On this day - November 9
2011-11-09 07:41
Today is Wednesday, November 9, the 313th day of 2011. There are 52 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte, newly returned from his disastrous expedition to Egypt, seizes power in France, making himself one of three consuls.
1803 - A French expedition sent to put down rebellious Haiti surrenders, and the island declares independence soon after.
1882 - Franco-British dual control of Egypt is established.
1918 - German Emperor William II abdicates and Germany is declared a republic. Two days later, Germany signs an armistice ending World War I.
1923 - Fourteen Nazis are killed as federal troops break up march of Adolf Hitler's storm troopers in Munich, Germany.
1937 - Japanese troops take Shanghai, China.
1938 - Bands of Nazis roam streets of Germany, burning and destroying Jewish synagogues, homes and stores in what becomes known as Kristallnacht or "Night of Broken Glass".
1946 - Nineteen people, including 11 British soldiers and eight Arab constables are slain in Palestine as Jewish terrorists, using land mines and suitcase bombs, increase their attacks on railroad stations, trains and streetcars.
1952 - Police and British troops arrest more than 400 Kikuyu tribesmen and women in an effort to apprehend Mau Mau cult members in Kenya. The Mau Maus reportedly murdered 37 persons in the last five months.
1962 - United States completes emergency airlift of arms and ammunition to India in that nation's border war with China.
1963 - Twin disasters strikes Japan as 450 miners are killed in a coal-dust explosion and 160 people die in a train crash.
1965 - The great Northeast blackout occurs as several US states and parts of Canada are hit by a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours.
1971 - Chinese Communists make their first appearance in United Nations for conference on problems facing main delegation on its way from Beijing.
1976 - The UN General Assembly approves 10 resolutions condemning South African apartheid.
1977 - Israeli fighter-bombers attack targets in southern Lebanon, and Lebanese government says two villages are levelled with at least 60 civilians killed.
1982 - Up to 2 700 civilians and Soviet soldiers in a convoy are killed after a fiery collision in an Afghanistan mountain tunnel jammed with buses and trucks.
1987 - Bomb explodes during rush hour in crowded neighbourhood of Colombo, Sri Lanka, with at least 32 people killed and 105 wounded.
1989 - Stunned East German border guards watch helplessly as jubilant Germans dance on the Berlin Wall. Thousands cross the border to experience long-forbidden freedoms and riches on one memorable night.
1990 - Nepal adopts a new constitution, creating a democratic government; Bundesrat, the upper house of the German parliament, meets in Berlin for the first time in 31 years; fifteen blacks are stabbed to death and four wounded in factional fight in South African eastern province of Natal.
1991 - Shifting positions, Serbia urges United Nations to send peacekeeping troops to Croatia.
1992 - Some 100 000 people demonstrate in cities throughout Germany on the 54th anniversary of the Nazis' '"Night of Broken Glass" attacks against Jews.
1993 - After a parliamentary election victory by his supporters, King Hussein says that Jordan will forge ahead in negotiating peace with Israel; Mostar's Old Bridge in Bosnia, completed in 1566 by engineers of Ottoman emperor Suleyman the Magnificent, is destroyed by Croatian forces.
1994 - Iranian jet fighters bomb an Iranian Kurdish base in northern Iraq, the second attack in a week on dissidents operating from Iraq.
1995 - In his first visit to Israel since the peace process began, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat calls on the widow of Yitzhak Rabin to offer his condolences.
1996 - Stung by allegations that it uses money and sex to win diplomatic backing, Taiwan says it will no longer use its wealth to fight China's diplomatic blockade.
1997 - Israeli and Greek Orthodox authorities announce the discovery in a Byzantine church ruin of a stone on which the Virgin Mary is said to have rested on her way to Bethlehem.
1998 - "In 72 hours, we lost what we had built, little by little, in 50 years," Honduran President Carlos Flores Facusse says during an aid appeal for his and other Central American countries after Hurricane Mitch.
1999 - France's National Assembly votes 315-249 to approve a law granting extensive legal rights to unmarried couples, including gays. After a year of heated debate, the law will take effect after President Jacques Chirac signs it as a symbolic gesture.
2000 - An Israeli combat helicopter drops rockets on a car carrying Palestinian militia commanders, killing one and wounding another critically. Six other people, including passers-by are injured.
2001 - Afghanistan's ruling Taliban send a thousand more fighters to the front lines, reinforcing its troops north of Kabul as American jets range throughout the country in support of the opposition alliance.
2002 - Faced with criticism, Nigeria's foreign minister promises that the government would block Islamic courts from carrying out stonings of women sentenced to death for sex outside marriage.
2003 - Nigerian officials warn the United States not to try to capture ousted Liberian leader Charles Taylor, thought to be the target of $2m bounty posted by the United States.
2004 - Thousands face off against French tanks outside Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo's home, defying warning shots in answer to appeals for a "human shield" around the hard-line leader to prevent an overthrow.
2005 - A fresh round of six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament begins with negotiators struggling to agree on when Pyongyang will disarm and how it will be rewarded.
2006 - Jews are welcomed back into the heart of Munich with a procession of Torah scrolls and the dedication of a new downtown synagogue -replacing one Adolf Hitler personally ordered destroyed as an "eyesore" in the centre of his power base.
2007 - Detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 12 of the past 18 years, meets with members of her opposition party - their first direct contact in more than three years.
2008 - Rose Kabuye, a Rwandan woman sought for questioning by a French judge about what sparked her country's infamous genocide in 1994, is arrested at Frankfurt International Airport.
Today's Birthdays:
Ivan Turgenev, Russian writer (1818-1883); Jean Monnet, French president of European Coal and Steel Community, the precursor of the EU (1888-1979); Carl Sagan, US physicist (1934-1996); Sisqo, US singer (1978--).
Thought For Today:
All life is an experiment - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, US Supreme Court justice (1841-1935).
Sapa-AP