| On this date in: |
| 1863 |
President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day. |
| 1929 |
The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes changed its name to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. |
| 1925 |
Author Gore Vidal was born in West Point, N.Y. |
| 1941 |
Adolf Hitler declared in a speech in Berlin that Russia had been “broken” and would “never rise again.” |
| 1951 |
Bobby Thomson hit the “shot heard ’round the world” – a three-run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of a playoff game at the Polo Grounds – to send the New York Giants into the World Series.
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| 1955 |
“Captain Kangaroo” premiered on CBS and “The Mickey Mouse Club” premiered on ABC. |
| 1960 |
“The Andy Griffith Show” premiered on CBS. |
| 1961 |
“The Dick Van Dyke Show” premiered on CBS. |
| 1974 |
The Cleveland Indians hired Frank Robinson as major league baseball’s first black manager. |
| 1981 |
Irish nationalists at the Maze Prison near Belfast, Northern Ireland, ended seven months of hunger strikes that had claimed 10 lives. |
| 1990 |
West Germany and East Germany ended 45 years of postwar division, declaring the creation of a new unified country. |
| 1992 |
Barack Obama married Michelle Robinson at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. |
| 1995 |
A jury found ex-football player O.J. Simpson innocent of murder in the 1994 slayings of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ronald Goldman. |
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| AP Photo/Myung Chun |
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| 2002 |
Five people were killed in random shootings in the Washington, D.C., area within a 14-hour period. Authorities began to search for the “Beltway Sniper.” |
| 2003 |
A tiger attacked magician Roy Horn of the duo “Siegfried & Roy” during a performance in Las Vegas, leaving him partially paralyzed. |
| 2005 |
President George W. Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. (Miers withdrew three weeks later.) |
| 2009 |
Maine voters voted to repeal a state law that would have allowed same-sex couples to marry. |
| 2011 |
An Italian appeals court freed Amanda Knox of Seattle after four years in prison, tossing murder convictions against Knox and an ex-boyfriend in the stabbing of their British roommate. |
