On this day

1900 – Battle of Leliefontein, a battle during which the Royal Canadian Dragoons win three Victoria Crosses.

1912 – The Deutsche Opernhaus (now Deutsche Oper Berlin) opens in the Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenburg, with a production of Beethoven's Fidelio.

1929 – In New York City, the Museum of Modern Art opens to the public.

1941 – World War II: Soviet hospital ship Armenia is sunk by German planes while evacuating refugees and wounded military and staff of several Crimean hospitals. It is estimated that over 5,000 people died in the sinking.

1944 – Franklin D. Roosevelt elected for a record fourth term as President of the United States of America.

1994 – WXYC, the student radio station of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, provides the world's first internet radio broadcast.

1996 – NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor.

2000 – Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected to the United States Senate, becoming the first former First Lady to win public office in the United States, although actually she still was the First Lady.

2002 – Iran bans advertising of United States products.

2004 – War in Iraq: The interim government of Iraq calls for a 60-day "state of emergency" as U.S. forces storm the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah (Operation Phantom Fury).

2007 – Jokela school shooting in Tuusula, Finland, resulting in the death of nine people.

1602 – The Bodleian Library at Oxford University is opened to the public.

1605 – Robert Catesby, ringleader of the Gunpowder Plotters, is killed.

1745 – Charles Edward Stuart invades England with an army of 6000 that would later participate in the Battle of Culloden.

1923 – Beer Hall Putsch: In Munich, Adolf Hitler leads the Nazis in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government.

1939 – Venlo Incident: Two British agents of SIS are captured by the Germans.

1939 – In Munich, Adolf Hitler narrowly escapes the assassination attempt of Georg Elser while celebrating the 16th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch.

1942 – World War II: Operation Torch – United States and United Kingdom forces land in French North Africa.

1957 – Operation Grapple X, Round C1: Britain conducts its first successful hydrogen bomb test over Kiritimati in the Pacific.

1965 – The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965 is given Royal Assent, formally abolishing the death penalty in the United Kingdom.

1973 – The right ear of John Paul Getty III is delivered to a newspaper together with a ransom note, convincing his father to pay 2.9 million USD.

1977 – Manolis Andronikos, a Greek archaeologist and professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, discovers the tomb of Philip II of Macedon at Vergina.

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".

2011 – The potentially hazardous asteroid 2005 YU55 passed 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.

1494 – The Family de' Medici are expelled from Florence.

1729 – Spain, France and Great Britain sign the Treaty of Seville.

1867 – Tokugawa Shogunate hands power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration.

1887 – The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

1888 – Jack the Ripper kills Mary Jane Kelly, his last known victim.

1907 – The Cullinan Diamond is presented to King Edward VII on his birthday.

1918 – Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany abdicates after the German Revolution, and Germany is proclaimed a Republic.

1953 – Cambodia becomes independent from France.

1967 – Apollo program: NASA launches the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft atop the first Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida.

1967 – First issue of Rolling Stone Magazine is published.

1979 – Nuclear false alarm: the NORAD computers and the Alternate National Military Command Center in Fort Ritchie, Maryland detected purported massive Soviet nuclear strike. After reviewing the raw data from satellites and checking the early warning radars, the alert is cancelled.

1989 – Cold War: Fall of the Berlin Wall. Communist-controlled East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall allowing its citizens to travel to West Germany. This key event led to the eventual reunification of East and West Germany, and fall of communism in eastern Europe including Russia.

1994 – The chemical element Darmstadtium is discovered.

2005 – The Venus Express mission of the European Space Agency is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

1918 – The Western Union Cable Office in North Sydney, Nova Scotia receives a top-secret coded message from Europe (that would be sent to Ottawa, Ontario and Washington, DC) that said on November 11, 1918 all fighting would cease on land, sea and in the air.

1940 – The Vrancea earthquake strikes Romania killing an estimated 1,000 and injuring approximately 4,000 more.

1944 – The ammunition ship USS Mount Hood explodes at Seeadler Harbour, Manus, Admiralty Islands, killing at least 432 and wounding 371.

1958 – The Hope Diamond is donated to the Smithsonian Institution by New York diamond merchant Harry Winston.

1970 – The Soviet Lunar probe Lunokhod 1 is launched.

1975 – United Nations Resolution 3379: United Nations General Assembly approves a resolution equating Zionism with racism (the resolution is repealed in December 1991 by Resolution 4686).

1979 – A 106-car Canadian Pacific freight train carrying explosive and poisonous chemicals from Windsor, Ontario, Canada derails in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada just west of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, causing a massive explosion and the largest peacetime evacuation in Canadian history and one of the largest in North American history.

1995 – In Nigeria, playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with eight others from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop), are hanged by government forces.

1869 – The Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act is enacted in Australia, giving the government control of indigenous people's wages, their terms of employment, where they could live, and of their children, effectively leading to the Stolen Generations.

1880 – Australian bushranger Ned Kelly is hanged at Melbourne Gaol.

1918 – World War I: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne, France. The fighting officially ends at 11:00 a.m., (the eleventh hour in the eleventh month on the eleventh day) and this is annually honoured with a two-minute silence. The war officially ends on the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on 28th June, 1919.

1921 – The Tomb of the Unknowns is dedicated by US President Warren G. Harding at Arlington National Cemetery.

1926 – U.S. Route 66 is established.

1930 – Patent number US1781541 is awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator.

1934 – The Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, Australia is opened.

1940 – World War II: Battle of Taranto – The Royal Navy launches the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian fleet at Taranto.

1966 – NASA launches Gemini 12.

1992 – The General Synod of the Church of England votes to allow women to become priests.

1999 – The House of Lords Act is given Royal Assent, restricting membership of the British House of Lords by virtue of a hereditary peerage.

2000 – Kaprun disaster: 155 skiers and snowboarders die when a cable car catches fire in an alpine tunnel in Kaprun, Austria.

2004 – New Zealand Tomb of the Unknown Warrior is dedicated at the National War Memorial, Wellington.

2004 – The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) confirms the death of Yasser Arafat from unidentified causes. Mahmoud Abbas is elected chairman of the PLO minutes later.

2006 – Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II unveils the New Zealand War Memorial in London, United Kingdom, commemorating the loss of soldiers from the New Zealand Army and the British Army.

1905 – Norway holds a referendum in favor of monarchy over republic.

1933 – Hugh Gray takes the first known photos of the Loch Ness Monster.

1944 – World War II: The Royal Air Force launches 29 Avro Lancaster bombers in one of the most successful precision bombing attacks of war and sinks the German battleship Tirpitz, with 12,000 lb Tallboy bombs off Tromsø, Norway.

1948 – In Tokyo, an international war crimes tribunal sentences seven Japanese military and government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, to death for their roles in World War II.

1970 – The Oregon Highway Division attempts to destroy a rotting beached Sperm whale with explosives, leading to the now infamous "exploding whale" incident.

1970 – The 1970 Bhola cyclone makes landfall on the coast of East Pakistan becoming the deadliest tropical cyclone in history.

1980 – The NASA space probe Voyager I makes its closest approach to Saturn and takes the first images of its rings.

1981 – Space Shuttle program: mission STS-2, utilizing the Space Shuttle Columbia, marks the first time a manned spacecraft is launched into space twice.

1990 – Crown Prince Akihito is formally installed as Emperor Akihito of Japan, becoming the 125th Japanese monarch.

1999 – The Düzce earthquake strikes Turkey with a magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter scale.

2003 – Shanghai Transrapid claims a new world speed record (501 kilometres per hour (311 mph)) for commercial railway systems, which remains the fastest for unmodified commercial rail vehicles.

(12-11-2012 15:32 )skully Wrote:  1970 – The Oregon Highway Division attempts to destroy a rotting beached Sperm whale with explosives, leading to the now infamous "exploding whale" incident.

Until resurrected by the coming of the internet, this story was believed to be an urban legend.

In 1970 the beaches of Oregon in the North-West of the USA came under the jurisdiction not of the Parks or Forestries department, but the local Highway Patrol. So when a 45ft, 8 ton whale washed up dead on the beach at Florence they were at a loss as to what to do. It was the biggest whale to wash up for decades and far too big to dispose of by normal means so they decided to blow it up and break it into more manageable pieces.

The advice given by a local former US Army explosives expert, Walter Umerhofer, was that they would need about 20 sticks of dynamite. Instead, they used 20 CASES - more than half a ton - with the result that when the whale was blown up huge chunks of blubber were flung anything up to a quarter of a mile.

Fortunately nobody was hurt, but many houses and vehicles were damaged and one car was totally destroyed....it was the car owned by Umerhofer!



The original local TV news report is poor quality but well worth a watch!

1002 – English king Æthelred II orders the killing of all Danes in England, known today as the St. Brice's Day massacre.

1927 – The Holland Tunnel opens to traffic as the first Hudson River vehicle tunnel linking New Jersey to New York City.

1941 – World War II: The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal is torpedoed by U-81], sinking the following day.

1947 – The Soviet Union completes development of the AK-47, one of the first proper assault rifles.

1956 – The United States Supreme Court declares Alabama laws requiring segregated buses illegal, thus ending the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1970 – Bhola cyclone: A 150-mph tropical cyclone hits the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 500,000 people in one night. This is regarded as the 20th century's worst natural disaster.

1985 – The volcano Nevado del Ruiz erupts and melts a glacier, causing a lahar (volcanic mudslide) that buries Armero, Colombia, killing approximately 23,000 people.

1994 – In a referendum voters in Sweden decide to join the European Union.

2001 – War on Terrorism: In the first such act since World War II, US President George W. Bush signs an executive order allowing military tribunals against foreigners suspected of connections to terrorist acts or planned acts on the United States.

2002 – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq agrees to the terms of the UN Security Council Resolution 1441.

2002 – The oil tanker Prestige sinks off the Galician coast and causes a huge oil spill.

1770 – James Bruce discovers what he believes to be the source of the Nile.

1889 – Pioneering female journalist Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochrane) begins a successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days. She completes the trip in seventy-two days.

1910 – Aviator Eugene Burton Ely performs the first take off from a ship in Hampton Roads, Virginia. He took off from a makeshift deck on the USS Birmingham in a Curtiss pusher.

1940 – World War II: In England, the city of Coventry is heavily bombed by German Luftwaffe bombers. Coventry Cathedral is almost completely destroyed.

1957 – The Apalachin Meeting outside Binghamton, New York is raided by law enforcement, and many high level Mafia figures are arrested.

1969 – Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 12, the second crewed mission to the surface of the Moon.

1970 – The Soviet Union enters ICAO, making Russian the fourth official language of organization.

1971 – Mariner 9 enters orbit around Mars

1979 – Iran hostage crisis: US President Jimmy Carter issues Executive order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States in response to the hostage crisis.

1990 – After German reunification, the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland sign a treaty confirming the Oder–Neisse line as the border between Germany and Poland.

1991 – In Royal Oak, Michigan, a fired United States Postal Service employee goes on a shooting rampage, killing four and wounding five before committing suicide.

2003 – Astronomers Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz discover 90377 Sedna, a Trans-Neptunian object.

1859 – The first modern revival of the Olympic Games takes place in Athens, Greece.

1920 – First assembly of the League of Nations is held in Geneva.

1942 – World War II: The Battle of Guadalcanal ends in a decisive Allied victory.

1943 – Holocaust: German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies are to be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps". (see Porajmos)

1966 – Gemini program: Gemini 12 completes the program's final mission, when it splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean.

1967 – The only fatality of the X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams loses control of his aircraft which is destroyed mid-air over the Mojave Desert.

1971 – Intel releases world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004.

1987 – In Braşov, Romania, workers rebel against the communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu.

1988 – In the Soviet Union, the unmanned Shuttle Buran makes its only space flight.

1988 – The first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, is launched in the Netherlands.

1990 – Space Shuttle program: Space Shuttle Atlantis launches with flight STS-38.

2000 – Jharkhand state comes into existence in India.