TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Thursday, Nov. 18.
Today’s highlight:
On Nov. 18, 1991, Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon freed Anglican Church envoy Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland, the American dean of agriculture at the American University of Beirut.
On this date:
In 1883, the United States and Canada adopted a system of Standard Time zones.
In 1963, the Bell System introduced the first commercial touch-tone telephone system in Carnegie and Greensburg, Pennsylvania.
In 1966, U.S. Roman Catholic bishops did away with the rule against eating meat on Fridays outside of Lent.
In 1976, Spain’s parliament approved a bill to establish a democracy after 37 years of dictatorship.
In 1978, U.S. Rep. Leo J. Ryan, D-calif., and four others were killed in Jonestown, Guyana, by members of the Peoples Temple; the killings were followed by a night of mass murder and suicide by more than 900 cult members.
In 1987, the congressional Iran-contra committees issued their final report, saying President Ronald Reagan bore “ultimate responsibility” for wrongdoing by his aides. A fire at London King’s Cross railway station claimed 31 lives.
In 1999, 12 people were killed when a bonfire under construction at Texas A&M University collapsed. A jury in Jasper, Texas, convicted Shawn Allen Berry of murder for his role in the dragging death of James Byrd Jr., but spared him the death penalty.
In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled 4-to-3 that the state constitution guaranteed gay couples the right to marry.
In 2004, former Ku Klux Klansman Bobby Frank
Cherry, convicted of killing four black girls in the racially motivated bombing of a Birmingham, Alabama, church in 1963, died in prison at age 74.
In 2005, eight months after Robert Blake was acquitted at a criminal trial of murdering his wife, a civil jury decided the actor was behind the slaying and ordered him to pay Bonny Lee Bakley’s children $30 million.
In 2013, Toronto’s city council voted to strip scandal-plagued Mayor Rob Ford of many of his powers following a heated debate in which he knocked over a city councilor.
Ten years ago: In an incident that prompted national outrage, campus police at the University of California, Davis used pepper spray on nonviolent Occupy protesters. (The school later agreed to pay $1 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the demonstrators.) Self-help author James Arthur Ray was sentenced to two years in prison for leading an Arizona sweat lodge ceremony that was supposed to offer spiritual enlightenment but instead resulted in three deaths.
Five years ago: President-elect Donald Trump signaled a sharp policy shift to the right by picking Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions as attorney general, Kansas Rep. Mike Pompeo to head the CIA and Michael Flynn as his national security adviser.
One year ago: President Donald Trump filed for a recount of Wisconsin’s two largest Democratic counties, paying the required $3 million cost and alleging that they were the sites of the “worst irregularities” although no evidence of illegal activity had been presented. (The recounts resulted in a slightly larger lead for Democrat Joe Biden.) Pfizer said new test results showed its coronavirus vaccine was safe and 95% effective, and that it protected older people most at risk of dying.