TODAY IN HISTORY

On Nov. 10, 1982, the newly finished Vietnam Veterans Memorial was opened to its first visitors in Washington, D.C., three days before its dedication. Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev died at age 75.

On this date

In 1766, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, had its beginnings as William Franklin, the Royal Governor of New Jersey, signed a charter establishing Queen's College in New Brunswick.

In 1775, the U.S. Marines were organized under authority of the Continental Congress.

In 1871, journalist-explorer Henry M. Stanley found Scottish missionary David Livingstone, who had not been heard from for years, near Lake Tanganyika in central Africa.

In 1917, 41 suffragists were arrested for picketing in front of the White House.

In 1938, Kate Smith first sang Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on her CBS radio program. Turkish statesman Mustafa Kemal Ataturk died in Istanbul at age 57.

In 1942, Winston Churchill delivered a speech in London in which he said, "I have not become the King's First Minister to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire."

In 1951, customer-dialed long-distance telephone service began as Mayor M. Leslie Denning of Englewood, New Jersey, called Alameda, California, Mayor Frank Osborne without operator assistance.

In 1954, the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, depicting the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, was dedicated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in Arlington, Virginia.

In 1969, the children's educational program "Sesame Street" made its debut on National Educational Television (later PBS).

In 1975, the U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution equating Zionism with racism (the world body repealed the resolution in Dec. 1991). The ore-hauling ship SS Edmund Fitzgerald mysteriously sank during a storm in Lake Superior with the loss of all 29 crew members.

In 1997, a judge in Cambridge, Massachusetts, reduced Louise Woodward's murder conviction to involuntary manslaughter and sentenced the English au pair to the 279 days she'd already served in the death of 8-monthold Matthew Eappen.

In 2004, word reached the United States of the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at age 75 (because of the time difference, it was the early hours of Nov. 11 in Paris, where Arafat died).