Today is Friday, Nov. 9, the 313th day of 2018. There are 52 days left in the year.
Today's highlight
On Nov. 9, 1938, Nazis looted and burned synagogues as well as Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria in a pogrom or deliberate persecution that became known as "Kristallnacht."
On this date
In 1620, the passengers and crew of the Mayflower sighted Cape Cod.
In 1918, it was announced that Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II would abdicate; he then fled to the Netherlands.
In 1961, U.S. Air Force Maj. Robert M. White became the first pilot to fly an X-15 rocket plane at six times the speed of sound. The Beatles' future manager, Brian Epstein, first saw the group perform at The Cavern Club in Liverpool, England.
In 1965, the great Northeast blackout began as a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours left 30 million people in seven states and part of Canada without electricity.
In 1967, a Saturn V rocket carrying an unmanned Apollo spacecraft blasted off from Cape Kennedy on a successful test flight.
In 1970, former French President Charles de Gaulle died at age 79.
In 1976, the U.N. General Assembly approved resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa, including one characterizing the white-ruled government as "illegitimate."
In 1986, Israel revealed it was holding Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear technician who'd vanished after providing information to a British newspaper about Israel's nuclear weapons program. (Vanunu was convicted of treason and served 18 years in prison.)
In 1989, communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West; joyous Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall.
In 1999, with fireworks, concerts and a huge party at the landmark Brandenburg Gate, Germany celebrated the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
In 2000, George W. Bush's lead over Al Gore in all-or-nothing Florida slipped beneath 300 votes in a suspense-filled recount, as Democrats threw the presidential election to the courts, claiming "an injustice unparalleled in our history."
In 2007, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest for a day and rounded up thousands of her supporters to block a mass rally against his emergency rule.