TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2018

On this day in history:

1615 - French King Louis XIII married Ann of Austria. They were both 14 years old.

1642 - Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sights Tasmania, naming it Van Diemen’s Land.

1859 - Charles Darwin, a British naturalist, published On the Origin of Species. It was the paper in which he explained his theory of evolution through the process of natural selection.

1871 - The National Rifle Association was incorporated in the US.

1940 - Nazis closed off the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, Poland. Over the next three years the population dropped from 350,000 to 70,000 due to starvation, disease and deportations to concentration camps.

1944 - During World War II, the first raid against the Japanese capital of Tokyo was made by land-based US bombers.

1947 - John Steinbeck’s novel The Pearl was published for the first time.

1963 - Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald live on national television.

1983 - The Palestine Liberation Organisation released six Israeli prisoners in exchange for the release of 4,500 Palestinians and Lebanese held by the Israelis.

1985 - In Malta, Egyptian commandos stormed an Egyptian jetliner. Sixty people died in the raid.

1989 - Czechoslovakia’s hard-line party leadership resigned after more than a week of protests against its policies.

1992 - In China, a domestic jetliner crashed, killing 141 people.

1993 - Robert Thompson and Jon Venables (both 11 years old) were convicted of murdering 2-year-old James Bulger of Liverpool, England. They were both sentenced to “indefinite detention.”

1995 - In Ireland, the voters narrowly approved a constitutional amendment legalising divorce.