This Day in History – November 9
Today is the 313th day of 2013. There are 52 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1976: The UN General Assembly approved resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa, including one characterising the white-ruled Government as “illegitimate”.
OTHER EVENTS:
1620: The passengers and crew of the Mayflower sight Cape Cod.
1872: Fire destroy nearly 800 buildings in Boston.
1952: Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, dies.
1961: US Air Force Major Robert M White becomes the first pilot to fly an X-15 rocket plane at six times the speed of sound. The Beatles’ future manager, Brian Epstein, first sees the group perform at The Cavern Club in Liverpool, England.
1963: Twin disasters strike Japan as some 450 miners are killed in a coal-dust explosion, and about 160 people die in a train crash.
1965: The great north-east blackout occurs, as a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours leave 30 million people in seven states and part of Canada without electricity.
1967: A Saturn V rocket carrying an unmanned Apollo spacecraft blasts off from Cape Kennedy on a successful test flight.
1970: Former French President Charles de Gaulle dies at age 79.
1989: Communist East Germany throws open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West; joyous Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall.
2003: Three-time Top Fuel champion Shirley Muldowney, 63, ends her 30-year racing career with a loss in the second round of the Auto Club NHRA Finals at Pomona Raceway in California. Comic actor Art Carney dies in Chester, Connecticut, at age 85.
2012: Retired four-star Army General David Petraeus resigns as CIA director after an affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell, was revealed by an FBI investigation.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Gospel singer Donnie McClurkin (1959- ); Rapper Pepa (Salt-NPepa)
(1969); Rapper Scarface (Geto Boys) is 43. Singer Nick Lachey
(98 Degrees) (1973); Rhythm-and-blues singer Sisqo (Dru Hill) (1978)
— AP