On this day - November 5
2009-11-05 07:39
Today is Thursday, November 5, the 309th day of 2009. There are 56 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1605 - English authorities arrest Guy Fawkes, the leader of the "Gunpowder Plot" to blow up Houses of Parliament.
1630 - Treaty of Madrid ends Anglo-Spanish War.
1688 - William of Orange lands in Tor Bay, England, heralding the start of the Glorious Revolution whereby he becomes William III of England.
1817 - Third Mahratta War against British in India begins with attacks on Poona, Nagpur and Indore.
1872 - Suffragist Susan B Anthony is fined $100 for attempting to vote in a US presidential election. She never pays the fine.
1895 - George B Selden of Rochester, New York, receives the first US patent for an automobile.
1914 - France and Britain declare war on Turkey; Britain annexes Cyprus.
1950 - US General Douglas MacArthur reports massing of Chinese in North Korea.
1956 - Britain and France land troops in Egypt during fighting between Egyptian and Israeli forces around the Suez Canal. A cease-fire is declared two days later.
1962 - UN General Assembly demands all nuclear tests cease by January 1 1963.
1967 - An Anglican bishop announces his resignation in protest against South Africa's apartheid system.
1974 - Ella T Grasso is elected governor of Connecticut, the first woman to win gubernatorial office in the United States without succeeding her husband.
1978 - Former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi makes a major political comeback, winning a seat in the lower house of Parliament.
1982 - Itaipu Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric plant, is inaugurated on the Brazil-Paraguay border.
1985 - The UN General Assembly approves a resolution calling on Vietnam to withdraw its forces from Cambodia.
1987 - South Africa releases Govan Mbeki, African National Congress leader and colleague of Nelson Mandela, after 23 years in prison.
1988 - Algeria's President Chadli Bendjedid appoints former head of military security to form new government in wake of widespread riots.
1990 - Rabbi Meir Kahane, 58, founder of the militant Jewish Defence League and Israel's extremist anti-Arab Kach party, is assassinated after giving a talk in a New York City hotel. His alleged killer, an Egyptian-born US citizen, is wounded and captured as he tries to escape.
1991 - Billionaire publisher Robert Maxwell is found dead in waters off Canary Islands where his yacht had been cruising.
1992 - In its first free elections since 1981, Ghana's leader Jerry J Rawlings becomes president.
1993 - Talks are held on restoring ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power collapse in Haiti.
1994 - Former US President Ronald Reagan, 83, discloses he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease; George Foreman, 45, becomes boxing's oldest heavyweight champion by knocking out Michael Moorer in the 10th round of their World Boxing Association fight in Las Vegas.
1995 - A draft peace accord presented to the parties in Bosnia excludes Serb leader Radovan Karadzic from power.
1998 - Helmer (Pacho) Herrera Buitrago, a leading member of the Cali drug cartel, is shot dead in a maximum security prison in Colombia.
2000 - Two thousand police officers struggle to control 1 200 neo-Nazi marchers and left-wing counter-protesters in Berlin. Some officers are hurt in scuffles.
2001 - Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, who led the country's Marxist-leaning government from 1979 to 1990, is defeated by businessman Enrique Bolanos Geyer.
2003 - Gary Leon Ridgway pleads guilty to 48 murders known collectively as the Green River killings, after the Seattle-area waterway in which the first of the victims was discovered in 1982.
2004 - Abimael Guzman, the founder of Peru's Maoist Shining Path Insurgency, goes on trial in a civilian court after his life sentence by a secret military court is overturned.
2006 - Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death by an Iraqi court for crimes against humanity, closing a quarter-century-old chapter of violent suppression by the former dictator.
2007 - A Chinese satellite - the Chang'e 1 named after a mythical Chinese goddess who flew to the moon - successfully enters lunar orbit, a month after rival Japan put its own probe into orbit around the moon.
2008 - British beekeepers swarm Parliament and the prime minister's office, demanding more funds for research after the number of Britain's honey bees dropped by nearly a third in the past year.
Today's Birthdays:
Philippe de Plessis-Mornay, French author (1549-1623); Will Durant, US historian-philosopher (1885-1981); Roy Rogers, former US cowboy actor (1912-1998); Elke Sommer, German actress (1940--); Art Garfunkel, US pop singer (1941--); Tatum O'Neal, US actress (1963--); Sam Shepard, US actor/playwright (1943--).
Thought for Today:
The most exhausting thing in life ... is being insincere - Anne Morrow Lindbergh, American writer (1906-2001).
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- News24