“That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of
all the lessons that history has to teach.”
― Aldous Huxley, 'Collected Essays'
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“If you don't know history,
then you don't know anything.
You are a leaf that doesn't
know it is part of a tree.”
― Michael Crichton
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NOVEMBER is:
Aviation History Month
National Gratitude Month
Native American Heritage Month
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November 28th is:
French Toast Day: The earliest known toasted bread recipe was found in a 4th-century CE Roman cookbook called Apicius. In 1724, Innkeeper Joseph French in Albany, NY, introduced America to his “French Toast.” But in France, it’s called "pain perdu" (lost bread) because it is a delicious way to use up stale bread.
Red Planet Day: November 28, 1964 – NASA’s spacecraft Mariner-4 was launched for a 228 day mission that brought it within 6,118 miles of Mars in July 1965
Talking Leaves Day: November 28, 1785 – The first Treaty of Hopewell is signed between U.S. representative Benjamin Hawkins and the Cherokee, laying out a western boundary for American settlement. The Cherokee called the white American’s papers ‘Talking Leaves.’ When the treaties written on the ‘leaves’ of paper no longer suited the white Americans, they blew away – like autumn leaves
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Albania – Independence Day: 1443 – Albanian Gjergj Kastrioti, known as Skanderbeg, leads his forces in liberating Krujë in central Albania from the Ottoman Empire, and raises the Albanian flag
Chad – Republic Day
East Timor – Independence Proclamation Day: 1975 - East Timor declares its independence from Portugal
Kosovo – Albanian Flag Day: 1912 – Albania declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire
Mauritania – Independence Day
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November 28th in History:
936 – General Shi Jingtang becomes first Emperor Gaozu of the Later Jin (936-943), after rebelling against Li Congke of the Later Tang. In order to overthrow the Later Tang dynasty, he allied himself with the Khitan-ruled Liao state, humiliating himself by becoming the adopted son of Liao Emperor Taizong, who was ten years old than he was, and yielding the strategically crucial Sixteen Prefectures of Yan and Yun to Liao after his rise to power — an event that would shape the Chinese political landscape for the next 200 years
1470 – Champa–Đại Việt War: Emperor Lê Thánh Tông of Đại Việt formally launches his attack against Champa (now part of the eastern coast of Vietnam)
1520 – An expedition under the command of Ferdinand Magellan passes through what is now called the Strait of Magellan, between South America and Tierra del Fuego
Map of South America from 1600 by Matthias Quad, with detail of the Straits of Magellan
1582 – In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 bond for their marriage license
1632 – Jean-Baptiste Lully born, Italian-French composer
1660 – At Gresham College, twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decide to found what is later known as the Royal Society (The President, Council and Fellows of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge)
1757 – William Blake born, major and prolific English poet, mystic, visual artist, and printmaker; best known for Songs of Innocence and Experience. Although his formal schooling ended when he was 10 years old, he was an avid reader. Blake was apprenticed to an engraver at age 15 in 1772, and he was a professional engraver by age 21. During his apprenticeship, he was sent to Gothic churches in London to copy images. In 1779, Blake became a student at the Royal Academy, but disliked the prevailing painting style of the period, preferring the classical style of Michelangelo and Raphael. He married Catherine Boucher in 1782, taught her to read and write, and trained her as an engraver. She helped to color his illuminated works. In 1783, he published Poetical Sketches, and in 1784, he and another engraver opened a print shop. Radical publisher Joseph Johnson, whose authors included Joseph Priestly, Thomas Paine, and Mary Wollstonecraft, was one of their frequent customers. Blake illustrated Wollstonecraft’s Original Stories from Real Life. Blake was a radical thinker, believing in racial and sexual equality, and abhorring slavery. By 1788, he was experimenting with relief etching as a faster means of producing his illuminated books. He died at age 69 in August 1827
1805 – John Lloyd Stephens born, American archaeologist and explorer; his book, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, became a best seller. This account of his rediscovery and exploration, accompanied by architect and draftsman Frederick Catherwood, of Mesoamerican sites, including Palenque, Quiriguá and Uxmal, raised public interest in ancient Mayan culture
‘Palenque’ by Frederick Catherwood
1811 – Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, premieres at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig
1814 – The Times of London becomes the first newspaper to be produced on a steam-powered printing press, built by the German team of Koenig & Bauer
1820 – Friedrich Engels born, German-English philosopher, economist, and journalist; co-author with Karl Marx of The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)
1829 – Anton Rubinstein born, Russian pianist, composer, and conductor
1837 – John Wesley Hyatt born, American inventor; developed commercially successful nitrocellulose, a substitute for ivory, to make billiard balls, piano keys and false teeth
1843 – Hawaiian Independence Day: Ka Lā Hui, the Kingdom of Hawaii, is officially recognized by the United Kingdom and France as an independent nation; the kingdom is overthrown by American planters, assisted by U.S. troops sent to “protect” the planters, in 1893
1853 – Helen Magill White born, American academic; member of the first graduating class of Swarthmore College in 1873, comprised of five women and one man; first woman to earn a PhD in languages in the U.S (in Greek) at Boston University; director of the Howard Collegiate Institute (1883-1887); and taught at Evelyn College for Women, the women’s annex to Princeton University
1861 – Adina De Zavala born, American historian, teacher, author and Texas history preservationist; her History and Legends of the Alamo and Other Missions In and Around San Antonio (1917) highlights the role of women and minorities in the history of both the Alamo and Texas
1866 – Henry Bacon born, American architect; designer of the Lincoln Memorial
One of Henry Bacon’s early sketches for
the Lincoln Memorial
1881 – Organizational meeting held to form the Association of Collegiate Alumnae, predecessor of American Association of University Women (AAUW)
1891 – Mabel Alvarez born in Hawaii to a Spanish family (her father was a doctor involved in leprosy research), American painter; noted for her contributions to Southern California Modernism and California Impressionism;, she painted a mural for the 1915-1916 Panama-California Exposition, which won a Gold Medal; one of the original members of the ‘Group of Eight’ formed as part of California’s progressive art movement
‘Silent Places’ by Mabel Alvarez
1893 – New Zealand women vote for the first time in a general election. The Electoral Bill granting women the franchise had been given Royal Assent by Governor Lord Glasgow in September 1893. Also in 1893, suffrage supporter Elizabeth Yates won election as Mayor of Onehunga (1894) by 13 votes, not only the first woman to hold the office in New Zealand, but the first woman mayor anywhere in the British Empire. But she was defeated in the next election, after a year of loud opposition and meetings disrupted by both the town council and town clerks
Mayor Elizabeth Yates — New Zealand Suffragists
1895 – The first American automobile race takes place over the 54 miles from Chicago’s Jackson Park to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours — over 7 hours of driving time, and the remaining time for resting the engine and/or repairs
1895 – Jose Iturbi born, Spanish pianist, conductor and harpsichordist
1896 – Dawn Powell born, American author; after her mother’s death when she was seven, she lived with a series of relatives until her father remarried; when her stepmother destroyed her notebooks and diaries, she ran away to live with an aunt who encouraged her writing. Powell later wrote the semiautobiographical novel, My Home is Far Away. She, her husband and their mentally challenged son moved to Greenwich Village in the 1920s. Though she wrote hundreds of short stories, ten plays and a dozen novels, she still had to earn money working a variety of jobs, from book reviewer, freelance writer, and silent film extra to radio personality. Her books include She Walks in Beauty, Dance Night (which was her favorite), Walking Down Broadway, which was made into the 1933 film Hello, Sister!, directed by Eric von Stroheim, and her first commercially successful book, A Time to Be Born, published in 1942
1903 – Alice Cook born, labor educator, who increased union representation of textile workers in the CIO. She taught at Cornell University (1952-1972), and established Cornell’s Department of Women’s Studies
1904 – Nancy Mitford born, English satiric novelist, essayist, and social commentator; eldest of the Mitford sisters; noted for her novels, The Pursuit of Love, and Love in a Cold Climate
1905 – Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Féin as a political party, originally with the aim of establishing a dual monarchy in Ireland
1908 – Claude Lévi-Strauss born, Belgian-French anthropologist and ethnologist
1909 – Sergei Rachmaninoff makes the debut performance of his Piano Concerto No. 3, considered one of the most technically challenging piano concertos in the standard classical repertoire
1910 – Elsie Quarterman born, American botanist and plant ecologist, noted for her work on the ecology of Tennessee cedar glades, a rare habitat dominated by herbs on shallow soils and limestone outcrops, containing many unique plant species; in 1969 she rediscovered the native Tennessee coneflower, Echinacea tennesseensis, which was thought to be extinct. Conservation efforts led to the coneflower being removed from the endangered species list in 2011. She was the first woman head of a department at Vanderbilt University when she became chair of the Biology Department in 1964
1919 – American-born Lady Nancy Astor elected as the first woman to take her seat in the British House of Commons (Countess Markievics was elected earlier, but as a member of the Irish Sinn Féin, she did not take her seat)
1924 – Johanna Döbereiner born a German-Czech, became a Brazilian citizen in 1956; agronomist and microbiologist who studied how Azospirillum and other bacteria could improve the soil, which played an important role in Brazil’s soybean production because the bacteria reduced the need for fertilizer; honored with the 1989 UNESCO Science Prize and the Brazilian Order of Scientific Merit in 1992
1924 – Dennis Brutus born, South African poet, professor, anti-apartheid activist and journalist; his was classified as “coloured” under South Africa’s racial code, because some of his heritage was Khoi and Malaysian. Noted as co-founder of the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC), campaigning for the banning of South Africa from the Olympics, which began in 1964, and continued until 1992 because though the South African regime said they would field ‘multi-racial’ teams, the teams would have been chosen under segregated conditions. Brutus was banned from meeting with more than two people outside his family for his SANROC activities, then arrested in 1963 for breaking the terms of his banning by trying to meet with an IOC official, and sentenced to 18 months in jail, but while still on bail tried to leave the country to go to an IOC meeting. He was arrested by the Portuguese secret police in Mozambique and returned to South Africa, where he was shot in the back while trying to escape, then sent to Robben Island for 16 months, five of them in solitary. His cell was next door to Nelson Mandela’s. Brutus was forbidden to teach, write or publish in South Africa. His first book of poetry, Sirens, Knuckles and Boots, was published in Nigeria while he was in prison. Released from prison in 1965, he left South Africa on an exit visa, banned from returning, and went into exile, first in Britain, and then in 1967 in the U.S. In 1983, he was granted political refugee status after a lengthy legal battle. He was “unbanned” by the South African government in 1990. In 1991 he became one of the sponsors of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa, and returned to South Africa
1925 – The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting from Nashville as the WSM Barn Dance
1936 – Carol Gilligan born, American psychologist; in 1977, she became Harvard’s first professor of Gender Studies. Her research questions that most traditional theories of human psychological development studied boys and men. She developed a theory based on the experiences of girls and women. In psychological tests of moral judgment, for example, girls were often graded as deficient. But what Gilligan demonstrated in her landmark 1982 book, In a Different Voice, was that girls place more emphasis on feelings and relationships than on objective standards of justice, and boys tend to do the opposite. Before she published her studies, researchers sometimes dropped women from their samples because the women’s different responses complicated the research
1929 – Berry Gordy III born, American songwriter and producer, the founder of Motown Records
1943 – Randy Newman born, American singer-songwriter and pianist
1944 – The movie musical Meet Me in St. Louis opens in New York City
1947 – Maria Farantouri born, Greek singer, activist and politician; recorded protest songs during the Greek military junta (1967-1974); elected to the Greek Parliament representing the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK – 1989-1993)
1947 – Gladys Kokorwe born, Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) politician and stateswoman; Speaker of the National Assembly of Botswana since 2014; elected to the National Assembly in 1994, also serving in various ministries in the government between 1999 and 2009, and as Deputy Speaker (2004-2008). Notably she was the author and sponsor of the Domestic Violence Act, which became law in 2008. She left the assembly to become Botswana’s ambassador to Zimbabwe (2009-2014), then was returned to the assembly as its speaker in the 2014 elections
1949 – Alexander Godunov born, Russian Bolshoi Premier danseur who defected to the U.S. in 1979; danced with the American Ballet Theatre (1979-1982)
1950 – Russell Alan Hulse born, American physicist and astronomer, co-winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with his thesis advisor Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr., "for the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation."
1951 – Barbara Morgan born, American schoolteacher and NASA Astronaut as part of the Teacher in Space program. She was a Mission Specialist on STS-118 in 2007
1953 – A strike of photogravers shuts down New York’s newspapers for 11 days
1958 – Chad, the Republic of the Congo, and Gabon become autonomous republics within the French Community
1960 – Mauritania becomes independent of France
1962 – Jon Stewart born, American comedian, actor, and television host
1965 – Vietnam War: In response to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson’s call for “more flags” in Vietnam, Philippine President-elect Ferdinand Marcos announces he will send troops to help fight in South Vietnam
1966 – Michel Micombero overthrows the monarchy of Burundi and makes himself its first president
1967 – The first pulsar, known as PSR B1919+21, in the constellation of Vulpecula, is discovered by astronomers Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish
1972 – Last executions in Paris: Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems are guillotined at La Santé Prison
The last French guillotine, now in a museum
1974 – Elton John and John Lennon sing a duet of “I Saw Her Standing There” at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The show was John Lennon’s last stage appearance
1978 – The Iranian government bans religious marches
1983 – The space shuttle Columbia takes off with the STS-9 Spacelab in its cargo bay
1994 – Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is clubbed to death in prison by a fellow inmate
1994 – Norwegian voters reject European Union membership
1995 – President Clinton signs a $6 billion road bill that ends the federal 55 mph speed limit
2001 – Enron Corporation, once the world’s largest energy trader, collapses when would-be rescuer Dynegy Inc. backs out of an $8.4 billion deal to take it over
2010 – Wikileaks releases 250,000 messages sent by U.S. embassies, including messages discussing corruption, criticisms of the UK, Guantánamo Bay prison camp, a Chinese cyber attack, the relationship between Vladimir Putin and Silvio Berlusconi, and a possible unified Korea. The “unauthorised disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information” is condemned “in the strongest terms” by the White House
Guantánamo Bay prison
2014 – Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto proposes broad policing reforms on Thursday after two months of criticism over the kidnapping and presumed murder of 43 student-teachers. Witnesses blamed local police for the abductions, and the mayor of Iguala, in Guerrero state, and his wife have been accused of masterminding the crime along with gang members. President Pena Nieto proposes putting the 1,800 municipal police forces under state control, giving the federal government power to dissolve corrupt local governments, and establishing a national 911 system
2017 – NBC fired longtime Today show host Matt Lauer after a colleague accused him of sexual misconduct in the workplace. Lauer’s former co-anchor, Savannah Guthrie, announced the news at the start of the show. “We are grappling with a dilemma that so many people have faced these last few weeks: How do you reconcile your love for someone with the revelation that they have behaved badly?” Guthrie said. In a memo to staff, NBC News chairman Andy Lack explained that “... we received a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace by Matt Lauer.” Lack added that while “it is the first complaint about his behavior in the over 20 years he’s been at NBC News, we were also presented with reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident.” Variety published allegations by three unnamed women who also accused him of sexual harassment just hours after NBC announced Lauer had been fired
2019 – In the UK, Jo Swinson, a leading Liberal Democrat, declared that Boris Johnson is “not fit” to be prime minister. “Boris Johnson only cares about Boris Johnson,” she said. “He will do whatever it takes, sacrifice whatever or whoever is needed to get what he wants. His life has been about becoming prime minister. Not out of some burning desire to make people’s lives better, but out of some sense of Etonian entitlement, because it’s what people like him get to do. Boris Johnson doesn’t care about you and your family. Just take the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe – a British mother wrongfully imprisoned, a small child devastated, separated from her mum. When he was talking about that case, his words would be used against Nazanin at her trial.” She added, “Whether it is the sexist, patronising crap of comparing elite women athletes to wet otters, or him bragging about patting his female boss on the bottom ... this man isn’t someone our sons can look up to, that our daughters can have faith in.”
Jo Swinson
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