Today is Wednesday, November 11, the 315th day of 2015. There are 50 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1500 – France’s King Louis XII and Ferdinand of Aragon secretly sign the Treaty of Granada for conquest and partition of Naples.
1528 – Margaret Hunt tells the Bishop of London the secrets of her “sorcery” — how she combines natural herbs and prayer to heal the sick. She is not prosecuted.
1606 – Peace treaty is signed at Zeitva-Torok between Turks and Austrians.
1620 – Forty-one Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, anchor in what is now Massachusetts and sign a compact calling for a “body politick.”
1673 – Poland’s King John Sobieski defeats Turks at Korzim, Poland.
1778 – British forces take St. Lucia, West Indies, from French.
1831 – Former slave Nat Turner, who led a violent insurrection, is executed in Jerusalem, Virginia.
1836 – Chile declares war on Peru-Bolivia Federation.
1895 – British Bechuanaland is annexed to Cape Colony.
1918 – World War I ends with Germany and the Allies signing an armistice in a railroad car at Compiegne, France.
1921 – U.S. President Warren Harding dedicates the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.
1938 – Kate Smith first sings Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America” on U.S. network radio.
1942 – Tearing up the Franco-German armistice which established the occupied zone in 1940, Hitler orders German troops into Unoccupied France on the 25th anniversary of the World War I Armistice.
1951 – Juan Peron is elected to his second of three presidential terms in Argentina.
1964 – Food shortages in India provoke riots.
1965 – Ian Smith declares Rhodesian independence, and Britain says the regime is illegal. The African country is now known as Zimbabwe.
1971 – China’s chief delegates to the United Nations arrive in New York City amid tight security arrangements; U.S. Senate ratifies treaty to return island of Okinawa to Japan.
1973 – Egypt and Israel sign cease-fire agreement sponsored by United States and begin discussions to carry out the pact.
1975 – Australian Governor General Sir John Kerr dismisses Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and dissolves Parliament — the first time in 200 years the British crown exercises its right to remove an elected PM.
1987 – Boris Yeltsin, who criticized what he called the slow pace of Soviet reform, is removed as Moscow Communist Party chief.
1992 – The Church of England votes to ordain women as priests.
1994 – A 72-page manuscript of Leonardo da Vinci’s scientific diagrams and notes is sold at an auction in New York for a record $30.8 million.
1996 – Guatemalan President Alvaro Arzu announces a peace agreement with the guerrilla movement, ending 36 years of fighting.
1998 – U.N. personnel leave Baghdad, Iraq, and U.S. President Bill Clinton orders more warplanes and ships to the Persian Gulf after Iraq refuses to allow weapons inspections to continue.
2000 – A cable car being pulled through an Austrian mountainside to a glacier resort catches on fire, killing 155 skiers and snowboarders.
2002 – Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates pledges $100 million to fight AIDS in India.
2004 – Palestinians at home and abroad weep in an eruption of grief at the death of Yasser Arafat, the man they consider the father of their nation, and quickly elevate his No. 2 in the Palestine Liberation Organization as their top leader.
2011 – The country’s top Cabinet secretary, Francisco Blake Mora, a key figure in Mexico’s battle with drug cartels, dies in a helicopter crash that President Felipe Calderon said was probably an accident.
2013 – The Vatican ambassador to the U.S. tells Roman Catholic bishops at their first national meeting since Pope Francis was elected they should not “follow a particular ideology” and should be more welcoming to church members.
2014 — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accuses Israel of leading the region toward a “religious war,” drawing an angry response from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Today’s Birthdays :
Louis Antoine Bougainville, French navigator (1729-1811); Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian writer (1821-1881); Kurt Vonnegut Jr., U.S. writer (1922-2007); Daniel Ortega, President of Nicaragua (1945–); Demi Moore, U.S. actress (1962–); Leonardo DiCaprio, U.S. actor (1974–); Calista Flockhart, U.S. actress (1964–).
Thought For Today:
Private opinion creates public opinion. … That is why private opinion, and private behavior, and private conversation are so terrifyingly important — Jan Struther (nee Joyce Anstruther), English poet (1901-53).
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