Nov 24 in History
1248 — An overnight limestone landslide on the north side of Mont Granier in France destroys five villages and causes more than 1,000 casualties. One of the largest rock-slope failures recorded in Europe to date creates the sheer 700m north face of the mountain. 1859 — English naturalist Charles Darwin publishes his 502-page theory of evolution, “On the Origin of Species or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”. The 1,250 copies sell out in a day. 1877 — Anna Sewell’s only novel “Black Beauty” is published in London. She is paid £20 for what is now one of the 10 bestselling (50-million) novels for children … a book about the humane treatment of horses written for adults. A first edition signed by Sewell to her cousins Mary and Catherine, is on sale by Jonkers Rare Books for $46,607.41. Sewell, 58, dies of hepatitis and tuberculosis on April 25 1878. 1929 — Georges Clemenceau, 88, French journalist, medical doctor and prime minister (1906-09 and 1917-20), dies in Paris. He is noted for the quote: “The war! It is too serious a thing to entrust to the military.” 1931 — Arthur Chaskalson, President of the Constitutional Court (1994-2001) and Chief Justice of South Africa (2001-05), is born in Johannesburg. 1955 — Ian Botham, England cricketer (102 Tests, 5,200 runs, 383 wickets), is born in Heswall, Cheshire. 1963 — Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby shoots and mortally wounds Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of assassinating President John F Kennedy, in front of TV cameras in the Dallas Police Department garage. 1971 — A man calling himself Dan (“DB”) Cooper boards Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305 in Portland, Oregon, says he has a bomb, and demands $200,000 and parachutes. He receives his “order“at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, lets the 35 passengers and two crew members go, then takes off with the three cockpit crew and a flight attendant. Trailed by five fighter jets, he parachutes from the Boeing 727 with the money over the Cascade Mountains near Ariel, Washington, never to be seen again. The FBI says in July 2016 it has closed the 60-volume case file.
1985 — The hijacking of EgyptAir Flight 648 (from Athens to Cairo) by terrorists of the Palestinian organisation Abu Nida, ends with 58 people (including two hijackers) dead when Egyptian commandos storm the plane on the ground in Malta. Another two passengers were killed earlier by the hijackers; 38 people (including the third hijacker) survive.
1989 — Nicolae Ceausescu is re-elected as Communist Party chief in Romania. Within a month, he is overthrown in a popular uprising and executed, along with his wife Elena, on Christmas Day.