Today is Friday, Nov. 22, the 326th day of 2019 with 39 to follow.
The moon is waning. Morning stars are Mars, Neptune and Uranus. Evening stars are Jupiter, Neptune, Saturn, Uranus and Venus.
Those born on this date are under the sign of Sagittarius. They include French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle in 1643; U.S. first lady Abigail Adams in 1744; English novelist George Eliot, born Mary Ann Evans, in 1819; French statesman/military leader Charles de Gaulle in 1890; Wiley Post, the first pilot to fly solo around the world, in 1898; comedian Rodney Dangerfield in 1921; actor Geraldine Page in 1924; actor Robert Vaughn in 1932; writer/director and Monty Python alum Terry Gilliam in 1940 (age 79); actor Tom Conti in 1941 (age 78); musician Jesse Colin Young in 1941 (age 78); Guion S. Bluford Jr., the first African-American astronaut in space, in 1942 (age 77); tennis star Billie Jean King in 1943 (age 76); guitarist/actor Steven Van Zandt in 1950 (age 69); actor Richard Kind in 1956 (age 63); actor Jamie Lee Curtis in 1958 (age 61); actor Mariel Hemingway in 1961 (age 58); actor Mads Mikkelsen in 1965 (age 54); actor Mark Ruffalo in 1967 (age 52); tennis player Boris Becker in 1967 (age 52); actor Scarlett Johansson in 1984 (age 35); South African Olympic sprinter Oscar Pistorius in 1986 (age 33); actor Jamie Campbell Bower in 1988 (age 31); actor Dacre Montgomery in 1994 (age 25); actor Katherine McNamara in 1995 (age 24); model Hailey Baldwin in 1996 (age 23); actor/singer Auli’i Cravalho in 2000 (age 19).
On this date in history:
In 1718, Edward Teach, also known as the pirate Blackbeard, was killed off North Carolina’s Outer Banks during a battle with a British navy force.
In 1858, the city of Denver was founded.
In 1935, a Pan American Martin 130 “flying boat” called the China Clipper began regular trans-Pacific mail service. The flight from San Francisco to Manila, Philippines, took 59 hours and 48 minutes.
In 1943, meeting in Cairo, Egypt, President Franklin Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Chinese Premier Chiang Kai-Shek discuss ways to defeat the Empire of Japan.
In 1950, a train wreck in New York City killed 79 people.
In 1954, the Humane Society of the United States was founded.
In 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, 46, in the third year of his first term, was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as the nation’s 36th chief executive. Lee Harvey Oswald was charged with Kennedy’s slaying but was killed before he could go to trial.
In 1972, the U.S. State Department ended a 22-year ban on U.S. travel to China.
In 1977, the Anglo-French supersonic Concorde jetliner began scheduled flights to New York from London and Paris.
In 1980, film legend Mae West died at the age of 88. She was buried in Brooklyn after a memorial service in Hollywood.
In 1988, the U.S. Air Force publicly unveiled the B-2 Stealth bomber for the first time before some 2,500 spectators, including members of Congress and other dignitaries.
In 1989, newly elected Lebanese President Rene Moawad died in bomb blast that also killed 17 other people in Syrian-patrolled Muslim West Beirut.
In 1990, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher resigned after 11 years in office.
In 1993, Mexico’s Senate approved the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari called it a “triumph.”
In 1997, New Zealanders Robert Hamill and Phil Stubbs arrived in Barbados from the Canary Islands in their boat, Kiwi Challenger, after 41 days, 1 hour and 55 minutes — a record for rowing across the Atlantic.
In 2002, at least 100 people died in riots in northern Nigeria sparked by a religious controversy over the Miss World beauty pageant.
In 2005, Angela Merkel was sworn in as Germany’s chancellor. She was the first woman and first person from East Germany to lead the country.
In 2010, about 400 people were killed and hundreds injured in a panic-driven stampede on a densely crowded suspension bridge during Cambodia’s Water Festival in Phnom Penh.
In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Grace Hopper for her roles as a pioneering computer scientist and Navy admiral. Also awarded that day were: Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres, Robert De Niro, Robert Redford, Lorne Michaels, Bruce Springsteen, Diana Ross, Cicely Tyson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Vin Scully, Elouise Cobell, Bill Gates, Melinda Gates, Frank Gehry, Maya Lin and Richard Garwin.
In 2017, former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic — dubbed the “Butcher of Bosnia” — was sentenced by a U.N. tribunal to life in prison for war crimes and genocide.
A thought for the day: “History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.” — President John F. Kennedy
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