TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1989

Communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West; joyous Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall.

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1620

The passengers and crew of the Mayflower sighted Cape Cod.

1872

Fire destroyed nearly 800 buildings in Boston.

1918

It was announced that Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II would abdicate; he then fled to the Netherlands.

1935

United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other labor leaders formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (later renamed the Congress of Industrial Organizations).

1938

Nazis looted and burned synagogues as well as Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria in a pogrom or deliberate persecution that became known as “Kristallnacht.”

1965

The great Northeast blackout began as a series of power failures lasting up to 13

1⁄2 hours, leaving 30 million people in seven states and part of Canada without electricity.

1970

Former French President Charles de Gaulle died at age 79.

1976

The U.N. General Assembly approved resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa, including one characterizing the white-ruled government as “illegitimate.” In 2007, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest for a day, and rounded up thousands of her supporters to block a mass rally against his emergency rule.

2011

After 46 seasons as Penn State’s head football coach and a record 409 victories, Joe Paterno was fired along with the university president, Graham Spanier, over their handling of child sex abuse allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.

2012

Retired four-star Army Gen. David Petraeus abruptly resigned as CIA director after an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, was revealed by an FBI investigation.

2016

Democrat Hillary Clinton conceded the presidential election to Republican Donald Trump, telling supporters in New York that her defeat was “painful, and it will be for a long time.” But Clinton told her faithful to accept Trump and the election results, urging them to give him “an open mind and a chance to lead.”

2020

President Donald Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper, injecting more uncertainty to a rocky transition period as Joe Biden prepared to assume the presidency; Trump said Christopher Miller, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, would serve as acting secretary.