Today is Wednesday, November 25, the 329th day of 2015. There are 36 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1542 – Scots under King James V are routed by Britain at Battle of Solway Moss.
1758 – British forces capture Senegal; in the French and Indian War, the British capture Fort Duquesne in present-day Pittsburgh.
1783 – The British evacuate New York, their last military position in the American colonies during the Revolutionary War.
1917 – A plebiscite approves separation of state and church in Uruguay.
1942 – A special Moscow communique reports 15,000 more Germans are captured and 6,000 are killed, raising the total in the seven-day Stalingrad offensive to 51,000 captured and 47,000 killed.
1952 – The world’s longest-running play, Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap,” opens in London.
1965 – General Joseph Mobutu, later known as Mobutu Sese Seko, deposes President Joseph Kasavubu in the Congo.
1973 – Greece’s President George Papadopoulos is ousted in a bloodless military coup.
1975 – Netherlands grants Suriname its independence.
1977 – U.N. General Assembly condemns Israel for occupation of Arab lands.
1981 – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak frees 31 journalists and political figures, including five former Cabinet officials, who were arrested in Anwar el-Sadat’s crackdown on political opposition in September.
1986 – The Iran-Contra affair erupts as U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese reveal that profits from secret arms sales to Iran had been diverted to Nicaraguan rebels.
1991 – President Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to hold the Soviet Union together suffer a setback when seven republics fail to initial the proposed Union Treaty as scheduled.
1992 – Representatives of 93 nations agree to speed efforts to phase out the production and use of chemicals that damage the Earth’s ozone layer. Under the agreement, industrialized nations will move up their deadlines for eliminating some harmful chemicals.
1994 – Guerrillas loyal to Yasser Arafat fight Palestine Liberation Organization dissidents in Lebanon’s largest refugee camp.
1995 – In Warsaw, Poland’s President-elect Aleksander Kwasniewski resigns from the former communist party in a bid to be seen as a leader above politics.
1996 – More than 100,000 people march through Belgrade, Yugoslavia, accusing Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic of stealing municipal elections.
1998 – President Jiang Zemin arrives in Tokyo for the first visit to Japan by a Chinese head of state since World War II.
1999 – Five-year-old Elian Gonzalez is rescued at sea after a boat capsizes during a voyage from Cuba, killing his mother and 10 others. Elian is turned over to his Miami relatives, but his Cuban father demands the boy’s return and a highly politicized custody battle rages for seven months.
2001 – U.S. Marines land in southern Afghanistan as the Taliban surrender in Kunduz, their last stronghold in the north. This leaves the Northern Alliance in control of the region and only Kandahar, remains in Taliban hands.
2006 – Lebanon’s U.S.-backed government approves the creation of an international tribunal to try suspects in the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
2010 – Incumbent Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki cements his grip on power, bringing an end to nearly nine months of political deadlock after he was asked to form the next government.
2012 – Fire races through a garment factory in Bangladesh that supplies major retailers in the West, killing at least 112 people, many of whom were trapped by the flames because the eight-story building lacked emergency exits.
2013 – Thailand’s prime minister invokes an emergency law after demonstrators seeking to remove her from office occupy parts of the finance and foreign ministries.
2014 -The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announces long-delayed calorie labeling rules, requiring establishments that sell prepared foods and have 20 or more locations to post the calorie contents of food and beverages.
Today’s Birthdays:
Lope Felix de Vega, Spanish dramatist (1562-1635); Joe DiMaggio, U.S. baseball player (1914-1999); Ricardo Montalban, Mexican-born actor (1920-2009); Mauno Koivisto, Finland’s president from 1982-1994 (1923–); Amy Grant, U.S. singer (1960–); Christina Applegate, U.S. actress (1971–).
Thought For Today:
To be free is to have achieved your life — Tennessee Williams, American playwright (1911-83).
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