Today In History
Today is Sunday, Nov. 20, the 324th day of 2022. There are 41 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Nov. 20, 1947, Britain’s future queen, Princess Elizabeth, married Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, at Westminster Abbey.
On this date:
• In 1789, New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights.
• In 1945, 22 former Nazi officials went on trial before an international war crimes tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany. (Almost a year later, the International Military Tribune sentenced 12 of the defendants to death; seven received prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life; three were acquitted.)
• In 1952, Presidentelect Dwight D. Eisenhower announced his selection of John Foster Dulles to be his secretary of state.
• In 1967, the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Clock at the Commerce Department ticked past 200 million.
• In 1969, the Nixon administration announced a halt to residential use of the pesticide DDT as part of a total phaseout. A group of American Indian activists began a 19-month occupation of Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.
• In 1985, the first version of Microsoft’s Windows operating system, Windows 1.0, was officially released.
• In 1992, fire seriously damaged Windsor Castle, the favorite weekend home of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II.
• In 1998, forty-six states embraced a $206 billion settlement with cigarette makers over health costs for treating sick smokers.
• In 2000, lawyers for Al Gore and George W. Bush battled before the Florida Supreme Court over whether the presidential election recount should be allowed to continue.
• In 2003, Michael Jackson was booked on suspicion of child molestation in Santa Barbara, California. (Jackson was later acquitted at trial.) Record producer Phil Spector was charged with murder in the shooting death of an actor, Lana Clarkson, at his home in Alhambra (al-ham’-bruh), California. (Spector’s first trial ended with a hung jury in 2007; he was convicted of second-degree murder in 2009 and sentenced to 19 years to life in prison. He died in January 2021.)
• In 2015, Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst, was released from prison after 30 years behind bars for spying for Israel. (After five years of parole, Pollard moved to Israel in December 2020.)
• In 2020, Georgia’s Republican governor and its top elections official certified results showing Democrat Joe Biden won the state’s presidential vote over President Donald Trump; the margin was less than 0.5%, allowing the Trump campaign to ask for a recount. A recount of the presidential election in Wisconsin’s two most heavily Democratic counties began with the Trump campaign seeking unsuccessfully to discard tens of thousands of absentee ballots.
Ten years ago: Former boxing champion Hector “Macho” Camacho was shot while sitting in a car in his hometown of Bayamon, Puerto Rico. (Camacho died four days later after doctors removed him from life support.) “Elmo” puppeteer Kevin Clash resigned from “Sesame Street” amid allegations of sexually abusing underage boys, which Clash denied. Jack Taylor, a guard for the Grinnell College basketball team, shattered the NCAA scoring record with a 138-point performance as the Division III school beat Faith Baptist Bible, 179-104.
Five years ago: President Donald Trump announced that he was designating North Korea, which he called a “murderous regime,” as a state sponsor of terror. CBS News suspended Charlie Rose, and PBS stopped distribution of his nightly interview show, after a Washington Post report carried accusations of sexual misconduct from eight women.