governor. In 1970 and 1972 she was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Connecticut's 6th District. While in Congress she served on the Education and Labor Committee and the Veterans' Affairs Committee. In 1974 Connecticut voters chose Ella Grasso as the first woman to be a governor of an American state on her own and not as a successor to an incumbent husband.
1974 Walter E Washington, becomes first elected mayor of Washington, DC.
1977 NCAA passing record set at 571 yards (Marc Wilson, Brigham Young)
1977 - A slow moving storm produced five to nine inch rains across northern Georgia causing the Toccoa Dam to burst. As the earthen dam collapsed the waters rushed through the Toccoa Falls Bible College killing three persons in the dorms. Thirty-eight persons perished at a trailer park along the stream. (David Ludlum)
1977 Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life," goes #1.
1977 George W. Bush marries Laura Welch in Midland, Texas. On this day in 1977, 31-year-old future President George W. Bush marries 33-year-old Laura Welch at the First United Methodist Church in her hometown of Midland, Texas.
Bush was the son of George H.W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States. Both father and son worked in the oil business in Texas before entering politics. Laura taught elementary school in Houston before getting her master's degree in library science in 1972 and becoming a school librarian. The couple met at a friend's barbecue in 1977 and went miniature golfing on their first date. They were married three months later in a small, modest ceremony attended by family and friends.
Early into their marriage, Laura enthusiastically supported her husband's bids for political office and over time became an astute and effective campaign asset. Still, Bush failed to win his first election (a bid for Congress in 1978) and the couple settled down to raising two children while Bush returned to the oil business. He served as CEO of Arbusto Oil (later renamed Bush Exploration Company) from 1979 to 1988 and became general manager of the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in 1989. In 1986, while George H.W. Bush was serving as Ronald Reagan's vice president, Laura Bush was discreetly instrumental in helping her husband overcome an addiction to alcohol. Two years later, Laura campaigned for her father-in-law's successful presidential bid and in 1994 supported her husband's decision to run for governor of Texas. In 2000, Bush became president in a contested and controversial campaign against Democratic Vice President Al Gore.
As first lady, Laura Bush successfully evaded the controversy surrounding her predecessor, the outspoken Hillary Clinton, by keeping a relatively low profile. She was careful in her choice of policy issues to champion, avoiding highly controversial subjects like health care and abortion rights. She often speaks in support of her husband's education policies and was highly visible in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. At that time, she attended forums on the mental health of children affected by the terrorist attacks, and in 2003, after Bush ordered an invasion of Afghanistan, met with Afghani women who had suffered terrible repression under that country's Taliban regime. In November 2001, Laura Bush made history by being the first first lady to deliver the weekly presidential radio address in place of her husband.
George and Laura Bush have twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, and maintain a home in Crawford, Texas.
1978 Oakland Raider's John Madden becomes 13th coach to win 100 NFL games.
1982 Cleveland Cavaliers lose 24th consecutive game (NBA record)
1983 "Islands in the Stream" by Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton topped the charts. Late in 1983, Rogers left United Artists/Liberty for RCA Records, releasing a duet with Dolly Parton called "Islands in the Stream" as his first single for the label. Written by the Bee Gees and produced by Barry Gibb, the record became one of his biggest hits, spending two weeks on the top of both the country and pop charts.
1984 The Supreme Court ruled that the NFL could not block future franchise moves and had exceeded antitrust limits in attempting to stop a move by the Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles.
1986 USS Rentz, USS Reeves and USS Oldendorf visit Qingdao (Tsing Tao) China -- the first US Naval visit to China since 1949.
1987 Iceberg twice the size of Rhode Island sighted in Antarctic. The iceberg that broke off the Ronne Ice Shelf, named A-38, is 92 miles long by 29.9 miles wide and covers an area roughly 2750.8 square miles. It broke off the second largest ice shelf in Antarctica, located in the southern Weddell Sea.
1987 Low pressure off the California coast produced stormy weather in the southwestern U.S. Flash flooding stranded 8000 persons in the Death Valley National Park of southern California. Thunder- storms over southern Nevada produced dime size hail and wind gusts to 68 mph around Las Vegas. Unseasonably mild weather in the northeastern U.S. was replaced with snow and gale force winds. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1988 Cornell confirms grad student source of worst computer sabotage. In 1988, a 23-year-old graduate student at Cornell University, Robert Morris, released the internet's first worm. Morris, the son of a National Security Agency (NSA) computer security expert, wrote 99 lines of code and released them into the internet as an experiment. Quickly, Morris discovered that the program was replicating and infecting machines at a much faster rate than he had anticipated. Invisible tasks were overloading machines around the country and preventing users from using the machines effectively, if at all. Computers were crashing or becoming unresponsive to commands. To curtail the spread of the infection, many system administrators were forced to cut off their machines from the internet entirely. In 1990, a federal judge sentenced Morris to 400 hours of community service and a $10,000 fine.
1988 A powerful low pressure system produced high winds from the Great Plains to New England, and produced heavy snow in northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. Winds gusted to 64 mph at Knoxville TN, and reached 80 mph at Pleasant Valley VT. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
1988 The Beach Boys hit #1 in US with "Kokomo." "Kokomo" came together when producer Terry Melcher was hired to work on a song with The Beach Boys for the Tom Cruise movie Cocktail. They were one of the most popular bands of the '60s, and had a bunch of songs dealing with recreation and fun, which is why they were asked to record for the movie.
1989 Temperatures warmed into the 80s across much of Texas. Highs of 86 degrees at Abilene, Fort Worth and San Angelo were records for the date. (The National Weather Summary)
1990 Jewish extremist assassinated in New York. Meir Kahane, an American-born rabbi and founder of the far-right Kach movement, is shot dead in New York City. Egyptian El Sayyid Nosair was later charged with the murder but acquitted in a state trial. The federal government later decided that the killing was part of a larger terrorist conspiracy and thus claimed the right to retry Nosair. In 1995, he was convicted of killing Kahane during the conspiracy trial of Brooklyn-based Arab militants led by Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. Nosair was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Kahane, a charismatic Jewish leader who advocated expelling all Arabs from Israel, found followers in Israel and the United States. He formed the Jewish Defense League in the United States in the 1960s and in 1971 moved to Israel, where he founded the Kach Party. Because of its racist platform, Kach was forbidden from participating in Israeli elections after 1988, but it continued to be supported by extremist Jewish settlers in Israel's occupied territories. In 1994, after a Jewish settler once affiliated with the Kach movement gunned down more than 30 Arabs worshipping in a mosque in the West Bank town of Hebron, Israel completely outlawed the organization.
1994 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."
Born in 1949 in Marshal, Texas, Foreman had a troubled childhood and dropped out of high school. Eventually, he joined President Lyndon Johnson's Jobs Corps work program and discovered a talent for boxing. "Big George," as he was nicknamed, took home a gold medal for the U.S. at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. In 1973 in Kingston, Jamaica, after winning his first 37 professional matches, 34 by knockout, Foreman KO'd "Smokin'" Joe Frazier after two rounds and was crowned heavyweight champ. At 1974's "Rumble in the Jungle" in Kinshasha, Zaire, the younger, stronger Foreman suffered a surprising loss to underdog Muhammad Ali and was forced to relinquish his championship title. Three years later, Big George morphed from pugilist into preacher, when he had a religious experience in his dressing room after losing a fight. He retired from boxing, became an ordained minister in Houston and founded a youth center.
A decade later, the millions he'd made as a boxer gone, Foreman returned to the ring at age 38 and staged a successful comeback. When he won his second heavyweight title in his 1994 fight against Moorer, becoming the WBA and IBF champ, Foreman was wearing the same red trunks he'd had on the night he lost to Ali.
Foreman didn't hang onto the heavyweight mantle for long. In March 1995, he was stripped of his WBA title after refusing to fight No. 1 contender Tony Tucker, and he gave up his IBF title in June 1995 rather than fight a rematch with Axel Schulz, whom he'd narrowly beat in a controversial judges' decision in April of that same year. Foreman's last fight was in 1997; he lost to Shannon Biggs. He retired with a lifetime record of 76-5.
Outside of the boxing ring, Foreman, who has five sons, all named George, and five daughters, has become enormously wealthy as an entrepreneur and genial TV pitchman for a variety of products, including the hugely popular George Foreman Grill.
1999 U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, in a ‘finding of fact’, declared Microsoft Corporation a monopoly.
2002 Severe thunderstorms moved across southeastern Alabama and the Florida panhandle, producing wind damage and several tornadoes. A tornado struck the Alabama town of Abbeville killing 2 people and injuring 25.
2006 Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar are sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for the role in the massacre of the 148 Shi'as in 1982.
2007 members of the Writers Guild of America, East, and Writers Guild of America, West--labor organizations representing television, film and radio writers--go 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.
The strike’s key issues included the writers’ demand for a larger share of DVD revenues and payment for films and TV shows distributed over the Internet and other forms of new media. Late-night talk shows, which used guild writers, were immediately affected by the strike and went into reruns. Production also shut down on many prime-time comedies and dramas; however, some had stockpiled completed programming and were able to avoid going straight into reruns.
After a series of stalemated discussions, leaders from both sides eventually reached a tentative agreement, and on February 12, 2008, WGA members voted to end the strike and go back to work. The strike officially ended on February 26, when WGA members overwhelmingly approved a new three-year contract with the AMPTP.
The impact of the writers’ walkout was felt across the entertainment industry, from actors to caterers to editors to set designers to animal wranglers. According to the Los Angeles Times, the chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation estimated the strike resulted in a loss to the local economy of more than $3 billion. The Times article stated: “Of that total, an estimated $772 million came from lost wages for writers and production workers, $981 million from various businesses that service the industry, including caterers and equipment rental houses, and $1.3 billion from the ripple effect of consumers not spending as much at retail shops, restaurants and car dealers.”
Previous multiple-month strikes launched by Writers Guild members in 1960 and 1988 had also greatly impacted the entertainment industry, bringing TV and movie production to a standstill and costing millions in revenue.
2009 US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan kills 13 and wounds 30 at Fort Hood, Texas in the largest mass shooting at a US military installation.
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There are 56 days remaining until the end of the year.
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1439 Duke Amadeus VIII of Savoy (1383–1451), in southeastern France, was elected Pope Felix V by one cardinal and eleven bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. Felix was the last of the church's “antipopes” (men whose election to the papal office has been traditionally viewed as irregular by Roman Catholic historians).
1492 Christopher Columbus learns of maize (corn) from the Indians of Cuba, Christopher Columbus wrote in his journal that, in the interior of Cuba, there was a great deal of land "sowed with a sort of beans and a sort of grain they call Mahiz, which was well tasted, baked, dried, and made into flour." Later, Spanish explorers found this plant being cultivated as the principal food crop in every land from New Mexico to Peru and Chile.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize
1677 Solomon Stoddard, Congregational minister, adopts the practice of open communion.
1768 Treaty of Fort Stanwix, the purpose of which is to adjust the boundary line between Indian lands and white settlements set forth in the Proclamation of 1763 in the Thirteen Colonies.
1775 Continental Army Commander in Chief General George Washington condemns his troops' planned celebration of the British anti-Catholic holiday, Guy Fawkes Night, as he was simultaneously struggling to win French-Canadian Catholics to the Patriot cause.
In his general orders for the day, Washington criticized "that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the Effigy of the Pope," part of the traditional Guy Fawkes celebration. He went on to express his bewilderment that there could be "Officers and Soldiers in this army so void of common sense" and berated the troops for their inability to recognize that "defence [sic] of the general Liberty of America" demanded expressions of "public thanks" to the Canadian Catholics who Washington believed to be necessary allies, and wrote that he found "monstrous" any actions, which might "be insulting their Religion."
On the night of November 5, 1605, the conspiracy by English Catholics to kill King James I and replace him with his Catholic daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was cut short by the arrest of Guy Fawkes, who had been charged with placing gunpowder under the Houses of Parliament. The plot involved digging a tunnel under the Palace of Westminster, filling it with gunpowder and then triggering a deadly explosion during the ceremonial opening of Parliament, which would have resulted in the death of not only James I, but also the leading Protestant nobility. From then on, November 5 was celebrated in Britain and its colonies with a bonfire burning either Guy Fawkes or the pope in effigy.
1780 French-American forces under Colonel LaBalme are defeated by Miami Chief Little Turtle.
1831 Nat Turner, American slave leader, is tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Virginia.
1852 The American Society of Civil Engineers and Architects was founded and was the first U.S. national civil engineering society. James Laurie was the first president, and the first secretary was Robert Bennett Gorsuch. The name was shortened later to the American Society of Civil Engineers. The purpose of the society was "the advancement of the sciences of engineering and architecture in their several branches, the professional improvement of its members, the encouragement of intercourse between men of practical science, and the establishment of a central point of reference and union for its members."
1862 300 Santee Sioux sentenced to hang in Minnesota On this day in Minnesota, more than 300 Santee Sioux are found guilty of raping and murdering Anglo settlers and are sentenced to hang. A month later, President Abraham Lincoln commuted all but 39 of the death sentences. One of the Indians was granted a last-minute reprieve, but the other 38 were hanged simultaneously on December 26 in a bizarre mass execution witnessed by a large crowd of approving Minnesotans.
The Santee Sioux were found guilty of joining in the so-called "Minnesota Uprising," which was actually part of the wider Indian wars that plagued the West during the second half of the nineteenth century. For nearly half a century, Anglo settlers invaded the Santee Sioux territory in the beautiful Minnesota Valley, and government pressure gradually forced the Indians to relocate to smaller reservations along the Minnesota River.
At the reservations, the Santee were badly mistreated by corrupt federal Indian agents and contractors; during July 1862, the agents pushed the Indians to the brink of starvation by refusing to distribute stores of food because they had not yet received their customary kickback payments. The contractors callously ignored the Santee's pleas for help.
Outraged and at the limits of their endurance, the Santee finally struck back, killing Anglo settlers and taking women as hostages. The initial efforts of the U.S. Army to stop the Santee warriors failed, and in a battle at Birch Coulee, Santee Sioux killed 13 American soldiers and wounded another 47 soldiers. However, on September 23, a force under the leadership of General Henry H. Sibley finally defeated the main body of Santee warriors at Wood Lake, recovering many of the hostages and forcing most of the Indians to surrender. The subsequent trials of the prisoners gave little attention to the injustices the Indians had suffered on the reservations and largely catered to the popular desire for revenge. However, President Lincoln's commutation of the majority of the death sentences clearly reflected his understanding that the Minnesota Uprising had been rooted in a long history of Anglo abuse of the Santee Sioux.
1862 A tortured relationship ends when President Lincoln removes General George B. McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac. McClellan ably built the army in the early stages of the war but was a sluggish and paranoid field commander who seemed unable to muster the courage to aggressively engage General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia.
McClellan was a promising commander who served as a railroad president before the war. In the early stages of the conflict, troops under McClellan's command scored several important victories in the struggle for western Virginia. Lincoln summoned "Young Napoleon," as some called the general, to Washington to take control of the Army of the Potomac a few days after its humiliating defeat at the Battle of First Bull Run in July. Over the next nine months, McClellan capably built a splendid army, drilling his troops and assembling an efficient command structure. He also developed extreme contempt for the president, and he often dismissed Lincoln's suggestions out of hand. In 1862, McClellan led the army down Chesapeake Bay to the James Peninsula, southeast of the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia. During this campaign, he exhibited the timidity and sluggishness that later doomed him. During the Seven Days' battles, McClellan was poised near Richmond but retreated when faced with a series of attacks by Lee. McClellan always believed that he was vastly outnumbered, though he actually had the numerical advantage. He spent the rest of the summer camped on the peninsula while Lincoln began moving much of his command to General John Pope's Army of Virginia.
After Lee defeated Pope at the Second Battle of Bull Run in late August, he invaded Maryland. With the Confederates crashing into Union territory, Lincoln had no choice but to turn to McClellan to gather the reeling Yankee forces and stop Lee. On September 17, 1962, McClellan and Lee battled to a standstill along Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg. Lee retreated back to Virginia and McClellan ignored Lincoln's constant urging to pursue him. For six weeks, Lincoln and McClellan exchanged angry messages, but McClellan stubbornly refused to march after Lee. In late October, McClellan finally began moving across the Potomac in feeble pursuit of Lee, but he took nine days to complete the crossing. Lincoln had seen enough. Convinced that McClellan could never defeat Lee, Lincoln notified the general on November 4 of his removal. A few days later, Lincoln named General Ambrose Burnside to be the commander of the Army of the Potomac.
After his removal, McClellan battled with Lincoln once more-for the presidency in 1864. McClellan won the Democratic nomination but was easily defeated by his old boss.
1867 The Susquehanna Synod was organized at Montoursville, Pennsylvania, from the Susquehanna Conference of the East Pennsylvania Synod.
cyclopedia.lcms.org/display.asp?t1=S&word=SUSQUEHANNASYNOD
1868 The Kansas Synod was organized at Topeka, Kansas.
1878 The second Lutheran Diet in America was held at Philadelphia.
1893 On this day, columns by the 20-year-old Willa Cather begin appearing in the Nebraska State Journal.
Cather was the first of seven children born to an old Virginia family dating back to colonial times. Her maternal grandfather served several terms in the Virginia House of Delegates. Her grandmother was a strong, courageous woman who had a powerful influence on Cather and served as the model for several of her characters.
Cather's family moved to Red Cloud, Nebraska, when she was a child and for the rest of her life wrote about the deep conflict she felt between East and West. While books like O Pioneers (1913) and My Antonia (1918) celebrated the spirit of the frontier, in other works, like The Song of the Lark (1915), she explored the stifling effects of small-town life on creative young minds.
After graduating form the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in 1895, Cather moved to Pittsburgh to be an editor for a family magazine. She later became an editor for the daily paper in Pittsburgh. In 1901, she became a teacher and stuck with it for several years while she published her first book of verse, April Twilights (1903), and her first collection of stories, The Troll Garden (1905). She moved to New York to take a job as managing editor of McClure's, a monthly magazine; she also began writing novels. Her first, Alexander's Bridge, appeared in 1912, but she didn't find her true voice until O Pioneers. Cather won a Pulitzer in 1922 for One of Ours. Her 1927 novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop, the story of two French-Canadian priests who build a cathedral in the wilds of New Mexico, was also well received. Cather lived most of her adult life in New York, writing novels until she died in 1947.
1894 The famous Election Day snowstorm occurred in Connecticut. As much as a foot of wet snow fell, and the snow and high winds caused great damage to wires and trees. Winds gusted to 60 mph at Block Island RI. (David Ludlum)
1901 Henry Ford received a patent for a motor carriage.
1912 Democrat Woodrow Wilson is elected the 28th president of the United States, with Thomas R. Marshall as vice president. In a landslide Democratic victory, Wilson won 435 electoral votes against the eight won by Republican incumbent William Howard Taft and the 88 won by Progressive Party candidate Theodore Roosevelt. The presidential election was the only one in American history in which two former presidents were defeated by another candidate.
Highlights of Wilson's two terms as president included his leadership during World War I, his 14-point proposal to end the conflict, and his championing of the League of Nations—an international organization formed to prevent future armed conflict.
1914 The men of Indian Expeditionary Force B (IEF B) evacuate the seaside town of Tanga in German East Africa after failing in their amphibious invasion of the region on behalf of the British navy in World War I.
As soon as the war broke out on the European continent in the summer of 1914, it quickly spread to Africa, where nearly all of the belligerent powers had significant colonial interests. For its part, Britain’s primary objective in Africa was to gain control of the entire coast of East Africa, the southern half of which was in German hands, through a purely naval operation. In early November, the British Admiralty chose as its first target the town of Tanga. The region’s busiest seaport, Tanga was also the northernmost point of the crucial Usambara railway line. Troops for the invasion would come from the principal garrison of the British colonial empire, India. As India’s best troops had already been sent to the war’s other fronts--France, Egypt and Mesopotamia--the task fell to the inadequately trained Indian Expeditionary Force B, under the command of General Arthur Aitken.
German forces in East Africa were led by the formidable General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, whose attentions at the time of the Tanga invasion were focused on preparing for the threat of a possible British invasion at the southern end of the railway line, near Mount Kilimanjaro. On November 2, then, when Aitken and the 8,000 members of IEF B launched their invasion, only one German company was left to defend Tanga. The expedition’s hesitant and blundering advance from their ships, however, allowed time for the Germans to regroup and for Lettow-Vorbeck to send seven companies by the morning of November 4, with two more scheduled to arrive that day.
Organized in efficient Prussian fashion and trained well in the methods of bush fighting, Lettow-Vorbeck’s still-outnumbered forces overwhelmed the British positions and forced them into a hasty retreat to their ships. By 3:20 p.m. on November 5, the evacuation was completed, marking the first—but not the last—British amphibious expedition to fail in German East Africa.
Lettow-Vorbeck’s campaign in East Africa would become Germany’s longest of World War I: He did not surrender until November 25, 1918, two weeks after the general armistice. Despite limited resources—British dominance of the seas meant that few German forces could be sent to reinforce their countrymen in Africa—the legendary general managed to engage his enemies along the coast of East Africa from Uganda to the Zambezi River without ever letting them catch him in defeat.
1916 The Everett Massacre takes place in Everett, Washington as political differences lead to a shoot-out between the Industrial Workers of the World organizers and local police.
1917 St. Tikhon of Moscow (1865–1925) was elected the Patriarch of Moscow and of the Russian Orthodox Church
1917 St. Tikhon of Moscow is elected the Patriarch of Moscow and of the Russian Orthodox Church.
1930 Sinclair Lewis is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." Lewis, born in Sauk Center, Minnesota, was the first American to win the distinguished award.
Lewis established his literary reputation in the 1920s with a series of satirical novels about small-town life in the United States, including Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), and Elmer Gantry (1927). In these novels, his central characters strive to escape their emotionally and intellectually repressive environments, with varying degrees of success. In 1926, he turned down the Pulitzer Prize awarded him for Arrowsmith but in 1930 decided to accept Sweden's Nobel Prize.
1933 Chicago Bears 30 game unbeaten streak ends to Patriots (10-0)
1935 The Cooperative General Association of Free Will Baptists (northern U.S.) and the General Conference of Free Will Baptists (southern U.S.) merged in Nashville, TN, to form the National Association of Free Will Baptists.
1935 The Cooperative General Association of Free Will Baptists (northern U.S.) and the General Conference of Free Will Baptists (southern U.S.) merged in Nashville, Tennessee, to form the National Association of Free Will Baptists.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_of_Free_Will_Baptists
1937 Adolf Hitler holds a secret meeting and states his plans for acquiring "living space" for the German people.
1938 Ottawa Roughriders score on 5-man, 4-lateral, 65-yard punt return.
1938 Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings receives its world premiere on NBC radio. The American composer Samuel Barber (born in 1910 in West Chester, Pennsylvania) was only 27 years old when he wrote the piece of music that would come to define his entire career. He would live to be 70, and he would win two Pulitzer Prizes for works composed during his final three decades, but even before he'd turned 40, he had responded to an interviewer's praise for his most famous work by saying, ""I wish you'd hear some new ones. Everyone always plays that." The piece to which Barber was referring was his Adagio for Strings, one of the most beautiful and recognizable works in the modern classical music canon. Submitted by Barber some nine months earlier for consideration by the great Italian conductor of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, Arturo Toscanini, Adagio for Strings made its world premiere on this day in 1938 to a live radio audience in the millions.
"Simplice e bella"—"simple and beautiful"—were the words that Toscanini reportedly used to describe Barber's piece after hearing the NBC orchestra's first rehearsal of the Adagio. This was high praise from a man who had become the single most important figure in classical music in America since his 1937 emigration from Italy, yet who almost never performed works by American composers. Toscanini chose two pieces by Barber, however, as the centerpieces of his November 5, 1938, program broadcast from Studio 8-H in Rockefeller Center.
Adagio for Strings had begun not as a freestanding piece, but as one movement of Barber's 1936 String Quartet No. 1, Opus 11. When that movement provoked a mid-composition standing ovation at its premiere performance, Barber decided to create the orchestral adaptation that he would soon send to Toscanini. In later years, the piece would be played at the state funerals of both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, taking its place as what one observer has called "the semi-official music of mourning."
The continued popularity of the Adagio for Stings—it ranks consistently among the most downloaded pieces of digital classical music and has been voted the world's "saddest piece of music" by BBC listeners—owes much to its prominent appearance in the soundtrack of the 1986 Oliver Stone film Platoon. But it was director David Lynch who preceded Stone in bringing Barber's Adagio to Hollywood, using it to beautiful effect in the final scene of his 1980 film The Elephant Man. "That piece of music is so beautiful," Lynch later said in an interview with National Public Radio, "that I'm surprised it's not in almost every film."
1942 The Second Battle of El Alamein is won by the British in El Alamein, Egypt.
1950 Billy Graham's "Hour of Decision" program was first broadcast over television.
1953 Paul Searls saws a 32" log in 86.4 seconds.Paul Searls was a champion log bucker for 30 years, and was featured on TV programs such as "You Asked For It" and others. The highlight of a dedication ceremony for California's famed Golden Gate Bridge in 1937 was a log bucking contest in which Searls sawed through a redwood log in two minutes, forty seven and two fifths seconds to defeat a champion from Idaho. He too was a guest performer on a number of TV shows.
1955 "Autumn Leaves" by Roger Williams topped the charts
1961 - Strong Santa Ana winds fanned the flames of the Bel Air and Brentwood fires in southern California destroying many homes. At 10 PM the Los Angeles Civic Center reported a temperature of 74 degrees along with a dew point of 5 degrees. On the 6th, Burbank reported a relative humidity of three percent. (The Weather Channel)
1966 "Last Train to Clarksville" by the Monkees topped the charts, written by Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, a songwriting team who came up with many songs for the Monkees. They also wrote songs for Chubby Checker and Jay And The Americans. Boyce and Hart wrote this as a protest to the Vietnam War. They had to keep this quiet in order to get it recorded, but it is about a guy who gets drafted and goes to fight in the war. The train is taking him to an army base, and he knows he may die in Vietnam. At the end of the song he states, "I don't know if I'm ever coming home."
1968 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.
1970 Vietnam War: The United States Military Assistance Command in Vietnam reports the lowest weekly American soldier death toll in five years (24).
1971 NBA's Los Angeles Lakers starts a 33 game consecutive victory streak
1974 Ella Grasso (CT) elected first woman US govenor not related to previous governor. In 1970 and 1972 she was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Connecticut's 6th District. While in Congress she served on the Education and Labor Committee and the Veterans' Affairs Committee. In 1974 Connecticut voters chose Ella Grasso as the first woman to be a governor of an American state on her own and not as a successor to an incumbent husband.
1974 Walter E Washington, becomes first elected mayor of Washington, DC.
1977 NCAA passing record set at 571 yards (Marc Wilson, Brigham Young)
1977 - A slow moving storm produced five to nine inch rains across northern Georgia causing the Toccoa Dam to burst. As the earthen dam collapsed the waters rushed through the Toccoa Falls Bible College killing three persons in the dorms. Thirty-eight persons perished at a trailer park along the stream. (David Ludlum)
1977 Debbie Boone's "You Light Up My Life," goes #1.
1977 George W. Bush marries Laura Welch in Midland, Texas. On this day in 1977, 31-year-old future President George W. Bush marries 33-year-old Laura Welch at the First United Methodist Church in her hometown of Midland, Texas.
Bush was the son of George H.W. Bush, the 43rd president of the United States. Both father and son worked in the oil business in Texas before entering politics. Laura taught elementary school in Houston before getting her master's degree in library science in 1972 and becoming a school librarian. The couple met at a friend's barbecue in 1977 and went miniature golfing on their first date. They were married three months later in a small, modest ceremony attended by family and friends.
Early into their marriage, Laura enthusiastically supported her husband's bids for political office and over time became an astute and effective campaign asset. Still, Bush failed to win his first election (a bid for Congress in 1978) and the couple settled down to raising two children while Bush returned to the oil business. He served as CEO of Arbusto Oil (later renamed Bush Exploration Company) from 1979 to 1988 and became general manager of the Texas Rangers baseball franchise in 1989. In 1986, while George H.W. Bush was serving as Ronald Reagan's vice president, Laura Bush was discreetly instrumental in helping her husband overcome an addiction to alcohol. Two years later, Laura campaigned for her father-in-law's successful presidential bid and in 1994 supported her husband's decision to run for governor of Texas. In 2000, Bush became president in a contested and controversial campaign against Democratic Vice President Al Gore.
As first lady, Laura Bush successfully evaded the controversy surrounding her predecessor, the outspoken Hillary Clinton, by keeping a relatively low profile. She was careful in her choice of policy issues to champion, avoiding highly controversial subjects like health care and abortion rights. She often speaks in support of her husband's education policies and was highly visible in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. At that time, she attended forums on the mental health of children affected by the terrorist attacks, and in 2003, after Bush ordered an invasion of Afghanistan, met with Afghani women who had suffered terrible repression under that country's Taliban regime. In November 2001, Laura Bush made history by being the first first lady to deliver the weekly presidential radio address in place of her husband.
George and Laura Bush have twin daughters, Jenna and Barbara, and maintain a home in Crawford, Texas.
1978 Oakland Raider's John Madden becomes 13th coach to win 100 NFL games.
1982 Cleveland Cavaliers lose 24th consecutive game (NBA record)
1984 The Supreme Court ruled that the NFL could not block future franchise moves and had exceeded antitrust limits in attempting to stop a move by the Oakland Raiders to Los Angeles.
1986 USS Rentz, USS Reeves and USS Oldendorf visit Qingdao (Tsing Tao) China -- the first US Naval visit to China since 1949.
1987 Iceberg twice the size of Rhode Island sighted in Antarctic. The iceberg that broke off the Ronne Ice Shelf, named A-38, is 92 miles long by 29.9 miles wide and covers an area roughly 2750.8 square miles. It broke off the second largest ice shelf in Antarctica, located in the southern Weddell Sea.
1987 Low pressure off the California coast produced stormy weather in the southwestern U.S. Flash flooding stranded 8000 persons in the Death Valley National Park of southern California. Thunder- storms over southern Nevada produced dime size hail and wind gusts to 68 mph around Las Vegas. Unseasonably mild weather in the northeastern U.S. was replaced with snow and gale force winds. (The National Weather Summary) (Storm Data)
1988 Cornell confirms grad student source of worst computer sabotage. In 1988, a 23-year-old graduate student at Cornell University, Robert Morris, released the internet's first worm. Morris, the son of a National Security Agency (NSA) computer security expert, wrote 99 lines of code and released them into the internet as an experiment. Quickly, Morris discovered that the program was replicating and infecting machines at a much faster rate than he had anticipated. Invisible tasks were overloading machines around the country and preventing users from using the machines effectively, if at all. Computers were crashing or becoming unresponsive to commands. To curtail the spread of the infection, many system administrators were forced to cut off their machines from the internet entirely. In 1990, a federal judge sentenced Morris to 400 hours of community service and a $10,000 fine.
1988 A powerful low pressure system produced high winds from the Great Plains to New England, and produced heavy snow in northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan. Winds gusted to 64 mph at Knoxville TN, and reached 80 mph at Pleasant Valley VT. (Storm Data) (The National Weather Summary)
1988 The Beach Boys hit #1 in US with "Kokomo." "Kokomo" came together when producer Terry Melcher was hired to work on a song with The Beach Boys for the Tom Cruise movie Cocktail. They were one of the most popular bands of the '60s, and had a bunch of songs dealing with recreation and fun, which is why they were asked to record for the movie.
1989 Temperatures warmed into the 80s across much of Texas. Highs of 86 degrees at Abilene, Fort Worth and San Angelo were records for the date. (The National Weather Summary)
1990 Jewish extremist assassinated in New York. Meir Kahane, an American-born rabbi and founder of the far-right Kach movement, is shot dead in New York City. Egyptian El Sayyid Nosair was later charged with the murder but acquitted in a state trial. The federal government later decided that the killing was part of a larger terrorist conspiracy and thus claimed the right to retry Nosair. In 1995, he was convicted of killing Kahane during the conspiracy trial of Brooklyn-based Arab militants led by Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. Nosair was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Kahane, a charismatic Jewish leader who advocated expelling all Arabs from Israel, found followers in Israel and the United States. He formed the Jewish Defense League in the United States in the 1960s and in 1971 moved to Israel, where he founded the Kach Party. Because of its racist platform, Kach was forbidden from participating in Israeli elections after 1988, but it continued to be supported by extremist Jewish settlers in Israel's occupied territories. In 1994, after a Jewish settler once affiliated with the Kach movement gunned down more than 30 Arabs worshipping in a mosque in the West Bank town of Hebron, Israel completely outlawed the organization.
1994 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."
Born in 1949 in Marshal, Texas, Foreman had a troubled childhood and dropped out of high school. Eventually, he joined President Lyndon Johnson's Jobs Corps work program and discovered a talent for boxing. "Big George," as he was nicknamed, took home a gold medal for the U.S. at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. In 1973 in Kingston, Jamaica, after winning his first 37 professional matches, 34 by knockout, Foreman KO'd "Smokin'" Joe Frazier after two rounds and was crowned heavyweight champ. At 1974's "Rumble in the Jungle" in Kinshasha, Zaire, the younger, stronger Foreman suffered a surprising loss to underdog Muhammad Ali and was forced to relinquish his championship title. Three years later, Big George morphed from pugilist into preacher, when he had a religious experience in his dressing room after losing a fight. He retired from boxing, became an ordained minister in Houston and founded a youth center.
A decade later, the millions he'd made as a boxer gone, Foreman returned to the ring at age 38 and staged a successful comeback. When he won his second heavyweight title in his 1994 fight against Moorer, becoming the WBA and IBF champ, Foreman was wearing the same red trunks he'd had on the night he lost to Ali.
Foreman didn't hang onto the heavyweight mantle for long. In March 1995, he was stripped of his WBA title after refusing to fight No. 1 contender Tony Tucker, and he gave up his IBF title in June 1995 rather than fight a rematch with Axel Schulz, whom he'd narrowly beat in a controversial judges' decision in April of that same year. Foreman's last fight was in 1997; he lost to Shannon Biggs. He retired with a lifetime record of 76-5.
Outside of the boxing ring, Foreman, who has five sons, all named George, and five daughters, has become enormously wealthy as an entrepreneur and genial TV pitchman for a variety of products, including the hugely popular George Foreman Grill.
1999 U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson, in a ‘finding of fact’, declared Microsoft Corporation a monopoly.
2002 Severe thunderstorms moved across southeastern Alabama and the Florida panhandle, producing wind damage and several tornadoes. A tornado struck the Alabama town of Abbeville killing 2 people and injuring 25.
2006 Saddam Hussein, former president of Iraq, and his co-defendants Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Hamed al-Bandar are sentenced to death in the al-Dujail trial for the role in the massacre of the 148 Shi'as in 1982.
2007 members of the Writers Guild of America, East, and Writers Guild of America, West--labor organizations representing television, film and radio writers--go 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.
The strike’s key issues included the writers’ demand for a larger share of DVD revenues and payment for films and TV shows distributed over the Internet and other forms of new media. Late-night talk shows, which used guild writers, were immediately affected by the strike and went into reruns. Production also shut down on many prime-time comedies and dramas; however, some had stockpiled completed programming and were able to avoid going straight into reruns.
After a series of stalemated discussions, leaders from both sides eventually reached a tentative agreement, and on February 12, 2008, WGA members voted to end the strike and go back to work. The strike officially ended on February 26, when WGA members overwhelmingly approved a new three-year contract with the AMPTP.
The impact of the writers’ walkout was felt across the entertainment industry, from actors to caterers to editors to set designers to animal wranglers. According to the Los Angeles Times, the chief economist for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation estimated the strike resulted in a loss to the local economy of more than $3 billion. The Times article stated: “Of that total, an estimated $772 million came from lost wages for writers and production workers, $981 million from various businesses that service the industry, including caterers and equipment rental houses, and $1.3 billion from the ripple effect of consumers not spending as much at retail shops, restaurants and car dealers.”
Previous multiple-month strikes launched by Writers Guild members in 1960 and 1988 had also greatly impacted the entertainment industry, bringing TV and movie production to a standstill and costing millions in revenue.
2009 US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan kills 13 and wounds 30 at Fort Hood, Texas in the largest mass shooting at a US military installation.
www.todayinsci.com/11/11_05.htm
www.weatherforyou.com/cgi-bin/weather_history/today2S.pl
daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html
www.christianhistorytimeline.com/lives_events/birthday/index.php
www.amug.org/~jpaul/nov05.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_5
www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi
www.lutheranhistory.org/history/tih1105.htm
www.cyberhymnal.org/index.htm#lk
www.lcms.org/
