TODAY IN HISTORY

On Nov. 17, 1917, French sculptor Auguste Rodin died in Meudon at age 77.

On this date:

In 1558, Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne upon the death of her half-sister, Queen Mary, beginning a 44year reign.

In 1800, Congress held its first session in the partially completed U.S. Capitol building.

In 1869, the Suez Canal opened in Egypt.

In 1889, the Union Pacific Railroad Co. began direct, daily railroad service between Chicago and Portland, Oregon, as well as Chicago and San Francisco.

In 1925, actor Rock Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois.

In 1934, Lyndon Baines Johnson married Claudia Alta Taylor, better known as Lady Bird, in San Antonio, Texas.

In 1947, President Harry S. Truman, in an address to a special session of Congress, called for emergency aid to Austria, Italy and France. (The aid was approved the following month.)

In 1968, NBC outraged football fans by cutting away from the closing minutes of a New York Jets- Oakland Raiders game to begin the TV special "Heidi" on schedule. (After being taken off the air, the Raiders came from behind to beat the Jets, 43-32.)

In 1973, President Richard Nixon told Associated Press managing editors in Orlando, Florida: "People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook."

In 1979, Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the release of 13 black and/ or female American hostages being held at the U. S. Embassy in Tehran.

In 1987, a federal jury in Denver convicted two white supremacists of civil rights violations in the 1984 slaying of radio talk show host Alan Berg. (Both men later died in prison.)

In 1997, 62 people, most of them foreign tourists, were killed when militants opened fire at the Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor, Egypt; the attackers were killed by police. Ten years ago: U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte delivered a blunt message to Pakistan's military ruler, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, telling him emergency rule had to be lifted and his opponents freed ahead of elections. A Nobel- winning U.N. scientific panel said in a landmark report released in Valencia, Spain, that the Earth was hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace.