On this date

1766 — Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, had its beginnings as William Franklin, the Royal Governor of New Jersey, signed a charter establishing Queen’s College in New Brunswick.

1775 — The U.S. Marines were organized under authority of the Continental Congress. 1864 — The city of Rome, Georgia, was burned by Union forces commanded by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman during his “March to the Sea.”

1871 — Journalist-explorer Henry M. Stanley found Scottish missionary David Livingstone, who had not been heard from for years, near Lake Tanganyika in central Africa.

1917 — Forty-one suffragists were arrested for picketing in front of the White House. 1938 — Kate Smith first sang Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” on her CBS radio program.

1942 — Winston Churchill delivered a speech in London in which he said, “I have not become the King’s First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”

1951 — Customer-dialed long-distance telephone service began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey, called Alameda, California, Mayor Frank Osborne without operator assistance.

1954 — The U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, depicting the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, was dedicated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Arlington, Virginia.

1969 — The children’s educational program “Sesame Street” made its debut on National Educational Television (later PBS).

1975 — The ore-hauling ship SS Edmund Fitzgerald mysteriously sank during a storm in Lake Superior with the loss of all 29 crew members.

1997 — A judge in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reduced Louise Woodward’s murder conviction to involuntary manslaughter and sentenced the English au pair to the 279 days she’d already served in the death of 8-monthold Matthew Eappen.

2007 — A stagehands strike shut down most Broadway shows, with curtains rising again 19 days later.

2012 — After a 32-year career in education, Floyd County Schools Superintendent Lynn Plunkett announced her retirement effective Nov. 28.

‘Men get opinions as boys learn to spell, By reiteration chiefly.’ Elizabeth Barrett Browning English poet (1806-1861)