Today is Thursday, November 12, the 316th day of 2015. There are 49 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1554 – Britain’s Parliament re-establishes Roman Catholicism.
1603 – Sir Walter Raleigh’s high treason trial opens in Winchester, England.
1812 – Napoleon Bonaparte’s army reaches Russian city of Smolensk in retreat from Moscow.
1927 – Leon Trotsky is expelled from Communist Party in Russia, and Josef Stalin becomes its undisputed ruler.
1933 – Nazis dominate German elections.
1937 – Japanese troops occupy Chinese city of Shanghai.
1941 – Soviet troops halt Germans at outskirts of Moscow in World War II.
1944 – The Tirpitz, the last of the major German battleships, is sunk by British bombers.
1948 – Japan’s former Premier Hideki Tojo and other Japanese World War II leaders are sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal.
1954 – Ellis Island closes after processing more than 20 million immigrants since opening in New York Harbor in 1892.
1955 – The first 101 soldiers and officers are named by Defense Minister Theodor Blank for West Germany’s new postwar armed forces, the Bundeswehr.
1965 – U.N. Security Council calls on all nations to refuse recognition to Rhodesia after it unilaterally declares independence from Britain.
1970 – The worst rainy season in Colombia in 40 years kills as many as 500 people, with more than a thousand others missing and 30,000-60,000 people homeless.
1976 – The U.N. General Assembly approves a resolution again calling on Turkey to withdraw its troops from Cyprus.
1982 – Yuri V. Andropov is elected to succeed the late Leonid I. Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee.
1987 – The American Medical Association issues a policy statement saying it is unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat someone solely because that person has AIDS or is HIV-positive.
1990 – Emperor Akihito ascends the throne in Japan.
1992 – Five Germans and two Egyptians are wounded when Islamic militants fire on them in an attempt to cripple Egypt’s tourist industry.
1995 – Britain ends arm sales to Nigeria.
1996 – A Saudi jumbo jet collides shortly after takeoff from New Delhi with a Kazak airliner making its landing approach, killing 349 people.
1997 – Ramzi Yousef is found guilty of masterminding the 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center.
2007 – Hamas security forces open fire on a rally by the Fatah movement in a Gaza City square, sending tens of thousands of protesters running for cover as gunfire kills at least seven and wounds at least 85.
2008 – Britain is facing a sperm donor shortage after reversing confidentiality laws and limiting the number of women who can use sperm from one donor, fertility experts warn.
2009 – U.S. government prosecutors take steps to seize four U.S. mosques and a New York skyscraper owned by a nonprofit Muslim organization long suspected of being secretly controlled by the Iranian government.
2010 — Supporters of Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi hold a vigil on the eve of expiration of her house arrest order, hoping to see the Nobel Peace Prize laureate taste freedom for the first time in seven years.
2011 — A chorus of Handel’s “Alleluia” rings out as Silvio Berlusconi resigns as Italian premier, ending a tumultuous 17-year political era and setting in motion a transition aimed at bringing the country back from the brink of economic crisis.
2012 — Greece’s international creditors propose giving the country two more years to reform its economy but finance ministers are split over how to put together a comprehensive deal to help Athens dig out of its mountain of debt.
2014— Government regulators fine five major banks $3.4 billion, say their traders plotted over Internet chat rooms to manipulate currency markets for years profiting at the expense of clients and then congratulating thems4elvesdo n their brilliance.
Today’s Birthdays:
Auguste Rodin, French sculptor (1840-1917); Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, founder of Chinese Republic (1866-1926); Princess Grace of Monaco (1929-1982); Kim Hunter, U.S. actress (1922–2002); Neil Young, Canadian singer/musician (1945–); Nadia Comaneci, Romanian gymnast (1961–); Ryan Gosling, Canadian actor (1980–); Anne Hathaway, U.S. actress (1982–).
Thought For Today:
Don’t be a pal to your son. Be his father. What child needs a 40-year-old for a friend? — Al Capp, American cartoonist (1909-1979).
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