Saturday, November 11, 2017

THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― NOVEMBER 11

November 11 is the 315th day of the year (316th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 50 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Wednesday, Friday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Monday or Tuesday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Thursday or Saturday (56).

VETERAN'S DAY 


1158 — Emperor Frederick I declares himself ruler of North Italy. Frederick I (1122 – 10 June 1190), known as Frederick Barbarossa, was the Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 until his death. He was elected King of Germany at Frankfurt on 4 March 1152 and crowned in Aachen on 9 March 1152. He became King of Italy in 1155 and was crowned Roman Emperor by Pope Adrian IV on 18 June 1155. Two years later, the termsacrum ("holy") first appeared in a document in connection with his Empire. He was later formally crowned King of Burgundy, at Arles on 30 June 1178. He got the name Barbarossa from the northern Italian cities he attempted to rule: Barbarossa means "red beard" in Italian; in German, he was known as Kaiser Rotbart, which has the same meaning.


1503 — Pope Julius II elected. Julius II (5 December 1443 – 21 February 1513), nicknamed "The Fearsome Pope" and "The Warrior Pope", born Giuliano della Rovere, was Pope from 1 November 1503 to his death in 1513. His papacy was marked by an active foreign policy, ambitious building projects, and patronage for the arts. He did much to improve and beautify the city. In 1506 he laid the foundation stone of the new St. Peter's Basilica. He was a friend and patron of Bramante and Raphael, and a patron of Michelangelo. Several of Michelangelo's greatest works (including the painting of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel) were commissioned by Julius.


1640 — Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, impeached by the House of Lords on the evidence of John Pym, and imprisoned in the Tower of London; he was later executed. Thomas Wentworth, the Earl of Strafford, was one of the main advisors to Charles I. Strafford became a devout supporter of Charles and was seen by Parliament, along with Archbishop Laud, as being the epitome of what was wrong in Stuart England. Wentworth paid the ultimate price for his loyalty when he was executed in 1641 – the price Parliament demanded for supporting Charles in his campaign against the Scots.


1675 — Mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz demonstrated integral calculus for the first time to find the area under the graph of y = f(x) function. Integral calculus is the study of the definitions, properties, and applications of two related concepts, the indefinite integral and the definite integral. The process of finding the value of an integral is called integration. In technical language, integral calculus studies two related linear operators. A motivating example is the distances traveled in a given time.

1750 — The F.H.C. Society, also known as the Flat Hat Club, was formed at Raleigh Tavern, Williamsburg, Virginia at the College of William and Mary and twice revived there in the twentieth century. The F.H.C. Society is the first recorded collegiate society within the territory of the present United States of America. The New York Times Education section recently profiled America's oldest university clubs and societies, including a letter by Thomas Jefferson to Thomas McAuley provided by Swem Library archives mentioning his membership of the F.H.C.


1778 — On this day in 1778, Patriot Colonel Ichabod Alden refuses to believe intelligence about an approaching hostile force. As a result, a combined force of Loyalists and Native Americans, attacking in the snow, killed more than 40 Patriots, including Alden, and took at least an additional 70 prisoners, in what is known today as the Cherry Valley Massacre. The attack took place east of Cooperstown, New York, in what is now Otsego County.


1831 — Nat Turner, the leader of a bloody slave revolt in Southampton County, Virginia, is hanged in Jerusalem, the county seat.

Turner, a slave and educated minister, believed that he was chosen by God to lead his people out of slavery. On August 21, 1831, he initiated his slave uprising by slaughtering Joseph Travis, his slave owner, and Travis' family. With seven followers, Turner set off across the countryside, hoping to rally hundreds of slaves to join his insurrection. Turner planned to capture the county armory at Jerusalem, Virginia, and then march 30 miles to Dismal Swamp, where his rebels would be able to elude their pursuers.


1918 — At 11 o'clock in the morning of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the First World War—known at the time as the Great War—comes to an end.

1921 — Exactly three years after the end of World War I, the Tomb of the Unknowns is dedicated at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia during an Armistice Day ceremony presided over by President Warren G. Harding.

1933 — A powerful wind strips the topsoil from desiccated farmlands in South Dakota, one of a series of disastrous windstorms that year. The drought-ridden land of the Southern Plains became known as the Dust Bowl; it was useless to farmers, and only exacerbated the economic problems of the Great Depression. Within two days, dust from the South Dakota storm had reached all the way to Albany, New York.

1942 — On this day in 1942, Congress approves lowering the draft age to 18 and raising the upper limit to age 37.

1967 — Three U.S. prisoners of war, two of them African American, are released by the Viet Cong in a ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The three men were turned over to Tom Hayden, a "new left" antiwar activist. U.S. officials in Saigon said that the released prisoners had been "brainwashed," but the State Department denied it. The Viet Cong said that the release was a response to antiwar protests in the U.S. and a gesture towards the "courageous struggle" of blacks in the United States.

1987 — Van Gogh's Irises sells for record $53.6 M at auction, setting a record which stood for two and a half years. Then it was sold for Alan Bond, but Bond did not have enough money to pay for it. Irises was later re-sold in 1990 to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Irises is currently (as of 2012) tenth on the inflation-adjusted list of most expensive paintings ever sold and in 25th place if the effects of inflation are ignored.

1992 – The General Synod of the Church of England votes to allow women to become priests.


1993 – A sculpture honoring women who served in the Vietnam War is dedicated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

2004 – The Palestine Liberation Organization confirms the death of Yasser Arafat from unidentified causes. Mahmoud Abbas is elected chairman of the PLO minutes later.


TODAY'S BIRTHS

1748 – Charles IV of Spain (d. 1819)

1821 – Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and philosopher (d. 1881)

1885 – George S. Patton, American general (d. 1945)

1896 – Shirley Graham Du Bois, American author, playwright, composer, and activist (d. 1977)

1922 – Kurt Vonnegut, American novelist, short story writer, and essayist (d. 2007)

From Wikipedia and Googleexcept as noted.

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