TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Saturday, Nov. 23, the 327th day of 2019. There are 38 days left in the year.
President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed Nov. 25 a day of national mourning following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
ON THIS DATE
In 1804, the 14th president of the United States, Franklin Pierce, was born in Hillsboro, New Hampshire.
In 1889, the first jukebox made its debut in San Francisco, at the Palais Royale Saloon. (The coin-operated device consisted of four listening tubes attached to an Edison phonograph.)
In 1903, Enrico Caruso made his American debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, appearing in “Rigoletto.”
In 1936, Life, the photojournalism magazine created by Henry R. Luce (loos), was first published.
In 1971, the People’s Republic of China was seated in the U.N. Security Council.
In 1980, some 2,600 people were killed by a series of earthquakes that devastated southern Italy.
In 1996, a commandeered Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 crashed into the water off the Comoros Islands, killing 125 of the 175 people on board, including all three hijackers.
In 2000, in a setback for Al Gore, the Florida Supreme Court refused to order Miami-Dade County officials to resume hand-counting its election-day ballots. Meanwhile, Gore’s lawyers argued in a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court that the high court should stay out of the Florida election controversy.
In 2001, the U.N. war crimes tribunal said it would try
former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for genocide in Bosnia, linking him for the first time in court to the murders of thousands of nonSerbs and the displacement of a quarter million people. (Milosevic died in March 2006 while his trial was in progress.)
In 2003, Five U.S. soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. Eduard Shevardnadze resigned as president of Georgia in the face of protests.
In 2006, former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko died in London from radiation poisoning after making a deathbed statement blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In 2012, supporters and opponents of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi clashed in the streets of Cairo and other major cities in the worst violence since Morsi took office nearly five months earlier. Actor Larry Hagman, best known for playing the scheming oil baron J.R. Ewing on TV’s“Dallas,”died in Dallas at the age of 81.
Ten years ago: One of the worst massacres in Philippine history took place as gunmen targeted an election campaign convoy in southern Maguindanao province, killing 58 people. Five years ago:
Israel’s Cabinet approved a bill to legally define the country as the nation-state of the Jewish people. One year ago: Black Friday shoppers were evacuated from a northwestern Indiana Meijer store, and a bomb squad was summoned, after a customer mistook a toy grenade for a real one.
THOUGHT FOR TODAY
“It is better to debate an important matter without settling it than to settle it without debating it.”— Author unknown.
— ASSOCIATED PRESS