Today is Thursday, November 19, the 323rd day of 2014. There are 42 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1794 – The United States and Britain sign the Jay Treaty, which resolves issues left over from the Revolutionary War.
1807 – France invades Portugal.
1863 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg address as he dedicates a national cemetery at the site of the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.
1899 – Sir Reginald Wingate, British general and administrator, kills Khalifa of Sudan on the White Nile during the British reconquest of Sudan.
1919 – The U.S. Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles.
1924 – Sir Lee Stack, British governor of Sudan, is slain in Cairo, Egypt.
1942 – Soviet troops counterattack at Stalingrad and surround German troops in World War II.
1957 – Thirty-one Cuban nationals about to sail for Cuba in a yacht loaded with arms, medical supplies and uniforms, for Fidel Castro’s rebel forces, are arrested by U.S. agents.
1961 – About 4,900 Algerian rebels in French prisons end a 19-day hunger strike after receiving assurances they will be treated as political prisoners.
1969 – Apollo 12 astronauts Charles Conrad and Alan Bean make man’s second landing on the moon.
1973 – The Cambodian presidential palace in Phnom Penh is bombed by a lone military pilot, killing three people and wounding 10. President Lon Nol, a target of the raid, is not injured.
1977 – Egyptian President Anwar Sadat arrives in Israel on his first peace mission to that nation and receives a warm welcome from principal political leaders.
1979 – Muslim militants seize Islam’s holiest shrine in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and are later driven out.
1985 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev meet for the first time at a summit in Geneva.
1992 – In a big concession to the South African government, the African National Congress offers whites a guaranteed share of power in negotiations on a new constitution.
1995 – A suicide bomber rams his explosive-packed truck into the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing 15 people.
1996 – Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Pope John Paul II meet in a historic first encounter in Rome.
1998 – The impeachment inquiry against U.S. President Bill Clinton opens with testimony by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, who accuses the president of perjury and obstructing justice.
2003 – The South African cabinet approves a plan to spend approximately 1.9 billion rand to launch a program to provide antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients free of charge. The program is to be fully implemented by 2008.
2004 – Sudanese government and rebel officials again pledge to end the 21-year civil war in southern Sudan — this time making the pledge before the U.N. Security Council.
2006 – Russia and the United States sign a key trade agreement, removing the last major obstacle in Moscow’s 13-year journey to join the World Trade Organization.
2007 – The U.N.-backed genocide tribunal in Cambodia arrests the former Khmer Rouge head of state Khieu Samphan, 76, following his release from a hospital in the capital.
2011 – Moammar Gadhafi’s former heir apparent Seif al-Islam is captured by revolutionary fighters in the southern desert just over a month after his father was killed, setting off joyous celebrations across Libya and closing the door on the possibility that the fugitive son could stoke further insurrection.
2012 — President Barack Obama pays the first visit by an America leader to Myanmar and Cambodia, two Asian countries with troubled histories, one on the mend and the other still a cause for concern.
2013 — Suicide bombers strike the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, killing 23 people, including a diplomat, and wounding 140 others in a blow to Tehran and Hezbollah, both supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
2014 — Four Taliban militants who attacked a compound housing foreign workers in the Afghan capital of Kabul are killed in a failed assault.
Today’s Birthdays:
Ferdinand de Lesseps, French builder of Suez Canal (1805-1894); Indira Gandhi, Indian prime minister (1917-1984); Calvin Klein, U.S. clothing designer (1942–); Jodie Foster, U.S. actress (1962–); Larry King, U.S. talk show host (1933–); Ted Turner, U.S. media mogul (1938–); Allison Janney, U.S. actress (1960–); Savion Glover, U.S. dancer/choreographer (1973–).
Thought For Today:
It is always brave to say what everyone thinks — George Duhamel, French author (1884-1966).
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