November 21
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November 21 |
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 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
1495: John Bale, Bishop of Ossory, antiquarian, dramatist
1643: Rene Robert, Cavalier de la Salle
1694: French author Francois Voltaire (Jean Francois Arouet)
1785: William Beaumont, pioneer American army surgeon
1787: British steamship company founder Samuel Cunard
1787: Sir Samuel Cunard, founded 1st regular Atlantic steamship line
1888: Comic actor Harpo Marx
1904: Jazz saxophonist Coleman Hawkins
1907: Writer Jim Bishop
1908: Baseball player Paul Richards
1916: Pro Football Hall of Famer Sid Luckman
1920: Baseball Hall-of-Famer Stan Musial
1924: Actress Vivian Blaine (State Fair)
1927: Actor Joseph Campanella (Ben, Meteor, Original Intent, The
President's Plane is Missing, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Sky Hei$t, The Colbys, The
Lawyers, Mannix)
1932: Pro Football Hall of Famer Jim Ringo
1933: Country singer Jean Shepard (Satin Sheets)
1934: Actor Laurence Luckinbill
1937: Actress Marlo Thomas (sources also list 1938 or 1943)
1940: Ballet dancer Natalia Makarova
1940: Singer Dr. John Dr. John
1941: Actress Juliet Mills
1941: Singer (Malcolm John Rebennack) Dr. John (Right Place Wrong Time)
1943: Comedian-director Harold Ramis .
1944: Television producer Marcy Carsey ("The Cosby Show,"
"Roseanne")
1944: Basketball player Earl 'The Pearl' Monroe
1945: Actress Goldie (Btudlendgehawn) Hawn (Cactus Flower, Private
Benjamin, Shampoo, The Sugarland Express, First Wives Club, Laugh-In)
1948: Rock musician Lonnie Jordan (War)
1949: Jockey Barbara Jo Rubin
1950: Singer Livingston Taylor
1952: Actress-singer Lorna Luft
1956: Actress Cherry Jones
1962: Gospel singer Steven Curtis Chapman
1963: Actress Nicollette Sheridan
1965: Pop singer Bjork
1966: Football player Troy Aikman
1968: Rhythm-and-blues singer Chauncey Hannibal (BLACKstreet)
1968: Rock musician Alex James (Blur)
1969: Baseball player Ken Griffey Junior
1971: Rapper Pretty Lou (Lost Boyz)
1984: Actress Jena Malone
0235: Coronation of St. Antheseus as Pope
0496: Death of St. Gelasius I, Pope
0615: Death of St. Columban
1430: Joan of Arc sold to the English by the Burgundians
1551: Francis Xavier leaves Japan for Goa, India
1624: Jakob Bîhme, German philosophical mystic, dies
1620: Leaders of the Mayflower expedition frame the
"Mayflower Compact,"designed to bolster unity among the settlers.
1638: General Assembly of "the faithful" meets
in Glascow, Scotland, without representation of the religious hierarchy
1783: Jean Francois Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis
Francois Laurant d'Arlandes made the first flight in a balloon, thus becoming the first
men to fly. The pair flew nearly six miles around Paris in 25 minutes reaching an altitude
of around 300 feet. Ben Franklin was one of the spectators for the big occasion.
1789: North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the
US Constitution.
1828: Schubert's estate was valued at 63 florins, about a
tenth of the cost of his cut-rate funeral.
1871: The cigar lighter was patented by M.F. Gale of New
York City.
1877: Inventor Thomas A. Edison announced the invention of
his phonograph. On February 19, 1878, Edison received a patent for the device.
1904: Motorized omnibuses replace horse-drawn cars in
Paris.
1906: In San Juan, President Theodore Roosevelt pledges
citizenship for Puerto Rican people.
1907: Cunard liner Mauretania sets a new speed record for
steamship travel, 624 nautical miles in a one day run.
1911: Suffragettes storm Parliament in London. All are
arrested and all choose prison terms.
1918: Prokofiev took it on the chin from the New York
Tribune. The Trib's music critic blasted Prokofiev for writing a piece called "Hircus
Nocturnus," only to discover that Prokofiev did not write it. The next day the critic
apologized to Prokofiev.
1922: Rebecca L. Felton of Georgia was sworn in as the
first woman to serve in the US Senate.
1925: Harold 'Red' Grange played his last game for the
University of Illinois. The next day, he joined the Chicago Bears.
1927: Police turn machine guns on striking Colorado mine
workers, killing five and wounding 20.
1934: Court rules Gloria Vanderbilt unfit for custody of
her daughter.
1934: Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" opened at
the Alvin Theatre in New York City. The show ran for 420 performances.
1937: Dmitri Shostakovich got out of trouble when his
Fifth Symphony premiered. Shostakovich billed it as "a Soviet artist's response to
just criticism," and the official critics who previously attacked his music for
decadence accepted the apology and the symphony.
1938: Nazi forces occupied western Czechoslovakia and
declared its people German citizens.
1942: The Alaska highway across Canada was formally
opened.
1944: The "Roy Rogers Show" was first heard on
the Mutual Broadcasting System this day. Singing along with Roy ('The King of the
Cowboys'), were the Whippoorwills and The Sons of the Pioneers.
1944: "I'm Beginning to See the Light", the song
that would become the theme song for Harry James and his Orchestra, was first recorded.
The song featured the lovely voice of Kitty Kallen ("Little Things Mean a Lot").
1948: The Sunday morning religious program "Lamp Unto
My Feet" first aired over CBS television. It became one of TV's longest running
network shows, and aired through January 1979.
1949: United Nations grants Libya its independence in the
year 1952.
1955: The first lady of the American stage, Helen Hayes,
was honored for her many remarkable years in show business, as the Fulton Theatre in New
York City was renamed the Helen Hayes Theatre.
1959: Jack Benny (Violin) & Richard Nixon (Piano) play
their famed duet.
1959: Following his firing from WABC Radio in New York the
day before, Alan Freed refused "on principle" to sign a statement that he never
received money or gifts (payola) for plugging records.
1964: New York's Verrazano Narrows Bridge opened.
1967: President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the air quality
act, allotting $428 million for the fight against pollution.
1969: The Senate voted down the nomination of Clement F.
Haynsworth to the Supreme Court, the first time a candidate for the nation's highest court
was rejected since 1930.
1970: U.S. planes conduct widespread bombing raids in
North Vietnam.
1973: President Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt,
revealed the existence of an 18-and-a-half-minute gap in one of the White House tape
recordings related to Watergate.
1974: Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act over
President Ford's veto.
1980: Eighty-seven people died in a fire at the MGM Grand
Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
1980: One of the largest TV audience ever - an estimated
82 million people - watched as Sue Ellen's sister, Kristin Shepard shot J.R. Ewing on
"Dallas." The jilted mistress was seen holding the smoking gun after a summer of
viewers asking that haunting question, "Who Shot J.R.?" Eighty percent of all
viewers watched the show.
1981: Olivia Newton-John began the first of 10 weeks at
the top of the pop music charts when "Physical" became the music world's top
tune.
1985: Former US Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay
Pollard was arrested, accused of spying for Israel.
1985: President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
ended a summit meeting in Switzerland. They promised acceleration of arms-reduction talks.
1986: Justice Department begins the inquiry into the
National Security Council; Lt. Col. Oliver North shreds important documents.
1986: CIA director William Casey defended secret U.S. arms
sales to Iran during closed-door sessions with the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees.
1987: An eight-day siege began at a detention center in
Oakdale, Louisiana, as Cuban detainees, alarmed over the possibility of being returned to
Cuba, seized the facility and took hostages.
1988: Canada's Progressive Conservative Party, led by
Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, won the country's general election.
1988: President-elect George Bush announced he was
retaining Dick Thornburgh as attorney general and Lauro Cavazos as education secretary,
and appointing Richard Darman budget director.
1989: The proceedings of Britain's House of Commons were
televised live for the first time.
1990: President Bush arrived in Saudi Arabia, where he
conferred with Saudi King Fahd and Kuwait's exiled emir.
1990: Junk-bond financier Michael R. Milken, who had
pleaded guilty to six felony counts, was sentenced by a federal judge in New York to ten
years in prison. (Milken served two years.)
1991: The UN Security Council chose Boutros Boutros-Ghali
of Egypt to be the new Secretary-General.
1991: President Bush signed a civil rights bill in a Rose
Garden ceremony, then sought to calm a storm of controversy by withdrawing a tentative
order to end government hiring preferences for blacks and women.
1992: Senator Bob Packwood (Republican, Oregon) issued an
apology but refused to discuss allegations that he'd made unwelcome sexual advances toward
ten women over the years.
1993: The US House of Representatives voted against making
the District of Columbia the 51st state, by a vote of 277-to-153.
1993: Actor Bill Bixby died in Century City, California,
at age 59.
1994: NATO warplanes bombed an air base in Serb-held
Croatia that was being used by Serb planes to raid the Bosnian "safe area" of
Bihac.
1994: Sen. Jesse Helms remarked in a newspaper interview
that President Clinton "better have a bodyguard" if he were to visit North
Carolina; Helms later called his comment "a mistake."
1995: Balkan leaders meeting in Dayton, Ohio, initialed a
peace plan to end 3½ years of ethnic fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
1995: France detonated a fourth underground nuclear blast
at its test site in the South Pacific.
1995: The Dow Jones industrial average closed above the
5000 mark for the first time.
1996: Thirty-three people were killed, more than 100
injured, when an explosion blamed on leaking gas ripped through a six-story building in
San Juan, Puerto Rico.
1997: UN arms inspectors returned to Iraq after Saddam
Hussein's three-week standoff with the United Nations over the presence of Americans on
the team.
1997: President Clinton signed a law giving the FDA new
powers to speed the approval of drugs to combat a host of killer diseases, including
cancer and AIDS.
1998: President Clinton, visiting South Korea, warned North Korea to forsake nuclear weapons, and urged the North to seize "an historic opportunity" for peace with the South.
1999: President Clinton, speaking at a conference in Florence, Italy, called on prosperous nations to spread global wealth by helping poor countries with Internet hookups, cell phones, debt relief and small loans.
(what a dip)!
1999: China completed its first unmanned test of a spacecraft meant to carry astronauts.
1999: Quentin Crisp, the eccentric writer, performer and raconteur best-known for his autobiography "The Naked Civil Servant," died in Manchester, England, at age 90.
See today's History Focus
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