TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – NOV 11
1499 Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck is executed.
1620 The Mayflower Compact was signed by Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower. It would provide the basis for all governments of the American colonies.
1675 German mathetician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz demonstrates integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = f(x) function
1778 Indians, led by William Butler, massacre the inhabitants of Cherry Valley, N.Y.
1831 Nat Turner, a slave who led a revolt against slave owners, is hanged in Jerusalem, Virginia.
1889 Washington becomes the 42nd state of the Union.
1909 Construction begins on the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
1918 Armistice signed by the Allies and Germany comes into effect and World War I hostilities end at 11am, “the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”
1921 The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery is dedicated.
1938 Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” is performed for the first time by singer Kate Smith.
1944 Private Eddie Slovik is convicted of desertion and sentenced to death for refusing to join his unit in the European Theater of Operations.
1953 The polio virus is identified and photographed for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1965 Rhodesia declares its independence
1973 Israel and Egypt sign a cease-fire.
1975 Angola gained its independence after over 300 years of Portuguese rule.
1992 The Church of England approves the ordination of female priests
1993 Sculpture honoring women who served in the Vietnam War dedicated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.
1999 House of Lords Act reforming Britain’s House of Lords, given Royal Assent; the act removed the right to hereditary seats (sitting members were permitted to remain).
2001 Journalists Pierre Billaud (France), Johanne Sutton (France) and Voker Handloik (Germany) killed in Afghanistan during an attack on the convoy in which they were traveling.
2004 New Zealand Tomb of the Unknown Warrior dedicated at the National War Museum, Wellington.
2004 Palestine Liberation organization confirms the death of its longtime chairman Yasser Arafat; cause of death has never been conclusively determined.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
