Today is Wednesday, Nov. 9, the 314th day of 2016. There are 52 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight:
On Nov. 9, 1976, the U.N. General Assembly approved resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa, including one characterizing the white-ruled government as “illegitimate.”
On this date:
In 1620, the passengers and crew of the Mayflower sighted Cape Cod.
In 1872, fire destroyed nearly 800 buildings in Boston.
In 1918, it was announced that Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II would abdicate; he then fled to the Netherlands.
In 1935, United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other labor leaders formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (later renamed the Congress of Industrial Organizations).
In 1938, Nazis looted and burned synagogues as well as Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria in a pogrom that became known as “Kristallnacht.”
In 1953, Welsh author-poet Dylan Thomas died in New York at age 39.
In 1965, the great Northeast blackout began as a series of power failures lasting up to 13 ½ hours left 30 million people in seven states and part of Canada without electricity.
In 1967, a Saturn V rocket carrying an unmanned Apollo spacecraft blasted off from Cape Kennedy on a successful test flight.
In 1970, former French President Charles de Gaulle died at age 79.
In 1986, Israel revealed it was holding Mordechai Vanunu, a former nuclear technician who’d vanished after providing information to a British newspaper about Israel’s nuclear weapons program. (Vanunu was convicted of treason and served 18 years in prison.)
In 1989, communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West; joyous Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall.
In 1991, singer-actor Yves Montand died near Paris at age 70.
Associated Press
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
