TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – NOV 21
164 BC During Maccabbean revolt Judas Maccabaeus recaptures Jersusalem and rededicates the Second Temple, commemorated since as Jewish festival Hanukkah
1620 Leaders of the Mayflower expedition frame the “Mayflower Compact,” designed to bolster unity among the settlers.
1789 North Carolina ratifies the Constitution, becoming the 12th state to do it.
1818 Russia’s Tsar Alexander I petitions for a Jewish state in Palestine
1855 Franklin Colman, a pro-slavery Missourian, guns down Charles Dow, a Free Stater from Ohio, near Lawrence, Kansas.
1877 Thomas Edison announces his “talking machine” invention (phonograph), the 1st machine to play and record sound
1906 China prohibits the opium trade
1906 In San Juan, President Theodore Roosevelt pledges citizenship for Puerto Rican people.
1911 Suffragettes storm Parliament in London. All are arrested and all choose prison terms.
1920 Bloody Sunday in Ireland A key event in the Irish War of Independence, which was a conflict between the British government and Irish revolutionaries in Ireland, Bloody Sunday began with the killings of 14 people by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) under the leadership of Michael Collins.
1922 Georgia’s Rebecca Felton was sworn into the U.S. Senate, becoming the first woman U.S. Senator.
1925 The court had ordered the return of 57,000 gallons of alcohol to the company that was “bootlegging” it (selling it illegally). Likewise, the judge ruled that the sale of the alcohol sold illegally could not be taxed by the I.R.S., especially since it was being used as evidence in a pending case. ( was there corruption in this case )
1927 Police turn machine guns on striking Colorado mine workers, killing five and wounding 20.
1941 Tweety Bird makes its debut
1942 The Alaska Highway across Canada was formally opened.
1953 British Natural History Museum authorities announced that “Piltdown Man” was a hoax.
1962 U.S. President Kennedy terminated the quarantine measures against Cuba.
1963 U.S. President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, arrived in San Antonio, TX. They were beginning an ill-fated, two-day tour of Texas that would end in Dallas.
1967 President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the air quality act, allotting $428 million for the fight against pollution.
1969 For the first time since 1930, the U.S. Senate rejected a Supreme Court nominee, Clement Haynsworth.
1973 The 18 1/2 min gap in the Richard Nixon Watergate tapes was revealed.
1975 A congressional report accuses US officials of assassination plots against foreign leaders, suggesting the CIA used exotic weapons ranging from exploding seashells to poison cigars with presidential approval ( No proof was ever obtained of these accusations ) but following the report President Gerald Ford responded by issuing Executive Order 11905, banning the US from authorizing assassinations of foreign leaders.
1979 Mob burns down US embassy in Pakistan The mob was allegedly incensed by a rumor that the United States was involved in an attack on a mosque in the holy city of Mecca.
1980 A fire broke out in the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino (Now Bally’s Las Vegas) in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, Smoke and fire spread through the hotel, killing 84 people and injuring 785, including tourists and employees.
1980 Millions of TV viewers tune in to watch the start of the new series of Dallas and find out ” Who Shot JR ” .
1985 US Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard arrested for spying and passing classified information to Israel; he received a life sentence on Nov. 1, 1987.
1986 The Justice Department begins an inquiry into the National Security Council into what will become known as the Iran-Contra scandal.
1992 U.S. Senator Bob Packwood, issued an apology but refused to discuss allegations that he’d made unwelcome sexual advances toward 10 women in past years.
1993 The U.S. House of Representatives voted against making the District of Columbia the 51st state.
1995 The Dayton Peace Agreement is initialed at Wright Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio; the agreement, formally ratified in Paris on Dec. 14, ends the three-and-a-half year war between Bosnia and Herzegovina.
2000 The Florida Supreme Court granted Al Gore’s request to keep the presidential recounts going.
2002 Nigeria/Miss World Riot. An angry crowd of people set fire to and stabbed riot demonstrators. This incident took place after it was announced by an Islamic news publication that the Miss World Beauty Pageant would have been accepted by Islam’s founding prophet. A total of 50 people were killed and 200 others were injured.
2004 The “Paris Club” “an informal group of financial officials from 19 of the world’s richest countries” agrees to write off $31 billion of Iraq’s external debt to members of the “Paris Club”
2004 Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts File For Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection
2008 Iraq/ Thousands of people have protested in Baghdad against the proposed deal that will allow US troops to remain in Iraq once the UN mandate is over. The demonstration was called by the Shi’ah cleric, Moqtada Sadr, who has strongly opposed any sort of deal with the US. Security has been tight around the march, but the organisers are insisting that the protest will remain peaceful.
2011 Russian hackers were able to destroy a water pump in Illinois by turning it on and off repeatedly until it broke. They gained access using stolen passwords from the company that created the software to operate the pump.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
