On This Day in:
1799 – Andrew Ellicott Douglass witnesses the Leonids meteor shower from a ship off the Florida Keys.
1815 – American suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born in Johnstown, NY.
1840 – Sculptor Auguste Rodin was born in Paris. His most widely known works are 'The Kiss' and 'The Thinker.'
1859 – The first flying trapeze act was performed by Jules Leotard at Cirque Napoleon in Paris, France. He was also the designer of the garment that is named after him.
1892 – William 'Pudge' Heffelfinger became the first professional football player when he was paid a $500 bonus for helping the Allegheny Athletic Association beat the Pittsburgh Athletic Club.
1915 – Theodore W. Richards, of Harvard University, became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
1918 – Austria and Czechoslovakia were declared independent republics.
1920 – Judge Keneshaw Mountain Landis was elected the first commissioner of the American and National Leagues.
1921 – Representatives of nine nations gathered for the start of the Washington Conference for Limitation of Armaments.
1927 – Joseph Stalin became the undisputed ruler of the Soviet Union. Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party leading to Stalin coming to power.
1931 – Maple Leaf Gardens opened in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was to be the new home of the Toronto Maple Leafs in the National Hockey League (NHL).
1933 – In Philadelphia, the first Sunday football game was played.
1940 – Walt Disney released 'Fantasia.'
1942 – During World War II, naval battle of Guadalcanal began between Japanese and American forces. The Americans won a major victory.
1944 – During World War II, the German battleship 'Tirpitz' was sunk off the coast of Norway.
1946 – The first drive-up banking facility opened at the Exchange National Bank in Chicago, IL.
1948 – The war crimes tribunal sentenced Japanese Premier Hideki Tojo and six other World War II Japanese leaders to death.
1953 – The National Football League (NFL) policy of blacking out home games was upheld by Judge Allan K. Grim of the U.S.
District Court in Philadelphia.
1954 – Ellis Island, the immigration station in New York Harbor, closed after processing more than 20 million immigrants since
1892.
1964 – Paula Murphy set the female land speed record 226.37 MPH.
1972 – Don Shula, coach of the Miami Dolphins, became the first NFL head coach to win 100 regular season games in 10 seasons.
1975 – U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas retired because of failing health, ending a record 36-year term.
1979 – U.S. President Carter ordered a halt to all oil imports from Iran in response to 63 Americans being taken hostage at the U.S.
embassy in Tehran, Iran on November 4.
1980 – The U.S. space probe Voyager I came within 77,000 miles of Saturn while transmitting data back to Earth.
1982 – Yuri V. Andropov was elected to succeed the late Leonid I.
Brezhnev as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee.
1984 – Space shuttle astronauts Dale Gardner and Joe Allen snared the Palapa B-2 satellite in history's first space salvage.
1985 – In Norfolk, VA, Arthur James Walker was sentenced to life in prison for his role in a spy ring run by his brother, John A.
Walker Jr.
1987 – The American Medical Association issued a policy statement that said it was unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat someone solely because that person had AIDS or was HIV-positive.
1990 – Japanese Emperor Akihito formally assumed the Chrysanthemum Throne.
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