Today in History – Minneapolis Star Tribune
Today in History
Today is Saturday, Nov. 27, the 331st day of 2021. There are 34 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Nov. 27, 1978, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone (mah-SKOH’-nee) and City Supervisor Harvey Milk, a gay-rights activist, were shot to death inside City Hall by former supervisor Dan White. (White served five years for manslaughter; he took his own life in October 1985.)
On this date:
In 1901, the U.S. Army War College was established in Washington, D.C.
In 1924, Macy’s first Thanksgiving Day parade — billed as a “Christmas Parade” — took place in New York.
In 1942, during World War II, the Vichy French navy scuttled its ships and submarines in Toulon (too-LOHN’) to keep them out of the hands of German troops.
In 1953, playwright Eugene O’Neill died in Boston at age 65.
In 1962, the first Boeing 727 was rolled out at the company’s Renton Plant near Seattle.
In 1967, the Beatles album “Magical Mystery Tour” was released in the United States by Capitol Records.
In 1970, Pope Paul VI, visiting the Philippines, was slightly wounded at the Manila airport by a dagger-wielding Bolivian painter disguised as a priest.
In 1973, the Senate voted 92-3 to confirm Gerald R. Ford as vice president, succeeding Spiro T. Agnew, who’d resigned.
In 1998, answering 81 questions put to him three weeks earlier, President Bill Clinton wrote the House Judiciary Committee that his testimony in the Monica Lewinsky affair was “not false and misleading.”
In 2000, a day after George W. Bush was certified the winner of Florida’s presidential vote, Al Gore laid out his case for letting the courts settle the nation’s long-count election.
In 2007, a Somali immigrant (Nuradin Abdi) was sentenced to 10 years in prison for plotting to blow up an Ohio shopping mall.
In 2015, a gunman attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, killing three people and injuring nine. (Suspect Robert Dear was sent to a psychiatric hospital after being deemed incompetent for trial; he was charged in federal court after his prosecution in state court stalled.)
Ten years ago: In an unprecedented move against an Arab nation, the Arab League approved economic sanctions against Syria, to pressure Damascus to end its deadly suppression of an 8-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad.
Five years ago: President-elect Donald Trump claimed that “millions” had voted illegally in the national election, scoffing at Hillary Clinton’s nearly 2 million-vote edge in the popular vote and returning to his campaign mantra of a rigged race even as he prepared to enter the White House in less than two months.
One year ago: President Donald Trump’s legal team suffered another defeat as a federal appeals court in Philadelphia roundly rejected the campaign’s latest effort to challenge Pennsylvania’s election results; Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, wrote that “calling an election unfair does not make it so.” The coronavirus pandemic kept crowds thin at stores across the country on Black Friday, but a surge in online shopping offered a small beacon of hope for struggling retailers. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the Iranian scientist who founded that country’s military nuclear program in the early 2000s, was killed in an attack on the outskirts of Tehran; Iran said Israel was responsible. California Gov. Gavin Newson reversed parole for Charles Manson follower Leslie Van Houten, marking the fourth time a governor had blocked her release.
Today’s Birthdays: Footwear designer Manolo Blahnik is 79. Academy Award-winning director Kathryn Bigelow is 70. TV host Bill Nye (“Bill Nye, the Science Guy”) is 66. Actor William Fichtner (FIHK’-nuhr) is 65. Caroline Kennedy is 64. Academy Award-winning screenwriter Callie Khouri is 64. Rock musician Charlie Burchill (Simple Minds) is 62. Actor Michael Rispoli is 61. Jazz composer/big band leader Maria Schneider is 61. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty is 61. Rock musician Charlie Benante (Anthrax) is 59. Rock musician Mike Bordin (Faith No More) is 59. Actor Fisher Stevens is 58. Actor Robin Givens is 57. Actor Michael Vartan is 53. Actor Elizabeth Marvel is 52. Rapper Skoob (DAS EFX) is 51. Actor Kirk Acevedo is 50. Rapper Twista is 49. Actor Jaleel White is 45. Actor Arjay Smith is 38. Actor Alison Pill is 36. Actor Lashana Lynch (TV: “Still Star-Crossed”) is 34.