TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Friday, Nov. 22. TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
On Nov. 22, 1963, John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was assassinated while riding in a motorcade in Dallas; Texas Gov. John B. Connally, in the same car as Kennedy, was seriously wounded; a suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, was arrested; Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president.
ON THIS DATE
In 1862, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “La Forza del Destino” had its world premiere in St. Petersburg, Russia.
In 1935, a flying boat, the China Clipper, took off from Alameda, California, carrying more than 100,000 pieces of mail on the first trans-Pacific airmail flight.
In 1955, comic Shemp Howard of “Three Stooges” fame died in Hollywood at age 60. In 1967, the U.N. Security Council approved Resolution 242, which called for Israel to withdraw from territories it had captured the previous June, and implicitly called on adversaries to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
In 1980, death claimed actress Mae West at her Hollywood residence at age 87 and former House Speaker John W. McCormack in Dedham, Mass. at age 88.
In 1990, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, having failed to win re-election of the Conservative Party leadership on the first ballot, announced she would resign.
In 2004, Tens of thousands of demonstrators jammed downtown Kiev, denouncing Ukraine’s presidential runoff election as fraudulent and chanting the name of their reformist candidate, Viktor Yushchenko (yoo-SHEN’koh), who ended up winning a revote the following month.
In 2005, Angela Merkel took power as Germany’s first female chancellor. Ted Koppel hosted his final edition of ABC News’ “Nightline.”
In 2017, former sports doctor Larry Nassar, accused of molesting at least 125 girls and young women while working for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University, pleaded guilty to multiple charges of sexual assault. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general whose forces carried out the worst massacre in Europe since World War II, was convicted of genocide and other crimes by the United Nations’ Yugoslav war crimes tribunal and sentenced to life behind bars.
Ten years ago: Iran said it had begun large-scale air defense war games aimed at protecting its nuclear facilities from attack. Five years ago: Twelve-yearold Tamir Rice was shot and mortally wounded by police outside a Cleveland recreation center after brandishing what turned out to be a pellet gun. (A grand jury declined to indict either the patrolman who fired the fatal shot or a training officer.)
One year ago: After a Thanksgiving night shooting at an Alabama shopping mall wounded two people, a responding officer shot and killed a 21-year-old black man, Emantic Bradford Jr., who police initially said had shot a teen at the mall; they later acknowledged that Bradford, who they said was fleeing the scene with a handgun, was not the triggerman. (A state investigation determined that the officer was justified in shooting Bradford because Bradford carried a weapon and appeared to pose a threat.)