TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Saturday, November 26, the 330th day of 2022. There are 35 days left in the year.
1778: British explorer Captain James Cook is the first European to visit Maui in the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii)
1825: The first college social fraternity, the Kappa Alpha Society, is formed at Union College in Schenectady, New
York.
1864: English mathematician and writer Charles Dodgson presents a handwritten and illustrated manuscript, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, to his 12-yearold friend Alice Pleasance Liddell; the book was later turned into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, publishing under Dodgson’s pen name, Lewis Carroll.
1883: Former slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth dies in Battle Creek, Michigan.
1865: Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is published in America
1917: The National Hockey League is founded in Montreal, succeeding the National Hockey Association.
1922: English archaeologist Howard Carter opens Tutankhamun's virtually intact tomb in Egypt
1941: US Secretary of State Cordell Hull delivers a note to Japan’s ambassador to the United States, Kichisaburo Nomura, setting forth US demands for “lasting and extensive peace throughout the Pacific area.” The same day, a Japanese naval task force consisting of six aircraft carriers leaves the Kuril Islands, headed toward Hawaii. 1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt orders nationwide gasoline rationing, beginning December 1.
1943: During World War II, the HMT Rohna, a British transport ship carrying American soldiers, is hit by a German missile off Algeria; 1,138 men are killed.
1948: The first polaroid camera sold for $89.75 in Boston at the Jordan Marsh department store. The Land Camera model 95 becomes prototype for all Polaroid Land cameras for next 15 years
1950: China enters the Korean War, launching a counteroffensive against soldiers from the United Nations, the US and South Korea.
1973: President Richard Nixon’s personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, tells a federal court she accidentally caused part of the 18-1/2-minute gap in a key Watergate tape.
1986: President Ronald Reagan appoints a commission headed by former Sen. John Tower to investigate his National Security Council staff in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair.
2000: Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certifies George W. Bush the winner over Al Gore in the state’s presidential balloting by a 537-vote margin.
2008: Teams of heavily armed Pakistani gunmen storm luxury hotels, a popular tourist attraction and a crowded train station in Mumbai, India, leaving at least 166 people dead in a rampage lasting some 60 hours.
2012: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak abruptly quit spolitics, saying in a surprise announcement, “I feel I have exhausted my political activity, which had never been a special object of desire for me.” New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie announces that he will be seeking re-election, so he can continue to guide the state through a recovery from Superstorm Sandy.
2018: Congressman John Conyers of Michigan gives up his leadership position as the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, while denying allegations that he has sexually harassed female staff members. Amid allegations that he has groped women in the past, Minnesota Democratic Sen. Al Franken said he feels “embarrassed and ashamed,” but that he looks forward to gradually regaining the trust of voters. (Franken announces less than two weeks later that he is resigning from Congress.)
2020: Americans mark the Thanksgiving holiday amid the coronavirus pandemic, with many celebrations canceled or reduced; Zoom and FaceTime calls connect some families with those who didn’t want to travel.
2021: A World Health Organization panel classifies a new COVID-19 variant as a highly transmissible virus of concern, and names it “omicron” under its Greekletter system. The United States,
Canada, Russia and a host of other countries join the European Union in restricting travel for visitors from southern Africa. Stephen Sondheim, the songwriter who reshaped the American musical theater in the second half of the 20th century, dies at his Connecticut home at the age of 91.