TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – NOV 22
1220 After promising to go to the aid of the Fifth Crusade within nine months, Frederick II is crowned emperor by Pope Honorius III
1497 Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama rounds Cape of Good Hope on way to first voyage from Europe to reach India
1542 New laws are passed in Spain giving Indians in America protection against enslavement.
1718 English pirate Edward Teach (a.k.a. “Blackbeard”) was killed during a battle off the coast of North Carolina. British soldiers cornered him aboard his ship and killed him. He was shot and stabbed more than 25 times.
1906 International Radio Telecommunications Com adopts “SOS” as new call for help
1919 A Labor conference committee in the United States urges an eight-hour workday and a 48-hour week
1927 1st snowmobile patent granted to Carl Eliason (Sayner, Wisconsin)
1943 President Franklin Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek met in Cairo to discuss measures for defeating Japan.
1963 US President John F. Kennedy assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while riding in an open-topped motorcade in Dallas, Texas
1967 The U.N. Security Council approved resolution 242. The resolution called for Israel to withdraw from territories it had captured in 1967 and called on adversaries to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
1968 1st interracial TV kiss (Star Trek – Captain Kirk and Uhura)
1969 Isolation of a single gene announced by scientists at Harvard University
1972 U.S. President Richard M. Nixon lifted a ban on American travel to Cuba. The ban had been put in place on February 8, 1963.
1975 “Dr. Zhivago” appeared on TV for the first time. NBC paid $4 million for the broadcast rights.
1985 Largest swearing-in ceremony, 38,648 immigrants become US citizens
1986 Attorney Generel Meese’s office discovered a memo in Colonel Oliver North’s office that included an amount of money to be sent to the Contras from the profits of weapons sales to Iran.
1989 Rene Moawad, the president of Lebanon, was assassinated less than three weeks after taking office by a bomb that exploded next to his motorcade in West Beirut.
1989 Conjunction of Venus, Mars, Uranus, Neptune, Saturn and the Moon
1998 CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired a tape of Jack Kevorkian giving lethal drugs in an assisted suicide of a terminally ill patient. Kevorkian was later sentenced to 25 years in prison for second-degree murder.
1999 Elian Gonzalez, Cuban boy at the center of a heated 2000 controversy involving the governments of Cuba and the United States, and his mother are sighted off of Florida’s coast by U.S. Coast Guard
2013 The discovery of Siats meekerorum was announced. The dinosaur skeleton, more than 30 feet long, was found in eastern Utah.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
