TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: NOV 26

1983 – A Brinks Mat Ltd. vault at London’s Heathrow Airport was robbed by gunmen. The men made off with 6,800 gold bars worth nearly $40 million. Only a fraction of the gold has ever been recovered and only two men were convicted in the heist.

43 BC – Second Triumvirate alliance of Roman leader Octavian (later Caesar Augustus), Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, and Mark Antony formed

0783 – Asturian queen Adosinda was put in the monastery of San Juan de Pravia, where she lived out the rest of her life, to prevent her kin from retaking the throne from Mauregatus.

1476 – Vlad III Dracula defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Bathory and becomes the ruler of Wallachia for the third time.

1688 – King James II escapes back to London

1716 – The first lion to be exhibited in America went on display in Boston, MA.

1778 – British explorer Captain James Cook is the first European to visit Maui in the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii)

1791 – 1st US cabinet meeting, held at George Washington’s home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph attend.

1805 – Official opening of Thomas Telford’s Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, carrying the Llangollen canal 126 feet above the River Dee. Longest aqueduct in the UK and highest canal aqueduct in the world.

1832 – Public streetcar service began in New York City.

1842 – The University of Notre Dame is founded

1865 – “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll is published in America

1898 – SS Portland “The Titanic of New England” leaves for Cape Cod, shipwrecked off Cape Ann, all 192 on board killed

1916 – Addressing the Chamber of Commerce in Cincinnati, US President Woodrow Wilson declares that ‘The business of neutrality is over. The nature of modern war leaves no state untouched’

1917 – The National Hockey League (NHL) was officially formed in Montreal, Canada.

1922 – In Egypt, Howard Carter peered into the tomb of King Tutankhamen.

1940 – The Nazis forced 500,000 Jews of Warsaw, Poland to live within a walled ghetto.

1941 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. In 1939 Roosevelt had signed a bill that changed the celebration of Thanksgiving to the third Thursday of November.

1942 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered nationwide gasoline rationing to begin December 1.

1949 – India’s Constituent Assembly adopted the country’s constitution The country became republic within the British Commonwealth two months later.

1950 – China entered the Korean conflict forcing UN forces to retreat.

1965 – France became the third country to enter space when it launched its first satellite the Diamant-A.

1966 – The Rance Tidal Power Station on the Rance River in Brittany, France was inaugurated by French president Charles de Gaulle. Today, it is one of the largest tidal power stations in the world.

1969 – Lottery for Selective Service draftees bill signed by President Nixon

1973 – Rose Mary Woods, told a federal court that she was responsible for the 18-1/2 minute gap in a key Watergate tape. Woods was U.S. President Nixon’s personal secretary.

1975 – Lynette”Squeaky” Fromme was found guilty by a federal jury in Sacramento, CA, for trying to assassinate U.S. President Ford on September 5.

1976 – Sex Pistols release their debut single “Anarchy In The UK”

1977 – ‘Vrillon’, claiming to be the representative of the ‘Ashtar Galactic Command’, takes over Britain’s Southern Television for six minutes at 5:12 PM.

1978 – 1st lesbian theme TV movie – “A Question of Love”

1979 – The International Olympic Committee voted to re-admit China after a 21-year absence.

1983 – A Brinks Mat Ltd. vault at London’s Heathrow Airport was robbed by gunmen. The men made off with 6,800 gold bars worth nearly $40 million. Only a fraction of the gold has ever been recovered and only two men were convicted in the heist.

1985 – The rights to Richard Nixon’s autobiography were acquired by Random House for $3,000,000.

1986 – Trial begins in Israel for John Demjanjuk, accused of being Nazi prison guard “Ivan the Terrible” at Treblinka concentration camp

1988 – The U.S. denied an entry visa to PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, who was seeking permission to travel to New York to address the U.N. General Assembly.

1990 – Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev met with Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz at the Kremlin to demand that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait.

1992 – The British government announced that Queen Elizabeth II had volunteered to start paying taxes on her personal income. She also took her children off the public payroll.

1997 – The U.S. and North Korea held high-level discussions at the State Department for the first time.

1998 – British Prime Minister Tony Blair made a speech to the Irish Parliament. It was a first time event for a British Prime Minister.

2003 – Concorde retired from service after 27 years of flight

2003 – The U.N. atomic agency adopted a resolution that censured Iran for past nuclear cover-ups and warning that it would be policed to put to rest suspicions that the country had a weapons agenda.

2004 – Ruzhou School massacre: a man stabs and kills eight people and seriously wounds another four in a school dormitory in Ruzhou, China.

2008 – Terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India: Ten coordinated attacks by Pakistan-based terrorists kill 164 and injure more than 250 people in Mumbai, India.

2011 – The Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL. The Mars rover Curiosity landed on the floor of Gale Crater on August 6, 2012.

2011 – NATO forces in Afghanistan attack a Pakistani checkpoint in a friendly fire incident, killing 24 soldiers and wounding 13 others

2012 – 10 children are killed and 15 people are injured after a Syrian government Jet drops a cluster bomb on a playground

2017 – Presidential elections held in Honduras with allegations of electoral fraud and resulting violent protests

2018 – General Motors announces it will close five factories in North America, cutting 14,000 jobs

2018 – Ukraine declares martial law in areas bordering Russia after Russia seizes three of its naval vessels

2020 – Turkey gives life sentences to 337 military officers and others involved in 2016 coup

REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com