1851... Moby Dick, written by Herman Melville, is published. Moby Dick
tells the tale of Captain Ahab and his quest for a giant white
whale.
It is not popular at first, but later becomes a great American Classic.
1970...A jet
plane
carrying the Marshall University
Thundering Herd Football Team from
West Virginia
crashes into a hillside near the
school.
There are no survivors.
1985...A
volcano
erupts in Columbia killing over 20,000 people. Nearby
towns are buried in mud, ice and lava.
Craig Breedlove
1867...The first stock ticker is unveiled at the
New York
Stock Exchange. It allows up to the minute prices for investors around the
country.
1956...Elvis Presley
makes his big
screen debut in Love Me Tender. The movie premiers in
New York City at the
Paramount
Theater.
1965...Twenty-eight year old Craig Breedlove breaks the 600 mph
barrier driving his vehicle The Spirit of America. The vehicle cost
$250,000.
November
16th
The Sound of Music
1957...Notre Dame beats Oklahoma 7-0, ending the Sooners
47 game winning streak. The record still stands as most
consecutive wins by a
college
football team.
1959...The Sound of Music is a success from the very
night of its Broadway Opening. The show gets average reviews, but the quality of
the music by Rogers and Hammerstein was immediately recognized.
1973...President Richard Nixon urges
Congress
to pass Senate Bill 1081. The bill allows construction of an oil pipeline to gain access
to the oil on
Alaska's
north slope.
November
17th
1777...After 16 months of debate,
Congress submits The Articles of Confederation to the states for
ratification.
1968...The Oakland Raiders score two touchdowns in 9 seconds to
beat the New York Jets. However, the fans watching on
television do not get to see the end of the game. When
the
game
goes longer than expected. NBC switches to the children's movie
Heidi. There is a lot of fallout from that blunder, and it goes down as
one of the most notable mistakes of broadcasting on
television.
2003...John Mohamed,
The Beltway Sniper,
is found guilty of the shootings that terrorized the Washington D.C. area.
November
18th
Sandy Koufax
1883... American and
Canadian
railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands
of local times.
1966...Los Angeles Dodger pitching ace Sandy
Koufax retires due to arthritis. He is just 30 years old. Sandy Koufax
also gained fame for refusing to
pitch the first game of the1965
World Series
because it fell on the Jewish
holiday
Yon Kippur.
1978...Jim Jones leads hundreds of his followers in a mass
murder-suicide in Ghana, South Africa. Many willingly drink the poison
punch,
but others are forced do do it at gunpoint.
November
19th
1863...
President Abraham Lincoln delivers a memorable speech when he dedicates the
Military
Cemetery at Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania.
President Lincoln's famous speech reminded Americans why the Union needed to
fight and win the Civil War.
1969...Brazilian
soccer great Pele scores his 1,000th professional goal. In his career
Pele led Brazil to three World Cup championships.
1975...One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a film about a group
of patients in a mental institution, opens in
theaters across the
United States.
Nurse Ratched becomes a symbol for a cold and heartless person.
November
20th
Garrett Morgan
1820...The American whale boat Essex, from Nantucket,
Massachusetts, is
attacked and sunk by an 80-ton sperm
whale off the coast of South America. This incident becomes the inspiration
for the novel Moby Dick, by Herman Melville.
1923...The U.S. Patent Office grants
newspaper man and inventor Garrett Morgan a patent for his three position
traffic signal.
1945...Twenty-four high-ranking Nazis are
tried in Nuremburg,
Germany
for atrocities committed during
WWII.
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