Saturday, November 14

Today is Saturday, November 14, the 318th day of 2009. There are 47 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1533 - Spanish conquistadors take the city of Cuzco, the capital of the Inca empire.

1647 - England's King Charles I is recaptured and imprisoned by rebels.

1775 - American troops under Benedict Arnold invade Quebec Province in Canada.

1832 - The first streetcar in the United States — a horse-drawn vehicle called the John Mason — goes into operation in New York City.

1851 - American author Herman Melville's novel "Moby Dick" is published.

1889 - Inspired by Jules Verne, New York World reporter Nellie Bly sets out to travel around the world in less than 80 days. She succeeds, making the trip in 72 days.

1890 - Anglo-Portuguese agreement on Zambezi and Congo grants Britain control of lower Zambezi and colonizing rights up to the Congo.

1935 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaims Philippine Islands a commonwealth and pledges independence by 1946.

1940 - German bombers destroy most of the English city of Coventry in World War II.

1947 - United Nations recognizes Korea's claim to independence.

1957 - Britain declares Bahrain an independent Arab state under British protection.

1960 - Two passenger trains collide in Czechoslovakia, killing 110 people and injuring 105.

1969 - Apollo 12 blasts off for the moon.

1970 - Cyclone and giant waves devastate southern coast of East Pakistan — now Bangladesh— and islands in Bay of Bengal, with death toll estimated at 300,000.

1973 - Britain's Princess Anne marries Captain Mark Phillips in Westminster Abbey. The couple divorces in 1992.

1986 - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission impose a record $100 million penalty against Wall Street trader Ivan Boesky for using insider information.

1988 - PLO's parliament-in-exile endorses new political strategy that implicitly recognizes the state of Israel and renounces terrorism.

1989 - Black nationalist movement SWAPO wins a solid majority in Namibia's first national election.

1990 - More than 300 people are arrested and about 70 injured as police clear anarchist squatters from Berlin neighborhood.

1991 - El Salvador's leftist rebels say they will halt all offensives until peace accord with government is reached; Prince Norodom Sihanouk returns to Cambodia after 20 years.

1992 - A Unionist gunman kills two people and wounds 13 in a Belfast bookmaker's shop in Northern Ireland.

1993 - Supporters of continued U.S. commonwealth status for Puerto Rico prevail in a statehood referendum.

1994 - Tropical Storm Gordon kills at least 829 people in Haiti.

1996 - American troops arrive in Kigali, Rwanda's capital, in advance of a multinational operation to feed and help send home more than one million refugees in Zaire, now called Congo.

1997 - The United States dispatches a second aircraft carrier to the Gulf to force Iraq to allow weapons inspections to resume.

1998 - Iraq sends a letter to the U.N. Security Council stating that weapons inspections can continue. An hour before the launch of an airstrike, U.S. President Bill Clinton calls it off.

1999 - The United Nations imposes sanctions on Afghanistan and demands the arrest of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden. The sanctions require U.N. member states to freeze Taliban assets and to ban flights in and out of the country.

2000 - Israeli troops impose a siege on Palestinian communities, paralyzing life in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in retaliation for deadly shooting ambushes that signal an escalation in seven weeks of fighting.

2003 - Negotiators for the 1989 Montreal Protocol, adopted to help eliminate chemicals that destroyed the atmospheric ozone layer, refuse most of the exemptions for methyl-bromide use sought by the U.S.

2004 - The U.S. military's ground and air assault of Fallujah goes quicker than expected, with the entire Iraqi city occupied after six days of fighting. Thirty-one Americans are killed in the siege.

2006 - The International Atomic Energy Agency reports new traces of plutonium and enriched uranium — potential material for atomic warheads — have been found in a nuclear waste facility in Iran.

2007 - Charged with crimes against humanity, former Khmer Rouge Foreign Minister Ieng Sary and his wife are formally put in detention by Cambodia's U.N.-backed genocide tribunal.

2008 - A lunar probe from India lands successfully on the moon.

Today's Birthdays:

Claude Monet, French painter (1840-1926); Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian statesman (1889-1964); Astrid Lindgren, Swedish author (1907-2002); Joseph McCarthy, U.S. senator (1909-1957); Jordan's King Hussein (1935-1999); Britain's Prince Charles (1948--); Buckwheat Zydeco, U.S. singer/accordionist (1947--); Reverend Run, U.S. rapper (1964--).

Thought For Today:

Comfort, opportunity, number and size are not synonymous with civilization — Abraham Flexner, American educator and author (1866-1959).