On This Day In History
November 27th
1095 Pope Urban II preaches the west to wrestle control of the Holy land from the Seljuk Turks at the Council of Clermont, triggering the First Crusade
1295 English King Edward I calls what later became known as “The Model Parliament” extending the authorities of its representatives
1493 Christopher Columbus returns to La Navidad colony, finding it destroyed by the 1st native American uprising against Spanish rule. Taíno cacique Caonabo led his people to attack the settlement after the brutal treatment they received from the garrison who disobeyed Columbus’s orders.
1807 Portuguese Royal Family and its court of nearly 15,000 people leave Lisbon for their colony of Brazil to escape invading Napoleonic troops
1895 Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel‘s will establishes the Nobel Prize
Did You Know?
“The Mark of Zorro” directed by Fred Niblo and starring Douglas Fairbanks is shown in New York – 1st American superhero film
Today in History in 1920
Would You Believe?
President El Hadj Omar Bongo Ondimba of Gabon, in power since 1967 and the longest-serving head of state in the world, is re-elected to his third consecutive seven-year term
Today in History in 2005
November 28th
1520 Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan begins crossing the Pacific Ocean
1814 The Times of London first printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer – makes newspapers available to a mass audience
1893 Women vote in a national election for the first time, in the New Zealand general election
1919 American-born Lady Nancy Astor elected as the 1st female member of the British House of Commons
1967 1st radio pulsars detected by British postgraduate Jocelyn Bell Burnell and her supervisor Antony Hewish at Cambridge University
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In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theater
Today in History in 1907
Would You Believe?
Captain Cyril Turner (RAF) gives 1st skywriting exhibition (NYC) Turner spelled out “Hello USA. Call Vanderbilt 7200.” 47,000 called
Today in History in 1922
November 29th
526 A possible date for the Antioch earthquake in present-day Syria (then the Byzantine Empire) which killed 200,000 people
1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie‘s army moves into Manchester and occupies Carlisle
1877 US inventor Thomas Edison demonstrates his hand-cranked phonograph for the first time
1935 Physicist Erwin Schrödinger publishes his famous thought experiment “Schrödinger’s cat”, a paradox that illustrates the problem of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics
1951 1st underground atomic explosion at Frenchman Flat in Nevada
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Co-founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell releases Pong, the 1st commercially successful video game, in Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California
Today in History in 1972
Would You Believe?
Crew of slave ship Zong murder about 142 African slaves by dumping them into the sea, to claim insurance
Today in History in 1781
November 30th
1016 Cnut the Great [Canute], King of Denmark, claims the English throne after the death of Edmund ‘Ironside’
1487 The first German Beer Purity Law (Reinheitsgebot), is promulgated in Munich by Albert IV, Duke of Bavaria stating beer should be brewed from only three ingredients – water, malt and hops
1648 English Parliamentary army captures King Charles I
1786 Grand Duke of Tuscany Leopold II promulgates a penal reform, making his the 1st state to abolish the death penalty. November 30 commemorated as Cities for Life Day.
1876 Archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann finds the gold Mask of Agamemnon at Mycenae (modern Greece) “the Mona Lisa of prehistory” [1]
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World’s longest recorded rainbow – 8 hrs 58 min in Taipei’s Yangmingshan mountain range
Today in History in 2017
Would You Believe?
Ann Hodges is bruised by a meteor at Sylacauga, Alabama in first modern instance of a meteorite striking a human
Today in History in 1954
December 1st
1913 Ford Motor Company institutes world’s 1st moving assembly line for the Model T Ford
1934 Leningrad mayor Sergey Kirov is assassinated, Joseph Stalin uses it as an excuse to begin his Great Purge of 1934-38
1955 Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus and give her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama
1988 Benazir Bhutto named Prime Minister of Pakistan, the 1st female leader of a Muslim country
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The New York Daily News reports the first successful sexual reassignment operation
Today in History in 1952
Would You Believe?
Sex Pistols using profanity on TV, gets them branded as “rotten punks”
Today in History in 1976
December 2nd
1804 General Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Emperor of the French at the Notre Dame de Paris in a ceremony officiated by Pope Pius VII
1823 US President James Monroe declares the “Monroe Doctrine” opposing European colonialism in the Americas, arguing any European political intervention in the New World would be a hostile act against the United States
1845 US President James K. Polk announces to Congress that the United States should aggressively expand into the West, a widely held belief termed “manifest destiny” by newspaper editor John O’Sullivan
1929 First skull of Peking man found in the caves of Zhoukoudian, 50 km outside of Peking, China. Later dated roughly 750,000 years old. [1]
1976 Communist revolutionary Fidel Castro becomes President of Cuba, replacing Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado
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1st permanent artificial heart successfully implanted (U of Utah) in retired dentist Barney Clark; lived 112 days with Jarvic-7 heart
Today in History in 1982
Would You Believe?
1st Model A Ford sold, for $385
Today in History in 1927
December 3rd
1586 Sir Thomas Herriot introduces potatoes to England from Colombia
1854 Eureka Stockade: In what is claimed by many to be the birth of Australian democracy, more than 20 goldminers at Ballarat, Victoria, are killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences
1967 1st human heart transplant performed in South Africa by Dr. Christiaan Barnard on Louis Washkansky
1984 Bhopal disaster: Union Carbide pesticide plant leak 45 tons of methyl isocyanate and other toxic compounds in Bhopal, India, kills 2,259 (official figure) – other estimates as high as 16,000 (including later deaths) and over half a million injured
1989 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George H. W. Bush, declare the Cold War over
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First official US flag raised (Grand Union Flag) aboard naval vessel USS Alfred
Today in History in 1775
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NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere
Today in History in 1999