Today in History.....

[haiducii]

On this day: 3rd November

In 1964, for the first time residents of the District of Columbia are allowed to vote in a presidential election. The passage of the 23rd Amendment in 1961 gave citizens of the nation’s capital the right to vote for a commander in chief and vice president.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 4th November

In 1925, Nellie Tayloe Ross became the first and only female governor of the state of Wyoming in the United States. She was inaugurated Jan. 5, 1925 - the first woman governor in the nation. It was a tough time to take office. Drought, farm and ranch failures and especially bank failures were spreading hardship across the state. Many people lost their property and their life savings. The oil boom was leveling off. Deadly mine explosions in western Wyoming at Kemmerer in 1923 killed 100 miners, and reminded the state that coal mining remained as dangerous as ever.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 5th November

In 1872, Susan B. Anthony, an American social reformer and feminist activist, is arrested in Rochester for trying to vote in the presidential election. Anthony was arrested for the crime, and she unsuccessfully fought the charges; she was fined $100, which she never paid.

 

[topdog]

On this day: 5th November

The Gunpowder Plot

On the 5 November 1605 Guy Fawkes, a member of the Gunpowder Plot, was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. Celebrating the fact that King James I had survived the attempt on his life, people lit bonfires around London, and months later the introduction of the Observance of 5th November Act enforced an annual public day of thanksgiving for the plot's failure.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 6th November

In 1997, it was reported that the Russian Mafia and other East European gangs controlled some 500,000 foreign women as illegal prostitutes in the 15 EU member countries. Some 15,000 gangs operated in Berlin alone.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 7th November

In 2000, Hillary Rodham Clinton, wife of the president, has won a seat for the Democrats in the Senate to become the only First Lady to win elective office in US history.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 8th November

In 1994, Salvatore “Sonny” Bono is elected to the U.S. Congress.

While his music and acting career faded after parting ways with Cher, Bono soon found a new vocation. The former showman had transformed himself into a conservative Republican. He entered the political arena, running for mayor of Palm Springs, California, in the late 1980s. Bono won that post, serving as the town from 1988 to 1992.

Before long, Bono set his sights on national office. He made an unsuccessful run for the Senate in 1992. Two years later, Bono was elected to Congress as a Representative from California's 44th Congressional District. He became a popular figure within the Republican Party, known for his wit and his deeply conservative views.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 11th November

In 1675, German mathetician Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the y=x function. He introduced several notations used in calculus to this day, for instance the integral sign "+ representing an elongated S from the Latin word summa and the d used for differentials from the Latin word differentia.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 12th November

In 1898, Leon Stukelj, a legendary Slovene gymnast, was born in Novo Mesto, Austro-Hungarian Empire, present-day Slovenia. He dominated the arena of gymnastics for nearly 14 years: from the 1922 World Championships in Ljubljana to 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, he became the top Slovene athlete and a giant of world gymnastics. This legendary Olympian won 20 international medals: eight gold, six silver and six bronze, through his participation in seven major international competitions, of which six medals were claimed at the Olympics. This brains-and-brawn personality worked as a lawyer before venturing into gymnastics and resumed his law profession after retiring from the sport after the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He lived a long-life of more than 100 years, and at one time he was the oldest living Olympic gold medalist—a record he held for over ten years.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 13th November

In 1994, Sweden votes to join EU. The voter turnout was 83.3%, and the result was 52.3% for and 46.8% against. The Nordic country officially joined the EU on January 1, 1995. In a 2003 referendum the Swedish electorate voted against the country joining the Euro currency.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 18th November

In 2000, the film world has celebrated the celebrity wedding of the year in New York, as Hollywood leading man Michael Douglas married Welsh actress Catherine Zeta Jones. The lavish ceremony took place in New York's Plaza Hotel and cost an estimated £1.5 million.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 19th November

In 1994, Britain braced for first lottery draw with a television programme presented by Noel Edmonds. A £1 ticket gives you a one-in-14-million chance of striking lucky and guessing correctly the winning six out of 49 numbers. The first numbers drawn were 30, 3, 5, 44, 14 and 22, the bonus was 10, and seven jackpot winners shared a prize of £5,874,778.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 20th November

In 1995, Sergei Grinkov (28), the Russian pairs skater who with his wife won two Olympic gold medals (1988 - Calgary, Canada; 1994 - Lillehammer, Norway) and became the most graceful and beloved pair of the past decade, collapsed and died while practicing on the ice in Lake Placid, N.Y.

The news of Grinkov's death stunned the figure skating community. "It's not just a loss to Katia (Grinkov's wife), but to the world," said Olympic gold medalist Brian Boitano. "They were arguably the best pairs skaters ever. The world will be deprived of seeing them skate again."

 

[alan2108]

Iconic Cars

1906 Charles Stewart Rolls and Frederick Henry Royce formed Rolls-Royce.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 21st November

In 1871, in the city of London, Emilio Onra became the first person ever to be shot out of a cannon. For some undisclosed reason, he accomplished this history-making feat while disguised as a woman. Other details, including how far he was propelled and whether or not he survived, are sketchy at best.

One is tempted to speculate that Mr. Onra had gathered the courage to attempt his unprecedented act by first making the rounds of the London pubs, and had managed to — uhh — get loaded.

There hasn’t been much in the news lately about folks being shot from cannons. Perhaps there’s some truth to the rumor that it has become very difficult to find anyone of Onra’s caliber.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 22n November

In 1900, the first car to be produced under the Mercedes name is taken for its inaugural drive in Cannstatt, Germany. The car was specially built for its buyer, Emil Jellinek, an entrepreneur with a passion for fast, flashy cars. Jellinek had commissioned the Mercedes car from the German company Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft: it was lighter and sleeker than any car the company had made before, and Jellinek was confident that it would win races so handily that besotted buyers would snap it up. (He was so confident that he bought 36 of them.) In exchange for this extraordinary patronage, the company agreed to name its new machine after Jellinek’s 11-year-old daughter, Mercedes.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 23rd November

In 1889, the first jukebox is installed at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco. It becomes an overnight sensation, and its popularity spreads around the world.

That first jukebox was constructed by the Pacific Phonograph Company. Four stethoscope-like tubes were attached to an Edison Class M electric phonograph fitted inside an oak cabinet. The tubes operated individually, each being activated by the insertion of a coin, meaning that four different listeners could be plugged in to the same song simultaneously.

Towels were supplied to patrons so they could wipe off the end of the tube after each listening.

The success of the jukebox eventually spelled the end of the player piano, then the most common way of pounding out popular music to a line of thirsty barflies.

The machine was originally called the “nickel-in-the-slot player” by Louis Glass, the entrepreneur who installed it at the Palais Royale. (A nickel then had the buying power of $1.08 today.) It came to be known as the jukebox only later, although the origin of the word remains a bit vague. It may derive from “juke house,” a slang reference to bawdy house, where music was not unknown.

 

[ihno]

In 1991 Freddie Mercury (born Farrokh Bulsara; 5 September 1946 – 24 November 1991) died from AIDS.

 

[camyoo]

On this day: 24th November

1859 – Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species.

 

[haiducii]

On this day: 25th November

In 1952, Agatha Christie's murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opens at the Ambassadors Theatre in London, and has been running continuously since then. The longest running West End show, it has by far the longest initial run of any play in history, with its 25,000th performance taking place on 18 November 2012.

Theatrical success is always relative. In a 2012 interview, producer Sir Stephen Waley-Cohen glumly noted the play's limited reach. "Even with very good houses for the last 59 years, only about 10m people have seen the play in London,'' he said. ''That's about the number for one episode of a good soap or Downton Abbey.''