Paradise Driver: 11/09/08

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Today is Sunday, Nov. 9, the 314th day of 2008.
There are 52 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On Nov. 9, 1938, Nazis looted and burned synagogues as well as Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria in what became known as "Kristallnacht." It's estimated that more than 90 Jews were killed in the pogrom.

On this date:

In 1872, fire destroyed nearly 800 buildings in Boston.
In 1918, it was announced that Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II would abdicate. He then fled to the Netherlands.
In 1935, United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other labor leaders formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (later Congress of Industrial Organizations).
In 1953, author-poet Dylan Thomas died in New York at age 39.
In 1963, twin disasters struck Japan as some 450 miners were killed in a coal-dust explosion, and about 160 people died in a train crash.
In 1965, the great Northeast blackout occurred as a series of power failures lasting up to 13 1/2 hours left 30 million people in seven states and part of Canada without electricity.
In 1967, a Saturn V rocket carrying an unmanned Apollo spacecraft blasted off from Cape Kennedy, Fla., on a successful test flight.
In 1976, the U.N. General Assembly approved resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa, including one characterizing the white-ruled government as "illegitimate."
In 1988, former Attorney General John N. Mitchell, a major figure in the Watergate scandal, died in Washington at age 75.
In 1989, communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West; joyous Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall.

Ten years ago:

A federal judge in New York approved a massive antitrust settlement in which leading brokerage firms promised to pay $1.03 billion to investors who had sued over a price-rigging scheme for stocks listed on the Nasdaq market.
The age of digital and interactive TV opened with the airing of a PBS documentary special, "Chihuly Over Venice."

Five years ago:

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's ruling bloc won a majority in the country's parliamentary elections.
Three-time Top Fuel champion Shirley Muldowney, 63, ended 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 died in Chester, Conn., at age 85.

One year ago:

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest for a day, and rounded up thousands of her supporters to block a mass rally against his emergency rule.
Chadian authorities released three Spanish flight crew members and a Belgian pilot detained in an alleged kidnapping plot of African children by a French charity.

Today's Birthdays: