Today in history
Today is Sunday, Nov. 19, the 323rd day of 2017. There are 42 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight
On Nov. 19, 1997, Iowa seamstress Bobbi McCaughey gave birth to the world’s first set of surviving septuplets, four boys and three girls.
On this date
In 1794, the United States and Britain signed Jay’s Treaty, which resolved some issues left over from the Revolutionary War.
In 1831, the 20th president of the United States, James Garfield, was born in Orange Township, Ohio.
In 1850, Alfred Tennyson was invested as Britain’s poet laureate.
In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania.
In 1917, Indira Gandhi, daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru and, like her father, a future prime minister of India, was born in Allahabad.
In 1924, movie producer Thomas H. Ince died after celebrating his 42nd birthday aboard the yacht of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. (The exact circumstances of Ince’s death remain a mystery.)
In 1942, during World War II, Russian forces launched their winter offensive against the Germans along the Don front.
In 1959, Ford Motor Co. announced it was halting production of the unpopular Edsel.
In 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean made the second manned landing on the moon.
In 1977, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Israel.
In 1985, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev met for the first time as they began their summit in Geneva.
In 2002, in a moment that drew criticism, singer Michael Jackson briefly held his youngest child, Prince Michael II ( known as Blanket), over a fourthfloor balcony rail at a Berlin hotel in front of dozens of fans waiting below. (Jackson said he’d made a “terrible mistake.”)
Ten years ago: The FBI reported that hate crime incidents had risen nearly 8 percent in 2006. President George W. Bush announced that Fran Townsend, the leading White House-based terrorism adviser, was stepping down. Amazon.com released its first Kindle ebook reader. Milo Radulovich, the Air Force Reserve lieutenant championed by CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow when the military threatened to decommission him during the anti-communist crackdown of the 1950s, died in Vallejo, California, at age 81. Actor Dick Wilson, who played the fussy, mustachioed grocer who told customers, “Please, don’t squeeze the Charmin,” died in Woodland Hills, California, at age 91.
Five years ago: President Barack Obama became the first U.S. chief executive to visit Myanmar, where he promised more American help if the Asian nation kept building its new democracy. Former U.S. Sen. Warren B. Rudman, R-N.H., who co-authored a ground-breaking budget balancing law, died in Washington at age 82.
One year ago: President-election Donald Trump met with 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney at Trump’s clubhouse in Bedminster, New Jersey; both were positive about their sit- down, a marked shift in tone after a year in which Romney attacked Trump as a “con man” and Trump labeled Romney a “loser.”
The International Space Station gained three new residents, including NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who at 56 was the oldest and most experienced woman to orbit the world. Pope Francis decried what he called a “virus of polarization and animosity” in the world while welcoming 17 new cardinals from six continents.
Today’s Birthdays: Talk show host Larry King is 84. Former General Electric chief executive Jack Welch is 82. Talk show host Dick Cavett is 81. Broadcasting and sports mogul Ted Turner is 79.