Today in history

On Nov. 19, 1915, labor activist Joe Hill was executed by firing squad in Utah for the murders of Salt Lake City grocer John Morrison and his son, Arling.

In 1794, the United States and Britain signed Jay's Treaty, which resolved some issues left over from the Revolutionary War.

In 1831, the 20th president of the United States, James Garfield, was born in Orange Township, Ohio.

In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln dedicated a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania.

In 1919, the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles (vehr-SY') by a vote of 55 in favor, 39 against, short of the two-thirds majority needed for ratification.

In 1924, movie producer Thomas H. Ince died after celebrating his 42nd birthday aboard the yacht of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. (The exact circumstances of Ince's death remain a mystery.)

In 1942, during World War II, Russian forces launched their winter offensive against the Germans along the Don front.

In 1955, the first issue of National Review, created by William F. Buckley Jr., was published.

In 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean made the second manned landing on the moon.

In 1975, the film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," starring Jack Nicholson, was released by United Artists.

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev met for the first time as they began their summit in Geneva. Actor Stepin Fetchit, whose on-screen persona of a shuffling, no-account character generated much controversy, died in Woodland Hills, California, at age 83.

In 1990, the pop duo Milli Vanilli were stripped of their Grammy Award because other singers had lent their voices to the "Girl You Know It's True" album.

In 1995, the animated film "Toy Story," a Buena Vista Pictures release, had its world premiere in Hollywood. The video of the new Beatles single "Free as a Bird" aired on ABC-TV.

Ten years ago: Two dozen Iraqi men, women and children in Haditha (hah-DEE'-thuh) were killed by U.S. Marines after a Marine was killed by a roadside bomb. (Eight Marines were initially charged in the case; one was acquitted and six others had their cases dropped.

“You can always tell gifted and highly intelligent people as they always turn to the past. Any young person who knows anything that happened before 1980, or 1990, or 2000 for that matter, is immediately someone who is intelligent, probably creative, maybe a writer. Nobody who is drawn to the past and learning about the past is not gifted.” — Mike Nichols (1931-2014).