TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2017

On this day in history:

1848 - After a gruelling five-month journey through thick rainforest, Edmund Kennedy finally reaches Weymouth Bay in North Queensland.

1911 - George Claude of Paris, France, applied for a patent on neon advertising signs. 1918 - Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II announced he would abdicate. He then fled to the Netherlands.

1923 - In Munich, the Beer Hall Putsch was crushed by German troops that were loyal to the democratic government. The event began the evening before when Adolf Hitler took control of a beer hall full of Bavarian government leaders at gunpoint.

1938 - Nazi troops and sympathisers destroyed and looted 7,500 Jewish businesses, burned 267 synagogues, killed 91 Jews, and rounded up over 25,000 Jewish men in an event that became known as Kristallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass.”

1960 - The Red and Green Kangaroo Paw is proclaimed the floral emblem of Western Australia.

1963 - In Japan, about 450 miners were killed in a coal-dust explosion.

1963 - In Japan, 160 people died in a train crash.

1965 - The great Northeast blackout occurred as several states and parts of Canada were hit by a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1⁄2 hours.

1976 - The UN General Assembly approved 10 resolutions condemning the apartheid government in South Africa.

1982 - Sugar Ray Leonard retired from boxing. In 1984 Leonard came out of retirement to fight one more time before becoming a boxing commentator for NBC. 1989 - Communist East Germany opened its borders, allowing its citizens to travel freely to West Germany. 1990 - Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a non-aggression treaty with Germany.

1992 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin, visiting London, appealed for assistance in rescheduling his country’s debt, and asked British businesses to invest.