November 26th is

Cider Monday

Cyber Monday

National Cake Day

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MORE! Johannes Bach, Inge King and Xavier Cugat, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Baha’i – Day of the Covenant: commorates Bahá’u’lláh’s appointment of His eldest son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, as the Center of His Covenant

Abkhazia – Constitution Day

Canada – Toronto ON:
Waterfront Spectacle of Lights (ongoing)

Mongolia –Freedom & Independence Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

783 – Queen Adosinda, Kingdom of Asturias (now an autonomous community in NW Spain), had not given Asturia an heir before her husband died, so her nephew Alfonso II is proclaimed king. Mauregatus, the illegitimate son of Alfonso I, usurps the throne by force and drives Alfonso II into exile in Álava in Basque territory. Mauregatus sends  Queen Adosinda to the monastery of San Juan de Pravia, where she is held until she dies

Church at San Juan de Pravia

1161 – Battle of Caishi: A Song dynasty fleet fights a naval engagement with Jin dynasty ships on the Yangtze river during the Jin–Song Wars

1288 – Go-Daigo born, Emperor of Japan (1318-1339); he overthrew the Kamakura shogunate in 1333, creating the short-lived Kenmu Restoration of imperial power, which was overthrown in 1336, splitting the imperial family into two factions

1476 – Vlad the Impaler defeats Voivode Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Báthory and becomes Voivode of Wallachia for the third time and final time

Vlad III – Ambras Castle portrait

1552 – In Korea, Seonjo King of Joseon born, who reigned from 1567 to 1608; encouraged Confucianism and attempted to renovate state affairs, but the political chaos resulting from his indecisive leadership led to the shrinking of his army, and Japanese invasion attempts (1592-1598)

1604 – Johannes Bach born, German Baroque organist and composer

1716 – The first lion exhibited in America is displayed in Boston MA

1731 – William Cowper born, English poet, anti-slavery advocate and hymnodist Light Shining out of Darkness (‘God moves in a mysterious way/His wonders to perform…’)

1778 – Captain James Cook is the first European to visit the Hawaiian Island of Maui

1789 – At the request of Congress, U.S. President Washington proclaims a national day of thanksgiving, to observe the adoption of the U.S. Constitution

1792 – Sarah Moore Grimké born, American writer, anti-slavery and women’s rights activist. As a writer, her strong pioneering arguments against slavery and in support of women’s rights helped advance both movements

1805 – The Pontcysylite Aqueduct, which carries a section of the Llangollen canal over the valley of the River Dee in NE Wales, officially opens. The longest and highest aqueduct in Britain, it was engineered by Scotsman Thomas Telford, whose nickname was the ‘Colossus of Roads’

1825 – The first U.S. college social fraternity, Kappa Alpha, is founded at Union College in Schenectady NY

1832 – Public streetcar service begins in New York City

1832 – Mary Edwards Walker born, American surgeon, abolitionist, women’s rights and rational dress activist; during the Civil War, volunteered as a surgeon with the Union Army; captured and arrested as a spy by the Confederates when she crossed enemy lines to treat wounded civilians, then held as a prisoner of war until released in a prisoner exchange; the only woman ever to receive the Medal of Honor, and one of only 8 civilians to be so honored – her name was deleted, with 900 others, from the Army Medal of Honor Roll in 1917, but restored in 1977

1842 – The University of Notre Dame begins in a log chapel near what is now South Bend Indiana, and work begins on three additional buildings; later, the first two students arrive

1863 – The first Thanksgiving after Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation of an official annual national holiday

1867 – J.B. Sutherland patents the refrigerated railroad car

1876 – Willis H. Carrier born, American inventor of the first electrical air conditioning unit in 1902; founder of the Carrier Corporation

1894 – Norbert Wiener born, American mathematician and philosopher; his work contributed to the fields of electronic engineering and communications; the Wiener equation concerns the velocity of fluid particle fluctuations

1900 – Anna Maurizio born, Swiss biologist, known for her study of bees, lasting over thirty years, at the Department of Bees at the Liebfeld Federal Dairy Industry and Bacteriological Institute, which included developing new methods for determining the amount of pollen in honey

1907 – Ruth Patrick born, American botanist and limnologist (studies inland water systems) specializing in diatoms and freshwater ecology; formed and chaired the Department of Limnology at the Academy of Natural Sciences in 1947; inventor of the diatometer, which takes more accurate samples for study of diversity in water ecology; also developed other methods of measuring the health of freshwater ecosystems; Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1976), and awarded the National Medal of Science (1996); lived to age 106

1909 – Eugene Ionesco born, Romanian-French Avant-garde playwright, Rhinocéros

1912 – Eric Sevareid born, American television journalist (CBS 1939-1977), author and commentator; first to report the fall of Paris during WWII, and the last journalist to interview Adlai Stevenson before his death

1915 – Inge King born, to a Jewish family in Germany; she fled to Britain in 1939, studied at the Glasgow School of Art; emigrated to Australia in 1951, where she was at the forefront of modern non-figurative sculpture; best known for Forward Surge at the Melbourne Arts Centre

Forward Surge, by Inge King

1917 – The Sykes-Picot Papers: The Manchester Guardian prints the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement which defined the “spheres of influence” of the UK and France as part of an understanding between their countries and Russia based on the Triple Entente, which was designed to keep the Ottoman Empire in check, and ultimately defeat it

1918 – The Montenegran Podgorica Assembly votes for a “union of the people,” declaring in favor of assimilation into the Kingdom of Serbia

1922 – Charles Schulz born, American cartoonist; creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip

1922 – Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon become the first people to enter the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamen in over 3000 years

1936 – Margaret Boden born, English computer scientist and psychologist, noted for research in cognitive science, which includes artificial intelligence and psychology

1939 – The Soviet Red Army lobs seven shells into the Russian village of Mainila, claiming that the shells were shot from Finland. Finland denies the attack and an internal investigation proves that their artillery could not have reached Mainila, but Russia uses the ruse to justify renouncing its non-aggression pact with Finland, and launches the Winter War against Finland on November 30^th. Soviet leadership expected total victory within two or three weeks. The Red Army had just completed the invasion of Eastern Poland at a cost of fewer than 4,000 casualties after Germany attacked Poland from the west. The League of Nations deemed the Soviet attack on Finland illegal and expelled the Soviet Union from the organization. The war lasted over three months, and cost the Soviets over 150,000 dead or missing, and over 200,000 wounded or sick. It was also costly to Finland, with almost 26,000 dead or missing, over 40,000 wounded, and Finland was forced in the Moscow Peace Treaty to give up 11% of its territory, representing 30% of its economy to the Soviets, but retained its sovereignty and enhanced its international reputation, while the Soviet’s international standing took a blow. In June, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, and the Continuation War between Finland and the USSR began

1939 – Tina Turner born, American singer-actress, now a Swiss citizen

1940 – The half million Jews of Warsaw, Poland, are forced by the Nazis to live within a walled ghetto

1940 – Xavier Cugat and his orchestra record “Orchids in the Moonlight”

1942 – Đặng Thùy Trâm born, battlefield surgeon for North Vietnam during the Vietnam War and posthumous author; killed in disputed circumstances by U.S. forces in 1970; her wartime diaries, Nhật ký Đặng Thùy Trâm (Đặng Thùy Trâm’s Diary (Last Night I Dreamed Of Peace), chronicling the last two years of her life, attracted international attention when they were published in 2005

1942 – President Roosevelt orders nationwide gasoline rationing, beginning December 1

1942 – Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, debuts in NYC

1943 – Marilynne Robinson born, American author and essayist; winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Gilead, the 2012 National Humanities Medal, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction; also noted for novels Housekeeping and Home

1944 – Joyce Quin born, Baroness Quin, Member of the European Parliament for Tyne and Wear (1979-1984); British Labour Party MP for Gateshead East (1987-1997); Minister of State for Europe (1998-1999); author of a 2010 book on the British Constitution

1948 – Elizabeth Blackburn born in Tasmania, Australian-American molecular biologist, President of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies; discoverer of the enzyme telomerase, which replenishes telomeres, the protectors for the ends of chromosomes from DNA damage or fusion; shared 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

1949 – India adopts a constitution as a republic within the British Commonwealth

1950 – China enters the Korean War, launching a counter-offensive against soldiers from the United Nations, the U.S. and South Korea

1952 – Elsa Salazar Cade born, Mexican-American science teacher and entomologist; selected by the National Science Teachers Association as one of the top ten science teachers in 1995; she and her husband William Cade have studied the Texas field cricket, Gryllus texensis, for over 30 years

1953 – Desiré Wilson born, South African racecar driver; one of only six women to compete in Formula One racing; she became the only woman to win a Formula One race, the 1980 British Aurora F1 Championship at the Brands Hatch racing circuit, in West Kingsdown, Kent, England

1954 – Roz Chast born, American cartoonist for The New Yorker

1955 – Gisela Stuart born in Bavaria; British Labour politician; Chair of Change Britain organization; Member of Parliament for Birmingham Edgbaston (1997-2017)

1959 – Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs born, American poet, cultural studies scholar and feminist theorist; a commissioner for the Washington State Arts Commission and a professor at Seattle University

1965 – France becomes the third country to enter space when it launches its first satellite, the Diamant-A

1969 – The Band receives a gold record for the album The Band

1969 – Kara Walker born, African-American contemporary artist and filmmaker

Section of Slavery mural by Kara Walker

1970 – The heaviest rainfall ever recorded, 1.5 inches in one minute, deluges Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe

1971 – Vicki Pettersson born, Urban Fantasy novelist; known for her Signs of the Zodiac series and Celestial Blues trilogy

1973 – Rose Mary Woods, President Nixon’s personal secretary, tells a federal court that she is responsible for the 18-1/2 minute gap in a key Watergate tape

1975 – Lynette”Squeaky” Fromme is found guilty by a federal jury in Sacramento CA of attempting to assassinate U.S. President Ford

1975 – Exiled Afrikaans writer and anti-apartheid activist Breyten Breytenbach is arrested for illegally re-entering South Africa with a false passport, and sentenced to nine years imprisonment for treason under the Terrorism Act by the Pretoria Supreme Court. He remained a political prisoner until December 1982, when he was released amid strong international intervention

1977 – In the UK, the Southern Television broadcast is interrupted for six minutes by a hijacker who claimed to be a representative of an ‘Intergalatic Association’ issuing a sound-only warning that “All your weapons of evil must be removed” and “You have but a short time to learn to live together in peace” – the hijacker was never apprehended

1979 – The International Olympic Committee re-admits China after a 21-year absence

1980 – Three young black South African men, Noimbithi Johnson Lubisi, Petrus Tsepo Mashigo, and Naphtali Manani, are found guilty of high treason, and the murder of two women during a bank robbery with aggravating circumstances. None of the three had been present at the shoot-out at the bank, but were among nine men tried for the bank robbery in accordance with the “common purpose” doctrine. The ANC called on the UN to impose sanctions against the South African regime, and asked the world community to intervene to save the three condemned men. In June, 1982, President Viljoen commuted their death sentences

1983 – At Britain’s Heathrow Airport, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly £26 million plus diamonds and cash are stolen from the Brink’s-Mat vault – some of the robbery gang were caught and convicted, but most of the gold has never been recovered

1985 – Random House acquires rights to Nixon’s autobiography for $3,000,000 USD

1986 – U.S. President Reagan announces appointments to the Tower Commission, naming former U.S. Senator John Tower (Republican-Texas), to investigate the Iran-Contra affair

1988 – The U.S. denies PLO Chair Yasser Arafat an entry visa for travel to New York to address the UN General Assembly

1990 – The Delta II rocket makes its maiden flight

1992 – Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II voluntarily takes her children off the public payroll, and begins paying taxes on her income

1997 – The U.S and North Korea meet at the State Department for high-level discussions for the first time

2000 – Katherine Harris, Republican Secretary of State in Florida, certifies George W. Bush as the winner of Florida’s electoral votes (recording Bush won the popular vote by 537 votes) in the midst of controversy over “hanging chads” voting irregularities

2009 – An investigation ordered by Ireland’s government finds that Roman Catholic Church leaders in Dublin have spent decades sheltering child-abusing priests from the law while most fellow clerics turned a blind eye

2011- NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory launches to Mars with the Curiosity Rover

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