1778 – In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui.
1863 – President Abraham Lincoln proclaims November 26 as a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated annually on the final Thursday of November (since 1941, on the fourth Thursday).
1944 – World War II: A German V-2 rocket hits a Woolworth's shop on New Cross High Street, United Kingdom, killing 168 shoppers.
1944 – World War II: Germany begins V-1 and V-2 attacks on Antwerp, Belgium.
1970 – In Basse-Terre, Guadeloupe, 1.5 inches (38.1 mm) of rain fall in a minute, the heaviest rainfall ever recorded.
1977 – 'Vrillon', claiming to be the representative of the 'Ashtar Galactic Command', takes over Britain's Southern Television for six minutes at 5:12 pm.
1983 – Brink's-MAT robbery: In London, 6,800 gold bars worth nearly £26 million are stolen from the Brink's-MAT vault at Heathrow Airport.
2003 – Concorde makes its final flight, over Bristol, England.
2004 – Ruzhou School massacre: a man stabs and kills eight people and seriously wounds another four in a school dormitory in Ruzhou, China.
2004 – A Male Po'ouli (Black-faced honeycreeper) dies of Avian malaria in the Maui Bird Conservation Center in Olinda, Hawaii before it could breed, making the species in all probability extinct.
2011 – 2011 NATO attack in Pakistan: NATO forces in Afghanistan attack a Pakistani checkpost in a friendly fire incident, killing 24 soldiers and wounding 13 others.
1975: TV presenter Ross McWhirter shot dead
Guinness Book of Records co-founder and editor Ross McWhirter has been shot dead outside his North London home.
Mr McWhirter was hit at close range in the head and chest at 1845 GMT. He was taken to a local hospital, but died soon after being admitted.
The well-known author and BBC Record Breakers presenter recently offered a reward of £50,000 for information leading to the arrest of IRA bombers.
Scotland Yard said no group had yet claimed to be behind the attack.
The two gunmen are thought to have waited in the garden of the couple's Enfield house for an hour while Mr McWhirter was in the house preparing to go out to the theatre.
Shots
When Rosemary McWhirter arrived home, she got out of her blue Ford Granada and was approached by two men holding pistols.
She ran into the house as her husband came to the front door and seconds later heard two shots.
The killers then used her car to escape. Police later found the car abandoned a few miles away in Tottenham.
Outspoken critic of the IRA
Mrs McWhirter and her two sons, Iain and James, were taken to a secret address soon after the murder, where they are being guarded around the clock.
Mr McWhirter edited the Guinness Book of Records with his twin brother, Norris, and also worked closely with Guinness Director David Hoy, who said the outspoken critic of the IRA was aware he could be in danger.
"He took normal precautions recommended by the police and always looked under his Mercedes - he also varied his routes home," he said.
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Ross McWhirter was an outspoken critic of the IRA
Ross McWhirter presenter and IRA critic is assassinated
In Context
The IRA gang who killed Ross McWhirter and carried out dozens of other attacks in London throughout 1975 was apprehended two weeks later.
Martin O'Connell, Edward Butler, Harry Duggan and Hugh Doherty exchanged shots with police in central London on 6 December and escaped to a flat in Balcombe Street, taking two hostages.
The four men were arrested after a six-day siege, charged with 10 murders and 20 bombings and jailed for life in 1977.
They were freed in April 1999 under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement - the multi-party peace deal for Northern Ireland.
Norris McWhirter continued to edit the Guinness Book of Records until 1985 and presented BBC's Record Breakers until 1994. He died in April 2004.
Stories From 27 Nov
1975: TV presenter Ross McWhirter shot dead
1967: De Gaulle says 'non' to Britain - again
2000: Schoolboy Damilola Taylor dies in stabbing
1990: Tories choose Major for Number 10
1961: RAF flies aid to flood-stricken Somalia
1985: Kinnock moves against Militant
1727 – The foundation stone to the Jerusalem's Church in Berlin is laid.
1830 – St. Catherine Laboure experiences a vision of the Blessed Virgin standing on a globe, crushing a serpent with her feet, and emanating rays of light from her hands.
1886 – German judge Emil Hartwich sustains fatal injuries in a duel, which would become the background for "Effi Briest", a classic work of German literature.
1895 – At the Swedish-Norwegian Club in Paris, Alfred Nobel signs his last will and testament, setting aside his estate to establish the Nobel Prize after he dies.
1934 – Bank robber Baby Face Nelson dies in a shoot-out with the FBI.
1971 – The Soviet space program's Mars 2 orbiter releases a descent module. It malfunctions and crashes, but it is the first man-made object to reach the surface of Mars.
1978 – In San Francisco, California, city mayor George Moscone and openly gay city supervisor Harvey Milk are assassinated by former supervisor Dan White.
1978 – The Kurdish party PKK is founded in the city of Riha (Urfa) in Turkey.
1991 – The United Nations Security Council adopts Security Council Resolution 721, leading the way to the establishment of peacekeeping operations in Yugoslavia.
1999 – The left-wing Labour Party takes control of the New Zealand government with leader Helen Clark becoming the first elected female Prime Minister in New Zealand's history.
28th November, 1987 - South African Airways Flight 295
One of the costliest disasters in airline history, South African Airways Flight 295 suffered a massive in-flight fire believed to be in the cargo area and crashed in to the Indian Ocean just east of Mauritius. Everyone on board (159 people) died and the salvage operation to recover the fight recorders extended to a depth of 4,900 metres - making it the deepest ever salvage operation in history.
The Flight
South African Airways Flight 295 was a Boeing 747-244B Combi, named The Helderberg (registration ZS-SAS; serial number 22171) that was delivered to the airline in 1980. The aircraft took off on 27 November 1987 from Chiang Kai Shek International Airport, on a flight to Johannesburg via Mauritius. Dawie Uys served as the captain of the flight.
The Boeing 747-244B Combi is a variant of the aircraft that permits the mixing of passengers and airfreight on the main deck according to load factors on any given route and Class B cargo compartment regulations. Flight 295 had 140 passengers and six pallets of cargo on the main deck. The master waybills stated that 47,000 kilograms (100,000 lb) of baggage and cargo were loaded on the plane. A Taiwanese customs official performed a surprise inspection of some of the cargo; he did not find any cargo that could be characterized as suspicious.
Thirty-four minutes after departure, the flight contacted Hong Kong air traffic control to obtain clearance from waypoint ELATO (22°19′N 117°30′E) to ISBAN. A position report was made over ELATO at 15:03:25, followed by waypoints SUNEK at 15:53:52, ADMARK at 16:09:54 and SUKAR (12°22′N 110°54′E) at 16:34:47. The aircraft made a routine report to the South African Airways base at Jan Smuts (ZUR) at 15:55:18.
At some point during the flight, a fire developed in the cargo section on the main deck; the fire was probably not extinguished before impact. The 'smoke evacuation' checklist calls for the aircraft to be depressurised, and for two of the cabin doors to be opened. No evidence exists that the checklist was followed, or the doors opened. A crew member might have gone into the cargo hold to try to fight the fire. A charged fire extinguisher was later recovered from the wreckage on which investigators found molten metal.
Crash Scene
Helderberg's last report of its position to Mauritian air traffic control was incorrectly judged to have been relative to the airport, rather than the next waypoint. This caused search & rescue teams to concentrate their efforts too close to Mauritius.
The U.S. navy sent P-3 Orion aircraft from Diego Garcia (a nearby coral reef) and these were soon joined by units from the French navy to lead the operation. It wasn't until 12 hours after the crash that the first debris was found on the ocean surface and this had drifted a considerable distance from the impact zone. Then came the horrific discovery of an oil slick in the water - within it 8 bodies showing signs of extreme trauma. The South African navy sent the SAS Tafelberg and SAS Jim Fouche to assist, with the ocean tugs John Ross and Wolraad Woltemade also attending the scene, along with the Department of Environment Affairs vessels RS Africana and RS Sonne.
Investigation
Rennie Van Zyl, the head South African investigator, examined three wristwatches from the baggage recovered from the surface; two of the watches were still running according to Taiwan time. Van Zyl deduced the approximate time of impact from the stopped watch. The aircraft crashed at 00:07:00, around three minutes after the last communication with air traffic control. Immediately after the crash, the press and public opinion suspected that terrorism brought down the Helderberg. South African Airways was perceived as representing the South African apartheid government as the airline was government-owned, and airline offices around the world had been vandalized. Experts searched for indicators of an explosion on the initial pieces of wreckage discovered, such as surface pitting, impact cavities and spatter cavities caused by white hot fragments from explosive devices that strike and melt metal alloys found in aircraft structures. Experts found none of this evidence. The investigators drew blood samples from bodies and found that the bodies had soot in their tracheae.
The South Africans mounted an underwater search, named Operation Resolve, to try to locate the wreckage. The pingers attached to the flight data recorders were not designed for deep ocean use; nevertheless, a two month long sonar search for the pingers was carried out before the effort was abandoned on 8 January 1988 when the pingers were known to have stopped transmitting. Steadfast Oceaneering, a specialist deep ocean recovery company in the USA, was contracted at great expense to find the site and recover the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder. The search area is described as being comparable in size to that of the RMS Titanic, with the water at 5,000 metres (16,000 ft) being considerably deeper than any previously successful salvage operation. However against all odds, the wreckage was found within two days of the sonar search of the area commencing.
Three debris fields were found: 19°10′30″S 59°38′0″E, 19°9′53″S 59°38′32″E and 19°9′15″S 59°37′25″E. These locations are 1.5, 2.3 and 2.5 km apart, which suggested that the fuselage broke up before impact. On 6 January 1989, the cockpit voice recorder was salvaged successfully from a record depth of 4,900 metres (16,100 ft) by the remotely operated vehicle Gemini, but the flight data recorder was never found.
Van Zyl took the voice recorder to the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington, DC, to show his goodwill and to ensure neutral observers. Van Zyl believes that if he kept the CVR in South Africa he could have been accused of covering up the truth. At the NTSB, Van Zyl felt frustration that the degraded CVR, which had been in the deep ocean for fourteen months, did not initially yield any useful information. Around 28 minutes into the recording the CVR indicated that the fire alarm sounded. Fourteen seconds after the fire alarm, the circuit breakers began to pop. Investigators believe that around 80 circuit breakers failed. The CVR cable failed 81 seconds after the alarm. The recording revealed the extent of the fire.
Van Zyl discovered that the front-right pallet was the "seat" of the fire. The manifest said that pallet mostly comprised computers in polystyrene packaging. The investigators said that the localized fire likely came in contact with the packaging and produced gases that accumulated near the ceiling. They also said that gases ignited into a flash fire that affected the entire cargo hold. The cargo fire of Flight 295 did not burn lower than one meter above the cargo floor. The walls and ceiling of the cargo hold received severe fire damage. Frustratingly, Van Zyl ended his investigation without discovering why the fire started.
Margo commission
An official commission of inquiry was chaired by Judge Cecil Margo, with cooperation from the aircraft manufacturer, Boeing, and the United States National Transportation Safety Board.
The official report determined that while the Helderberg was over the Indian Ocean, a fire had occurred in the main deck cargo hold, originating in the front right-hand cargo pallet. Aircraft parts recovered from the ocean floor showed fire damage in temperatures over 300 °C (572 °F); tests showed that temperatures of 600 °C (1,112 °F) would have been required to melt a carbon-fibre tennis racket recovered from the crash site, leading Boeing specialist Fred Bereswill to speculate that an oxidant such as ammonium perchlorate was present. The reason for the loss was not specified, but two possibilities were detailed in the official report: Firstly, that the crew became incapacitated due to smoke penetration into the cockpit. Secondly, that the fire weakened the structure and the tail separated leading to impact with the ocean. The commission concluded that it was impossible to allocate blame to anyone for the fire. The manufacturer is quoted in the report as having "contested" any scenario that involved a break-up of the aircraft and thus the commission did no more than mention the two possible scenarios in its final report as incidental to the primary cause of the accident.
The commission determined that the primary cause of the aircraft's loss was that fire detection and suppression facilities in class B cargo bays (the type used aboard the 747-200 Combi) were inadequate. The accident alerted aviation authorities worldwide to the fact that the regulations regarding class B bays had lagged far behind the growth in capacity of such cargo bays. The exact source of ignition was never determined, but the report concluded that sufficient evidence was found to confirm that the fire had burned for some time and that it might have caused structural damage.
Conspiracy?
The lack of concrete proof of the cause of the aircraft's loss has fueled a number of conspiracy theories:-
- the South African Defence Force was smuggling the substance red mercury on board for their atomic bomb project;
- Reports from the Project Coast investigation suggested there was a weighbill showing that 300 grams of highly volatile activated carbon had been placed on board the Helderberg, leading to speculation that this substance had caused the fire;
- that the airline had admitted to using its passenger jets to carry cargo for Armscor (a South African arms agency), leading to an ignition of missile rocket fuel. Armscor immediately filed a complaint against the newspaper, Weekend Star, for publishing these allegations.
A television show, Carte Blanche, broadcast a programme featuring an investigation to check the validity of these theories.
David Klatzow's theory
Dr David Klatzow was one of the forensic scientists who, on his own admission, was retained to work on the case by Boeing's counsel around the time of the official enquiry. He subsequently criticized the Margo commission for spending an inordinate amount of time looking into "relatively irrelevant issues" and that the commission ignored the most important question: what was the source of the fire and who had been responsible for loading it onto the aircraft. Klatzow believes that there are certain irregularities in parts of the commission transcript that indicate that something on the CVR transcript had to be concealed.
Klatzow put forward a theory that the fire likely involved substances that would not normally be carried on a passenger aircraft and that the fire was not likely a wood, cardboard, or plastic fire. South Africa was under an arms embargo at the time; the South African government therefore had to buy arms clandestinely. His theory postulates that the South African government placed a rocket system in the cargo hold, and that vibration caused unstable ammonium perchlorate to ignite.
Klatzow contends that conversation of the crew suggests that the fire started above the South China Sea, shortly after takeoff; he believes that this indicates that the voice recorder was not working for a long period of the flight or that the crew turned it off. If this is the case, he says it is then likely that an unknown number of the passengers would have already died from smoke inhalation from the first fire. Klatzow believes that theory is consistent with reports that find most of the passengers were in the first class area of the plane at the front as smoke from the back of the plane forced them to move forward. The captain did not land the aircraft directly after the fire, Klatzow argues, because if he had he would have been arrested for endangering the lives of his passengers and it would have caused a major problem for South Africa, costing the country and SAA 400 million Rands. Klatzow argues that the captain, who was also a reservist in the South African Air Force, would therefore have been ordered to carry on to South Africa in hopes of making it there before the aircraft's structural integrity gave in. These points have been refuted by others.
On 20 July 2011, retired SAA captain Clair Fichardt announced that he had made a statement in connection with the missing Jan Smuts air traffic control tapes, after he was persuaded to do so by Klatzow. Fichardt claimed that captain James Deale admitted to handing the tapes to captain Mickey Mitchell, who was chief pilot at the Johannesburg control centre on the night of the crash. Deale would further have stated that Gert van der Veer, head of SAA, and lawyer Ardie Malherbe were present during the transfer of the tapes. Earlier, during the TRC hearings, Klatzow had cross-examined Van der Veer, Mitchell and Vernon Nadel, the Operations Officer who was on duty.
Post-apartheid investigation
In 1996, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), established by the post-apartheid South African Government, investigated apartheid era atrocities. In particular, the Helderberg accident was investigated to determine if there was any truth behind the conspiracy theories that the Margo Commission had covered up or missed any evidence that might implicate the previous government. David Klatzow was invited by the TRC to explain his theories and cross-examine witnesses. Unlike most other hearings of the TRC, the hearing into SA 295 was conducted in camera, and without any representation from the Civil Aviation Authority. Klatzow considered the CAA untrustworthy because it had participated in the official enquiry, which he considered flawed. A number of key aspects of Klatzow's theory hinged on his criticism of the actions of Judge Margo during the official enquiry, yet Judge Margo was not summoned to answer any of the allegations made against him.
The commission concluded that nothing listed in the cargo manifest could have caused the fire. Following public pressure, the TRC records were released into the public domain in May 2000. Upon receiving the documents, Transport Minister Dullah Omar stated that the inquiry would be reopened if any fresh evidence was discovered.The police were tasked to investigate if there was any new evidence, and to make a recommendation to the minister. In October 2002, the minister announced that no new evidence had been found to justify re-opening the enquiry.
At the time, South Africa was very much a country in turmoil - divided, heavily sanctioned and largely hated by many other states in the world because of its racist policies. Thus the conspiracy theories about apartheid governments covering up the accident and transportation of illegal arms units continue to rage. It remains one of the most disputed air disasters in history.
A documentary-drama programme titled 'Mayday' details the crash in one of it's episodes. The episode was titled 'Fanning The Flames'. I've found the episode on YouTube, (it's long - 47 minutes).
1660 – At Gresham College, 12 men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray decide to found what is later known as the Royal Society.
1814 – The Times in London is for the first time printed by automatic, steam powered presses built by the German inventors Friedrich Koenig and Andreas Friedrich Bauer, signaling the beginning of the availability of newspapers to a mass audience.
1843 – Ka Lā Hui: Hawaiian Independence Day – The Kingdom of Hawaii is officially recognized by the United Kingdom and France as an independent nation.
1905 – Irish nationalist Arthur Griffith founds Sinn Féin as a political party with the main aim of establishing a dual monarchy in Ireland.
1907 – In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theater.
1909 – Sergei Rachmaninoff makes the debut performance of his Piano Concerto No. 3, considered to be one of the most technically challenging piano concertos in the standard classical repertoire.
1919 – Lady Astor is elected as a Member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. She is the first woman to sit in the House of Commons. (Countess Markievicz, the first to be elected, refused to sit.)
1925 – The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee as WSM Barn Dance.
1943 – World War II: Tehran Conference – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran to discuss war strategy.
1989 – Cold War: Velvet Revolution – In the face of protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announces it will give up its monopoly on political power.
2002 – Suicide bombers blow up an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya; their colleagues fail in their attempt to bring down Arkia Israel Airlines Flight 582 with surface-to-air-missiles.
1781 – The crew of the British slave ship Zong murders 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea to claim insurance.
1830 – November Uprising: An armed rebellion against Russia's rule in Poland begins.
1847 – Whitman Massacre: Missionaries Dr. Marcus Whitman, his wife Narcissa, and 15 others are killed by Cayuse and Umatilla Indians, causing the Cayuse War.
1947 – The Partition Plan: the United Nations General Assembly recommends the partition of Palestine.
1961 – Project Mercury: Mercury-Atlas 5 Mission – Enos, a chimpanzee, is launched into space. The spacecraft orbited the Earth twice and splashed-down off the coast of Puerto Rico.
1965 – The Canadian Space Agency launches the satellite Alouette 2.
1972 – Atari announces the release of Pong, the first commercially successful video game.
| 1955: Black woman challenges race law
A black woman has been arrested by police in Montgomery, Alabama, after refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white person.
Mrs Rosa Parks now faces a fine for breaking the segregation laws which say black Americans must vacate their seats if there are white passengers left standing.
It is not the first time Mrs Parks, who is a seamstress, has defied the law on segregation.
In 1943 she was thrown off a bus for refusing to get on via the back door, which was reserved for black passengers. She became known to other drivers who sometimes refused to let her on.
Today Mrs Parks left Mongomery Fair, the department store where she was employed doing repairs on men's clothing, as usual.
She said she was tired after work and suffered aches and pains in her shoulders, back and neck.
When she got on the bus she realised the driver was the same man, James Blake, who had thrown her off twelve years before.
As more white people got on and the seats filled up, he asked her to give up her seat and she refused.
He threatened to call the police and she told him to go ahead.
She was subsequently arrested and charged with violating segregation law.
She will now appear in court on Monday 5 December.
Mrs Parks is a youth leader of the local branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) and her husband, Raymond, a barber, has taken part in voter registration drives.
Segregation laws
Between them the couple have worked for many years to improve the lot of black Americans in the southern United States where rigid segregation laws have been in force since the end of the Civil War in 1865.
Last year a group of professional black woman in Montgomery, the Women's Political Council, protested to the mayor about segregation on the buses, warning him they were planning a boycott.
The NAACP has also tried to challenge the laws on segregation in the courts and Mrs Parks has been involved in raising money to defend a 15-year-old student, Claudette Colvin, who was removed from a bus in March of this year for refusing to give up her seat to a white man.
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Rosa Parks's refusal to give up her seat on the bus provoked a boycott
In Context
Five days later, thousands of black citizens boycotted the buses in Alabama - to mark the day Mrs Parks was due in court. She was fined $10 (the equivalent of about $70 in 2003), plus $4 costs.
She challenged the verdict and the NAACP decided to use her case as a test against city and state segregation laws.
Later that same evening, the young preacher Martin Luther King addressed a crowd of several thousand at Holt Street Baptist Church and called for the boycott to continue.
Nearly all Montgomery's 40,000 black citizens took part in the bus boycott, which lasted for 381 days.
On 20 December the Supreme court upheld the decision of a lower court to end segregation on Alabama's buses.
Mrs Parks was sacked from her job and in 1957 left Montgomery for Detroit following harassment. She later became a special assistant to Democratic congressman John Conyers until her retirement in 1988.
She died in October 2005 - an icon for the civil rights movement - almost exactly 50 years after her famous bus boycott began.
Stories From 1 Dec
1955: Black woman challenges race law
1942: Beveridge lays welfare foundations
1990: Tunnel links UK and Europe
1943: Allies united after Tehran conference
1973: Israel's founding father dies
1986: Surprise inquiry into Guinness affairs
1965: Sweeping changes to British farming
1867 – At Tremont Temple in Boston, British author Charles Dickens gives his first public reading in the United States.
1908 – Child Emperor Pu Yi ascends the Chinese throne at the age of two.
1930 – Great Depression: US President Herbert Hoover goes before the United States Congress and asks for a US$150 million public works program to help generate jobs and stimulate the economy.
1854 – Eureka Stockade: In what is claimed by many to be the birth of Australian democracy, more than 20 gold miners at Ballarat, Victoria, Australia are killed by state troopers in an uprising over mining licences.
1904 – The Jovian moon - Himalia is discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at California's Lick Observatory.
1919 – After nearly 20 years of planning and construction, including two collapses causing 89 deaths, the Quebec Bridge opens to traffic.
1925 – World War I aftermath: The final Locarno Treaty is signed in London, establishing post-war territorial settlements.
1944 – Greek Civil War: Fighting breaks out in Athens between the ELAS and government forces supported by the British Army.
1959 – The current flag of Singapore is adopted, six months after Singapore became self-governing within the British Empire.
1967 – At Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, a transplant team headed by Christiaan Barnard carries out the first heart transplant on a human (53-year-old Louis Washkansky).
1973 – Pioneer program: Pioneer 10 sends back the first close-up images of Jupiter.
1976 – An assassination attempt is made on Bob Marley. He is shot twice, but plays a concert two days later.
1984 – Bhopal Disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, kills more than 3,800 people outright and injures 150,000–600,000 others (some 6,000 of whom would later die from their injuries) in one of the worst industrial disasters in history.
1992 – UN Security Council Resolution 794 is unanimously passed, approving a coalition of United Nations peacekeepers led by the United States to form UNITAF, with the task of establishing peace and ensuring that humanitarian aid is distributed in Somalia.
1997 – In Ottawa, Canada, representatives from 121 countries sign The Ottawa treaty prohibiting manufacture and deployment of anti-personnel landmines. The United States, People's Republic of China, and Russia do not sign the treaty, however.
1999 – NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere.