Today in history
On Nov. 24, 1917, nine members of the Milwaukee police department and two civilians were killed when a bomb exploded inside a police station. (The suspicious-looking package was brought to the station by a local resident after it was discovered outside a church; anarchists were suspected, but the culprits were never caught.)
In 1784, Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States, was born in Orange County, Virginia.
In 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species,” which explained his theory of evolution by means of natural selection.
In 1939, British Overseas Airways Corp. (BOAC) was formally established.
In 1944, during World War II, U.S. bombers based on Saipan attacked Tokyo in the first raid against the Japanese capital by land-based planes.
In 1947, a group of writers, producers and directors that became known as the “Hollywood Ten” was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about alleged Communist influence in the movie industry. John Steinbeck’s novel “The Pearl” was first published.
In 1957, Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, 70, died in Mexico City.
In 1963, Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, in a scene captured on live television.
In 1969, Apollo 12 splashed down safely in the Pacific.
In 1971, a hijacker calling himself “Dan Cooper” (but who became popularly known as “D.B. Cooper”) parachuted from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 over the Pacific Northwest after receiving
$200,000 dollars in ransom; his fate remains unknown.
In 1985, the hijacking of an Egyptair jetliner parked on the ground in Malta ended violently as Egyptian commandos stormed the plane. Fifty-eight people died in the raid, in addition to two others killed by the hijackers.
In 1991, rock singer Freddie Mercury died in London at age
45 of AIDS-related pneumonia. In 1992, a China Southern Airlines Boeing 737 crashed in southern China, killing all 141 people on board.
Ten years ago: A fast-moving wildfire pushed by Santa Ana winds raced through the canyons and mountains of Malibu, California, for the second time in little more than a month, destroying some 50 homes. In Australia’s election, conservative Prime Minister John Howard suffered a major defeat at the hands of Labor Party head Kevin Rudd.
Five years ago: Fire raced through a garment factory in Bangladesh that supplied major retailers in the West, killing 112 people; an official said many of the victims were trapped because the eight-story building lacked emergency exits. Former championship boxer Hector “Macho” Camacho died at a hospital in Puerto Rico after doctors disconnected life support; he’d been shot in his hometown of Bayamon earlier in the week.
One year ago: President-elect Donald Trump gathered with family at his Palm Beach estate Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving. A car bomb tore through a gas station south of Baghdad, killing at least 92 people in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group. A Northern California woman, Sherri Papini, was found near an interstate three weeks after disappearing while jogging; Papini told police she had been abducted at gunpoint by two women in a case that has baffled investigators. Florence Henderson, who went from Broadway star to become one of America’s most beloved television moms in “The Brady Bunch,” died in Los Angeles at age 82.