November 17

They confronted me in the day of my disaster,
but the LORD was my support.

Psalm 18:18 NIV

November is:

Aviation History Month Diabetic Eye Disease Month Epilepsy Awareness Month National Adoption Month National Diabetes Month National Marrow Awareness Month Religion and Philosophy Books Month

Born on this Day

 

	799: Artist and naturalist Titian Peale
	1901: Director Lee Strasberg
	1905: Actor Mischa Auer (My Man Godfrey, Brewster's Millions, Destry Rides Again, You Can't Take it with You)
	1914: Entertainer and comedian Archie Campbell (Trouble in the Amen Corner, Bleeping Sleauty, Ridercella, The Men in My Little Girl's Life; Hee Haw, Grand Ole Opry)
	1916: Historian Shelby Foote
	1925: Actor (Roy Scherer Fitzgerald) Rock Hudson (McMillan and Wife, Giant, A Gathering of Eagles, Ice Station Zebra, Magnificent Obsession, Pillow Talk, Written on the Wind)
	1930: Olympic & National Track & Field Hall of Famer Bob Mathias
	1935: Baseball player Orlando Pena
	1936: Baseball player Gary Bell
	1937: Actor-comedian Peter Cook (Bedazzled, The Princess Bride, Whoops Apocalypse, The Two of Us)
	1938: Singer Gordon Lightfoot (Sundown, If You Could Read My Mind, Carefree Highway, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald)
	1941: Singer and Musician Gene Clark (Group: The Byrds: Turn, Turn, Turn; New Christy Minstrels)
	1942: Movie director Martin Scorsese (Mean Streets, The Color of Money, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, New York, New York, The Last Temptation of Christ, Cape Fear, Michael Jackson's Bad video)
	1942: Singer Bob Gaudio (Group - The Four Seasons: Sherry, Big Girls Don't Cry, Walk like a Man, Rag Doll)
	1944: Actress Lauren Hutton (American Gigolo, Lassiter, Paper Lion)
	1944: Actor-director Danny DeVito (Taxi, Twins, Batman Returns, Hoffa, The Jewel of the Nile, Romancing the Stone, Terms of Endearment, director: Throw Mama from the Train, The War of the Roses, Jack the Bear)
	1944: Baseball hall-of-famer Tom Seaver (Cy Young Award-winner [1969, 1973, 1975])
	1944: Saturday Night Live" producer Lorne Michaels
	1945: Movie director Roland Joffe ("The Killing Fields")
	1950: Olympic Gold Medalist in swimming Roland Matthes
	1958: Actress Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (The Color of Money, The Abyss, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Class Action, Consenting Adults, Scarface)
	1959: Actor William Moses
	1962: Actor Eric Olson (Apple's Way, Swiss Family Robinson)
	1967: Rhythm-and-blues singer (New Edition) Ronnie DeVoe
	1960: Entertainer RuPaul
	1963: Actor Dylan Walsh
	1966: Actress-model-veejay Daisy Fuentes
	1967: Rhythm-and-blues singer Ronnie DeVoe (New Edition; Bell Biv DeVoe)
	1968: Rhythm-and-blues musician Jeff Allen (Mint Condition)
	1976: Actor Brandon Call
	1980: Rock musician Isaac Hanson (Hanson)
	1988: Actor Justin Cooper

Events in History on this day
  

• 0594: Death of St. Gregory of Tours
  
  

• 1200: Death of St. Hugh of Lincoln
  
  

• 1231: Death of St. Elizabeth of Thuringia
  
  

• 1292: John Baliol declared to be rightful King of Scotland
  
  

• 1370: Coronation of Louis I "the Great," as King of Poland
  
  

• 1372: Death of "Sir John de Mandeville," whose real name was Jean de Bourgogne of Liege, and who was also known as Dr. Jehan de la Barbe
  
  

• 1558: Elizabeth the First ascended the English throne upon the death of Queen Mary.
  
  

• 1603: Sir Walter Raleigh imprisoned for treason
  
  

• 1629: Laconia Company chartered to establish the colony of New Hampshire
  
  

• 1637: Anne Hutchinson, a founder of RI, brought to trial in Massachusetts.
  
  

• 1796: Catherine the Great of Russia dies. Today's History Focus
  
  

• 1800: Congress held its first session in Washington in the partially completed Capitol building.
  
  

• 1839: The Rite of Spring was completed. We know this because Igor Stravinsky said so, writing in a parenthetical clause that he had a toothache as he composed the final notes. 1839: Verdi's first opera, "Oberto," was first performed. The premiere was at Milan's La Scala. Not until his middle years was Verdi widely acclaimed, and even then he tended to be underrated, living in the shadow of his contemporary Wagner.
  
  

• 1851: The U.S. Post Office issued a 1-cent carrier stamp to make it easier to pay fees for delivering and collecting letters. It was the first postage stamp to depict an American eagle; and the last to make it easier to pay the fees.
  
  

• 1869: The Suez Canal opened in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean and the Red seas.
  
  

• 1877: The first production of Gilbert and Sullivan's opera, "The Sorcerer" was presented in London.
  
  

• 1889: The Union Pacific Railroad Company began direct, daily railroad service between Chicago and Portland, Oregon, as well as Chicago and San Francisco.
  
  

• 1891: Poland's premier and premier ivory tickler, Ignace Jan Paderewski, made his American debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
  
  

• 1917: Sculptor August Rodin died in Meudon, France.
  
  

• 1934: Lyndon Baines Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor, better known as "Lady Bird."
  
  

• 1950: Roberta Peters filled in for the lead in Mozart's "Don Giovanni;" making her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. She would become one of the Met's most famous stars.
  
  

• 1954: Golfer Arnold Palmer signed a contract with Wilson Sporting Goods.
  
  

• 1962: The 4 Seasons, with Frankie Valli as lead singer, began the first of five weeks at the top of the tunedex with "Big Girls Don't Cry."
  
  

• 1962: Washington's Dulles International Airport was dedicated by President Kennedy.
  
  

• 1966: Woody Allen's first play, "Don't Drink the Water" opened on Broadway.
  
  

• 1969: The strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) between the United States and the Soviet Union began in Helsinki, Finland.
  
  

• 1970: The Soviet Union landed an unmanned, remote-controlled vehicle on the moon, the "Lunokhod One."
  
  

• 1973: President Nixon told Associated Press managing editors meeting in Orlando, Florida, that "people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."
  
  

• 1979: Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran.
  
  

• 1980: Roger Mudd began working as chief Washington correspondent for NBC. Mudd had left CBS after being passed over as Walter Cronkite's replacement on "The CBS Evening News."
  
  

• 1981: Luke Spencer married Laura Baldwin in what was called "the wedding of the year" on the TV serial, "General Hospital". An audience of 14 million viewers watched as vows were exchanged on the ABC-TV program.
  
  

• 1986: South Korea reported that North Korean loud speakers along the border had announced the death of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. The report, however, proved false. (Kim died eight years later, in July 1994.)
  
  

• 1987: A report from congressional committees investigating the Iran-Contra scandal said that "if the president did NOT know what his national security advisers were doing, he should have."
  
  

• 1987: Retiring Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger received an elaborate send-off on the grounds of the Pentagon.
  
  

• 1987: A federal jury in Denver convicted two neo-Nazis and acquitted two others of civil rights violations in the 1984 slaying of radio talk show host Alan Berg.
  
  

• 1988: President-elect Bush announced his choice of New Hampshire Governor John Sununu to be White House chief of staff.
  
  

• 1988: Hollywood gossip columnist Sheilah Graham died in West Palm Beach, Florida, at age 84.
  
  

• 1989: The Senate Ethics Committee hired an outside counsel to look into allegations of improprieties against six senators.
  
  

• 1990: President Bush, on the first visit to Czechoslovakia by a U.S. president, told a cheering crowd of 100,000 in Prague that "America will stand with you" through hard times ahead. 
  

• 1991: Secretary of State James A. Baker III concluded a three-day visit to China, touting an arms control agreement and progress on human rights and trade as "clear gains," but acknowledging that the gains fell short of goals.
  
  

• 1992: Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts, Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Hank Brown of Colorado made an unprecedented tour of Vietnam's military headquarters, but found nothing to substantiate reports of American prisoners sighted there after the Vietnam War.
  
  

• 1993: Polly Kahn was named Director of Education for the New York Philharmonic.
  
  

• 1993: By a surprisingly wide margin of 234-to-200, the House of Representatives voted to approve legislation implementing the North American Free Trade Agreement in what was seen as a major political victory for President Clinton.
  
  

• 1994: Francisco Martin Duran, the Colorado man accused of an assault-rifle attack on the White House, was indicted on a new charge of trying to assassinate President Clinton.
  
  

• 1994: The Andrew Lloyd Webber musical "Sunset Boulevard" opened on Broadway with Glenn Close as faded movie star Norma Desmond. 
  
  

• 1995: The commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific called the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl "absolutely stupid" and said in Washington the incident could have been avoided if the U.S. servicemen involved had simply paid for sex. (Adm. Richard C. Macke later apologized for his remarks, and took early retirement.)
  
  

• 1996: A Russian Mars space probe carrying plutonium plunged into the South Pacific Ocean after failing to break out of Earth orbit following its launch.
  
  

• 1996: The World Food Summit concluded a five-day meeting in Rome.
  
  

• 1997: Sixty-two people, most of them foreign tourists, were killed when six militants opened fire at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, Egypt; the attackers were killed by police.  
  
  

• 1998: Israel's parliament overwhelmingly approved the Wye River land-for-peace accord with the Palestinians.
  
  

• 1998: The public got to hear Monica Lewinsky's voice for the first time as the House Judiciary Committee released 22 hours of tape recordings secretly made by Linda Tripp.
  
  

• 1998: Actress Esther Rolle died in Culver City, California, at age 78. 
  

• 1999: Officials close to the investigation into the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 said a relief co-pilot alone in the cockpit had said, in Arabic: "I made my decision now; I put my faith in God's hands" just before the jetliner began its fatal plunge. (In Egypt, relatives angrily rejected any notion that relief co-pilot Gameel el-Batouty had deliberately crashed the plane.)
  
  
  See today's History Focus    
  
  

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