Today in History
Today’s highlight:
On Nov. 27, 1978, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gayrights activist, were shot to death inside City Hall by former supervisor Dan White. White served five years for manslaughter; he committed suicide in Oct. 1985.
On this date:
1901: The U.S. Army War College was established in Washington, D.C.
1924: Macy’s first Thanksgiving Day parade — billed as a “Christmas Parade” — took place in New York.
1942: During World War II, the Vichy French navy scuttled its ships and submarines in Toulon to keep them out of the hands of German troops.
1945: General George C. Marshall was named special U.S. envoy to China by President Harry S. Truman to try to end hostilities between the Nationalists and the Communists.
1962: The first Boeing 727 was rolled out at the company’s Renton Plant.
1970: Pope Paul VI, visiting the Philippines, was slightly wounded at the Manila airport by a dagger-wielding Bolivian painter disguised as a priest.
1973: The Senate voted 92-3 to confirm Gerald R. Ford as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who’d resigned.
1998: Answering 81 questions put to him three weeks earlier; President Bill Clinton wrote the House Judiciary Committee that his testimony in the Monica Lewinsky affair was “not false and misleading.”
1989: A bomb blamed on drug traffickers destroyed a Colombian Avianca Boeing 727, killing all 107 people on board and three people on the ground.
1999: Northern Ireland’s biggest party, the Ulster Unionists, cleared the way for the speedy formation of an unprecedented Protestant-catholic administration.
2000: A day after George W. Bush was certified the winner of Florida’s presidential vote, Al Gore laid out his case for letting the courts settle the nation’s long-count election.
2003: President George W. Bush flew to Iraq under extraordinary secrecy and security to spend Thanksgiving with U.S. troops and thank them for “defending the American people from danger.”
Ten years ago: Tiger Woods crashed his SUV outside his Florida mansion, sparking widespread attention to reports of unfaithfulness to his wife, Elin Nordegren. (The couple divorced the following year.) Space shuttle Atlantis and its seven astronauts returned from the International Space Station with a smooth touchdown.
Five years ago: Reflecting its lessening oil clout, OPEC decided to keep its output target on hold and sit out falling crude prices. Mystery writer P.D. James, 94, died in Oxford, England.
One year ago: President Donald Trump threatened to cut off all federal subsidies to General Motors because of its planned massive cutbacks in the U.S.