ON THIS DAY NOVEMBER 8
ON THIS DAY NOVEMBER 8
(SUBS/NEDS: FOR PLANNING PURPOSES ONLY — NOT FOR BROADCAST/PUBLICATION)
HISTORIC, COMMEMORATIVE, AND INTERESTING EVENTS
1291 – The Republic of Venice enacts a law confining most of Venice’s glassmaking industry to the “island of Murano”.
1519 – Hernán Cortés enters Tenochtitlán and Aztec ruler Moctezuma welcomes him with a great celebration.
1602 – The Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford is opened to the public.
1605 – Robert Catesby, ringleader of the Gunpowder Plotters, is killed.
1892 – The New Orleans general strike begins, uniting black and white American trade unionists in a successful four-day general strike action for the first time.
1895 – While experimenting with electricity, Wilhelm Röntgen discovers the X-ray.
1901 – Gospel riots: Bloody clashes take place in Athens following the translation of the Gospels into demotic Greek.
1917 – The first Council of People’s Commissars is formed, including Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.
1923 – Beer Hall Putsch: In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government.
1933 – Great Depression: New Deal: US President Franklin D Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, an organization designed to create jobs for more than 4 million unemployed.
1936 – Spanish Civil War: Francoist troops fail in their effort to capture Madrid, but begin the 3-year Siege of Madrid afterwards.
1939 – In Munich, Adolf Hitler narrowly escapes the assassination attempt of Georg Elser while celebrating the 16th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.
1940 – Greco-Italian War: The Italian invasion of Greece fails as outnumbered Greek units repulse the Italians in the Battle of Elaia–Kalamas.
1942 – World War II: French Resistance coup in Algiers, in which 400 civilian French patriots neutralise Vichyist XIXth Army Corps after 15 hours of fighting, and arrest several Vichyist generals, allowing the immediate success of Operation Torch in Algiers.
1950 – Korean War: United States Air Force Lt Russell J Brown, while piloting an F-80 Shooting Star, shoots down two North Korean MiG-15s in the first jet aircraft-to-jet aircraft dogfight in history.
1957 – Pan Am Flight 7 disappears between San Francisco and Honolulu. Wreckage and bodies are discovered a week later.
1960 – John F Kennedy is elected as the 35th President of the United States, defeating incumbent Vice President Richard Nixon, who would later be elected president in 1968 and 1972.
1965 – The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 is given Royal Assent, formally abolishing the death penalty in the United Kingdom for almost all crimes.
1966 – Former Massachusetts Attorney General Edward Brooke becomes the first African American elected to the United States Senate since Reconstruction.
1968 – The Vienna Convention on Road Traffic is signed to facilitate international road traffic and to increase road safety by standardising the uniform traffic rules among the signatories.
1973 – The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper outlet along with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay US$2.9 million.
1977 – Manolis Andronikos, a Greek archaeologist and professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, discovers the tomb of Philip II of Macedon at Vergina.
1983 – TAAG Angola Airlines Flight 462 crashes after takeoff from Lubango Airport killing all 130 people on board. UNITA claims to have shot down the aircraft, though this is disputed.
1987 – Remembrance Day bombing: A Provisional IRA bomb explodes in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland during a ceremony honouring those who had died in wars involving British forces. Twelve people are killed and sixty-three wounded.
1999 – Bruce Miller is killed at his junkyard near Flint, Michigan. His wife Sharee Miller, who convinced her online lover Jerry Cassaday to kill him (before later killing himself) was convicted of the crime, in what became the world’s first Internet murder.
2002 – Iraq disarmament crisis: UN Security Council Resolution 1441: The United Nations Security Council unanimously approves a resolution on Iraq, forcing Saddam Hussein to disarm or face “serious consequences”.
2004 – Iraq War: More than 10,000 US troops and a small number of Iraqi army units participate in a siege on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.
2011 – The potentially hazardous asteroid 2005 YU55 passes 0.85 lunar distances from Earth (about 324,600 kilometres or 201,700 miles), the closest known approach by an asteroid of its brightness since 2010 XC15 in 1976.
2013 – Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, strikes the Visayas region of the Philippines; the storm left at least 6,340 people dead with over 1,000 still missing, and caused $2.86 billion (2013 USD) in damage.
2016 – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly announces the withdrawal of ₹500 and ₹1000 denomination banknotes.
BIRTHS: Edmond Halley, English astronomer and mathematician (1656), Sarah Fielding, English author (1710), Bram Stoker, Irish novelist and critic, created Count Dracula (1847), Herbert Austin, 1st Baron Austin, English businessman, founded the Austin Motor Company (1866), Hermann Rorschach, Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst (1884), Christiaan Barnard, South African surgeon and academic (1922), Patti Page, American singer and actress (1927), Jim Redman, English-Rhodesian motorcycle racer (1931), Alain Delon, French-Swiss actor, producer, screenwriter (1935), Gordon Ramsay, British chef, restaurateur, and television host/personality (1966), Penelope Heyns, South African swimmer (1974).
DEATHS: Melozzo da Forlì, Italian painter (1494), Robert Catesby, English conspirator, leader of the Gunpowder Plot (1605), John Milton, English poet and philosopher (1674), Victor Borisov-Musatov, Russian painter (1905), Jean Marais, French actor and director (1998), John Hunt, Baron Hunt, English colonel, mountaineer, and academic (1998), Vitaly Ginzburg, Russian physicist and astrophysicist, Nobel Prize laureate (2009).
– African News Agency (ANA)