This day in history
Today is Sunday, Nov. 26, the 330th day of 2023. There are 35 days left in the year.
Birthdays: Impressionist Rich Little is 85. Singer Jean Terrell is
79. Pop musician John McVie is
78. Actor Marianne Muellerleile is 75. Actor Scott Jacoby is 67. Actor Jamie Rose is 64. Country singer Linda Davis is 61. Actor Scott Adsit is 58. Blues singermusician Bernard Allison is 58. Country singer-musician Steve Grisaffe is 58. Actor Kristin Bauer is 57. Actor Peter Facinelli is
50. DJ/record label executive DJ Khaled is 48. Pop singer Natasha Bedingfield is 42. Rock musician Ben Wysocki (The Fray) is 39. Singer Lil Fizz is 38. Actor-singer-TV personality Rita Ora is 33.
►In 1825, the first college social fraternity, the Kappa Alpha Society, was formed at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y.
►In 1864, English mathematician and writer Charles Dodgson presented a handwritten, illustrated manuscript, “Alice’s Adventures Under Ground,” to his 12-year-old friend Alice Pleasance Liddell; it was later turned into “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” published under Dodgson’s pen name, Lewis Carroll.
►In 1883, former enslaved woman and abolitionist Sojourner Truth died in Battle Creek, Mich.
►In 1917, the National Hockey League was founded in Montreal, succeeding the National Hockey Association.
►In 1941, US Secretary of State Cordell Hull delivered a note to Japan’s ambassador to the United States, Kichisaburo Nomura, setting forth US demands for “lasting and extensive peace throughout the Pacific area.” The same day, a Japanese naval task force consisting of six aircraft carriers left the Kuril Islands, headed toward Hawaii.
►In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered nationwide gasoline rationing, beginning Dec. 1.
►In 1943, in World War II, the HMT Rohna, a British transport ship carrying American soldiers, was hit by a German missile off Algeria; 1,138 men were killed.
►In 1950, China entered the Korean War, launching a counteroffensive against soldiers from the United Nations, the US, and South Korea.
►In 1973, President Richard Nixon’s personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, told a federal court that she’d accidentally caused part of the 18½-minute gap in a key Watergate tape.
►In 1986, President Ronald Reagan appointed a commission headed by former Senator John Tower to investigate his National Security Council staff in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair.
►In 2000, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified George W. Bush the winner over Al Gore in the state’s presidential balloting by a 537-vote margin.
►In 2008, teams of Pakistani gunmen stormed luxury hotels, a popular tourist attraction, and a train station in Mumbai, leaving at least 166 people dead in a rampage lasting some 60 hours.
►In 2017, amid allegations that he had groped women in the past, Minnesota Democratic Senator Al Franken said he felt “embarrassed and ashamed,” but that he looked forward to gradually regaining the trust of voters. (Franken announced less than two weeks later that he was resigning from Congress.)
►In 2021, Stephen Sondheim, the songwriter who reshaped American musical theater in the second half of the 20th century, died in Connecticut at 91.