Today is Saturday, Nov. 9, the 313th day of 2019.
Today’s Highlight in History:
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 (pur-VEHZ’ moo-SHAH’-ruhv) of Pakistan placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto (BEN’-uh-zeer BOO’-toh) under house arrest for a day, and rounded up thousands of her supporters to block a mass rally against his emergency rule.
In 2008: Barack Obama’s transition chief, John Podesta, told Fox News Sunday the president-elect planned to review President George W. Bush’s executive orders on such things as stem cell research and domestic drilling for oil and natural gas. China unveiled a $586 billion stimulus package aimed at inoculating the world’s fourth-largest economy against the global financial crisis.
In 2011, after 46 seasons as Penn State’s head football coach and a record 409 victories, Joe Paterno was fired along with the university president, Graham Spanier, over their handling of child sex abuse allegations against former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.