This day in history
Today is Monday, Nov. 27, the 331st day of 2023. There are 34 days left in the year.
Birthdays: Footwear designer Manolo Blahnik is 81. TV host Bill Nye (the Science Guy”) is 68. Caroline Kennedy is 66. Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty is 63. Rock musician Charlie Benante (Anthrax) is 61. Rock musician Mike Bordin (Faith No More) is 61. Actor Fisher Stevens is 60. Actor Robin Givens is 59. Actor Michael Vartan is 55. Actor Elizabeth Marvel is 54. Rapper Skoob (DAS EFX) is 53. Actor Kirk Acevedo is 52. Rapper Twista is 51. Actor Jaleel White is 47. Actor Lashana Lynch (TV: “Still Star-Crossed”) is 36.
▶In 1901, the US Army War College was established in Washington, D.C.
▶In 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.
▶In 1962, the first Boeing 727 was rolled out at the company’s Renton Plant near Seattle.
▶In 1970, Pope Paul VI, visiting the Philippines, was slightly wounded at the Manila airport by a dagger-wielding Bolivian painter disguised as a priest.
▶In 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 took his own life in October 1985.)
▶In 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.”
▶In 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.
▶In 2003, President George W. Bush flew to Iraq under extraordinary secrecy and security to spend Thanksgiving with US troops and thank them for “defending the American people from danger.”
▶In 2015, a gunman attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing three people and injuring nine. (The prosecution of suspect Robert Dear stalled in state court, and then federal court, after he was repeatedly found mentally incompetent to stand trial.); as he tried to bolster his support in the wake of a sexual harassment allegation, Minnesota Democratic Senator Al Franken apologized to “everyone who has counted on me to be a champion for women.” (Franken would later resign.)
▶In 2020, President Donald Trump’s legal team suffered another defeat as a federal appeals court in Philadelphia roundly rejected the campaign’s latest effort to challenge Pennsylvania’s election results.
▶In 2021, the new potentially more contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus popped up in more European countries, just days after being identified in South Africa.