On this day

534 BC – Thespis of Icaria becomes the first recorded actor to portray a character onstage.

1499 – Pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck is hanged for reportedly attempting to escape from the Tower of London. He had invaded England in 1497, claiming to be the lost son of King Edward IV of England.

1852 - Britain's first four pillar boxes came into service on the Channel Island of Jersey. The idea comes from English novelist Anthony Trollope who worked for the General Post Office in London before becoming a writer.

1889 - The first jukebox goes into operation, in San Francisco at the Palais Royale Saloon.

1910 - American born Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen was hanged at Pentonville Prison in London after being found guilty of poisoning his wife and dismembering her body.

1963 - The first episode of the BBC TV serial Dr. Who was screened in Britain. The first Dr. Who was played by William Hartnell, and Ann Ford was his first female companion. The producer, Sydney Newman, thought the Daleks, designed by Ray Cusick, were ‘bug-eyed monsters’ and totally wrong for the series. Dr Who is the world's longest running science fiction drama.

1980 - Southern Italy was devastated by earthquakes, which killed nearly 5000 people.

2005 – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is elected president of Liberia and becomes the first woman to lead an African country.

(22-11-2011 13:42 )skully Wrote:  1963 – In Dallas, Texas, US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John B. Connally is seriously wounded. Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald is later captured and charged with the murder of both the President and police officer J. D. Tippit. Oswald is shot two days later by Jack Ruby while in police custody.

There's little that can be added to the story of JFK but one piece of trivia is the connection to the late Radio 1 DJ John Peel.

Peel was working in the States in the late 50s and early 60s doing a variety of jobs outside of music and even worked as a travelling insurance salesman at one time. He met and spoke to JFK during the 1960 election campaign when it passed through Texas. Peel was working in the area at the time of JFK's assassination and managed to get into the courtroom to see Lee Harvey Oswald being arraigned by passing himself off as a reporter from the Liverpool Echo. There is actual television footage still in existence showing Peel in the background at the hearing!

Peel then phoned in the story to the Echo and he says in his autobiography that he was "handsomely rewarded" for his ingenuity.

1642 - Dutch navigator Abel Tasman discovered Van Diemen's Land which he named after his captain; later it was renamed Tasmania.

1859 - British naturalist Charles Darwin published "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection" which explained his groundbreaking theory of evolution. The anniversary of which is sometimes called "Evolution Day"

1963 - Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, in the Dallas police station in a scene captured on live television.

1969 – Apollo program: The Apollo 12 command module splashes down safely in the Pacific Ocean, ending the second manned mission to the Moon.

1971 – During a severe thunderstorm over Washington state, a hijacker calling himself Dan Cooper (AKA D. B. Cooper) parachutes from a Northwest Orient Airlines plane with $200,000 in ransom money. He has never been found.

1972 - One of only eight 1933 pennies minted was auctioned at Sotherbys for £7,000.

1974 – Donald Johanson and Tom Gray discover the 40% complete Australopithecus afarensis skeleton, nicknamed "Lucy" (after The Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"), in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia's Afar Depression.

1977 - Greece announced the discovery of the tomb of King Philip II, father of Alexander the Great.

1991 - Freddie Mercury, English rock singer, died at the age of 45, just one day after he publicly announced that he was HIV positive.

1120 - Henry I's only legitimate son, William, was drowned when the ship (White Ship) carrying him from Normandy to England sank off Barfleur. This set up a conflict for the English crown between Stephen and Henry's daughter, Matilda.

1783 - The British evacuated New York City, their last military position of the Revolutionary War.

1835 - Birth of Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-born US industrialist and philanthropist who rose from telegraph boy to iron and steel multimillionaire. He devoted his vast wealth to libraries and universities including the Carnegie Hall in New York which opened in 1891.

1947 – Red Scare: The Hollywood Ten are blacklisted by Hollywood movie studios.

1952 - The play, The Mousetrap by Agatha Christie, opened in London, at the Ambassador's Theatre where it remained for 21 years. By Saturday 12th April 1958 it had become the longest running production of any kind in the history of British Theatre.

1969 - John Lennon returned his MBE in protest against British involvement in Biafra and British support of US involvement in Vietnam.

2005 - Former football star George Best died in hospital at the age of 59 after suffering multiple organ failure.

By one of those strange coincidences that life throws up, the former New York Times reporter Tom Wicker died yesterday at the age of 85. Wicker was the NYT reporter assigned to cover JFK's visit to Dallas and was in the motorcade when the assassination happened 48 years ago this week.

His detailed report filled two pages of the following day's edition of the newspaper and came to be recognised as the definitive media version of the day's events as known at the time. It made Wicker a household name in the States and is even more remarkable considering it was written and filed in an era where faxes and photocopiers were still two decades away, let alone mobiles, e-mail, blackberries and the internet.

http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/...se#article

1476 – Vlad III Dracula defeats Basarab Laiota with the help of Stephen the Great and Stephen V Bathory and becomes the ruler of Wallachia for the third time.

1778 – In the Hawaiian Islands, Captain James Cook becomes the first European to visit Maui.

1864 - Oxford professor Charles Dodgson presented a little girl called Alice Liddell with a story she had inspired him to write. It was called Alice in Wonderland and was written under the pen name of Lewis Carroll.

1922 - Howard Carter and the Earl of Carnarvon, Carter’s sponsor, became the first men to see inside the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun near Luxor since it was sealed 3,000 years previously. Having escaped detection by tomb robbers, it was complete with gold statues and a gold throne inlaid with gems.

1941 - President Franklin Roosevelt established the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. In 1789, President George Washington proclaimed Nov. 26 to be Thanksgiving Day. It was the first U.S. holiday by presidential proclamation. Abraham Lincoln changed it to the last Thursday in November and then Roosevelt moved it to the fourth Thursday in November.

1942 - The film Casablanca premiered in New York City as Allied Expeditionary Forces landed in North Africa.

1965 – In the Hammaguir launch facility in the Sahara Desert, France launches a Diamant-A rocket with its first satellite, Asterix-1 on board, becoming the third country to enter outer space.

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.

1992 - Queen Elizabeth II announced she would start paying taxes on her personal income and take her children off the national payroll.

1998 – Tony Blair becomes the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the Republic of Ireland's parliament.

2003 – Concorde makes its final flight, over Bristol, England.

1095 - Pope Urban II called for the first crusade to free the Holy land from Islamic occupation.

1582 - William Shakespeare, aged 18, married Anne Hathaway. They had a daughter in 1583 and a twin boy and girl in 1585. The boy died aged 11.

1934 – Bank robber Baby Face Nelson dies in a shoot-out with the FBI.

1944 - Between 3,500 and 4,000 tons of explosives stored in a cavern beneath Staffordshire detonated, killing 68 people and wiping out an entire farm. The explosion was heard over 100 miles away in London, and recorded as an earthquake in Geneva.

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.

1976 - The four millionth 'Mini' car left the production line.

1984 – Under the Brussels Agreement signed between the governments of the United Kingdom and Spain, the former agreed to enter into discussions with Spain over Gibraltar, including sovereignty.

2000 - A 10-year-old schoolboy, Damilola Taylor, died after being stabbed in the leg by a gang of hooded attackers near his home in Peckham, south London.

2001 – A hydrogen atmosphere is discovered on the extrasolar planet Osiris by the Hubble Space Telescope, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet.

1520 – After navigating through the South American strait, three ships under the command of Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan reach the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first Europeans to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific.

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.

1811 – Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, was premiered at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.

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.

1963 - Cape Canaveral, Florida, was renamed Cape Kennedy.

1964 - Mariner 4 was launched, the first successful mission to Mars, taking photographs and instrument readings.

1968 - Enid Blyton, English children's book author, died.

1994 – In Portage, Wisconsin, convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer is clubbed to death by an inmate in the Columbia Correctional Institution gymnasium.

1997 - A large majority of MPs in the House of Commons approved a Private Member's Bill, introduced by Labour MP Michael Foster, to ban fox hunting.

2006 - A modern spy drama unfolded following the death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London when traces of polonium-210 radiation were found at central London addresses.

1907 - British nurse Florence Nightingale, aged 87, was presented with the Order of Merit by Edward VII for her work tending the wounded during the Crimean War.

1922 – Howard Carter opens the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun to the public.

1929 - Commander Richard E. Byrd reported successfully flying over the South Pole. He had made headlines in 1926 by flying over the North Pole.

1947 - The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the partitioning of Palestine between Arabs and Jews and the creation of an independent Jewish state.

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.

1962 - Britain and France announced a joint agreement to design and build Concorde, the world's first supersonic airliner.

1972 – Nolan Bushnell (co-founder of Atari) releases Pong, the first commercially successful video game, in Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California.

1996 - Evidence suggesting that water might be present on the Moon was published in Science magazine.

2001 - George Harrison, former member of the Beatles died, aged 58.

2007 – A 7.4 magnitude earthquake occurs off the northern coast of Martinique. This affected the Eastern Caribbean as far north as Puerto Rico and as far south as Trinidad.

St Andrew’s Day. He is the patron saint of Scotland, also of golfers and fishermen.


1872 - The first football match between England and Scotland took place in Glasgow. It ended in a 0-0 draw.

1874 - Birth of Sir Winston Leonard Churchill, British statesman, journalist, historian and Nobel prize-winner for literature. He was a descendant of the great Duke of Marlborough, and was born born in Blenheim Palace. The great wartime Prime Minister, with his highly quotable speeches, was considered by many as ‘the greatest living Englishman’.

1886 – The Folies Bergère stages its first revue.

1913 - Charlie Chaplin made his film debut without the moustache and cane in 'Making a Living'.

1934 – The steam locomotive Flying Scotsman becomes the first to officially exceed 100mph.

1936 - London's famed Crystal Palace, built for the International Exhibition of 1851, was destroyed by fire.

1966 – Barbados becomes independent from the United Kingdom.

1968 - The Trade Descriptions Act came into force making it a crime for a trader to knowingly sell an item with a misleading label or description.

1982 – Michael Jackson's Thriller, the best-selling album of all time, is released.

1987 - At Christie's auctioneers in London, a painting by Edgar Degas, 'The Laundry Maids', was sold for £7.48 million.

1998 – Exxon and Mobil sign a $73.7 billion USD agreement to merge, thus creating Exxon-Mobil, the world's largest company.

1999 – British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems merge to form BAE Systems, Europe's largest defense contractor and the fourth largest aerospace firm in the world.

2005 – John Sentamu becomes the first black archbishop in the Church of England with his enthronement as the 97th Archbishop of York.