TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – NOV 12
1859 The first flying-trapeze circus act is performed by Jules Leotard at the Circus Napoleon.
1867 Mount Vesuvius erupts.
1920 Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis was elected the first commissioner of baseball.
1923 Adolf Hitler is arrested for his attempted German coup.
1927 Canada is admitted to the League of Nations.
1927 Leon Trotsky expelled from Soviet Communist Party, paving way for Joseph Stalin
1938 Mexico agrees to compensate the United States for land seizures.
1940 Walt Disney released “Fantasia.”
1942 Naval Battle of Guadalcanal begins between Allied and Japanese forces in Solomon Islands (WWII)
1946 The Exchange National Bank of Chicago, Illinois, institutes the first drive in banking service in America .
1948 Hikedi Tojo, Japanese prime minister, and seven others are sentenced to hang by an international tribunal.
1954 Ellis Island stopped serving as the chief immigration station for the United States. Twenty million immigrants went through Ellis Island in its 62 years of operation.
1968 The U.S. Supreme Court voids an Arkansas law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools.
1970 The Oregon Highway Division attempts to destroy a rotting eight-ton sperm whale near Florence, Oregon with half a ton of dynamite, leading to the now infamous exploding whale incident.
1979 Following the taking of 66 Americans as Hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran on November 4, President Jimmy Carter bans the import of oil from Iran .
1982 Yuri V. Andropov was elected to succeed the late Leonid I. Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee.
1985 In Norfolk, VA, Arthur James Walker was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a spy ring run by his brother, John A. Walker Jr.
1987 Boris Yeltsin is fired as head of Moscow’s Communist Party for criticizing the slow pace of reform.
1987 The American Medical Association issued a policy statement that said it was unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat someone solely because that person had AIDS or was HIV-positive.
1990 Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist, publishes a formal proposal for the creation of the World Wide Web.
1991 In the U.S., Robert Gates was sworn in as CIA director.
1997 Ramzi Yousef convicted of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
1999 President Bill Clinton signs the financial services reform bill allowing banks, investment firms and insurance companies to sell each other’s products.
2001 It was reported that the Northern Alliance had taken the Kabul, Afghanistan, from the ruling Taliban. The Norther Alliance at this point was reported to have control over most of the northern areas of Afghanistan.
2002 Stan Lee filed a lawsuit against Marvel Entertainment Inc. that claimed the company had cheated him out of millions of dollars in movie profits related to the 2002 movie “Spider-Man.” Lee was the creator of Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk and Daredevil.
2004 A jury in Redwood City, Calif., convicted Scott Peterson of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and dumping her body in San Francisco Bay.
2014 NATO commander Gen Philip Breedlove reported that Russian military equipment and Russian combat troops had been seen entering Ukraine in columns over several days.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
