Years Ago

Today is Wednesday, Nov. 28, the 333rd day of 2012. There are 33 days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1520: Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reaches the Pacific Ocean after passing through the South American strait that now bears his name.

1861: The Confederate Congress admits Missouri as the 12th state of the Confederacy after Missouri’s disputes secession from the Union.

1885: At the end of the Third Anglo-Burmese War, British troops occupy Mandalay.

1905: Sinn Fein is founded in Dublin.

1912: Albania proclaims its independence from the Ottoman Empire.

1922: Capt. Cyril Turner of the Royal Air Force gives the first public skywriting exhibition, spelling out, “Hello USA. Call Vanderbilt 7200” over New York’s Times Square; about 47,000 calls in less than three hours result.

1942: Nearly 500 people die in a fire that destroys the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston.

1958: Chad, Gabon and Middle Congo become autonomous republics within the French community.

1961: President John F. Kennedy dedicates the original permanent headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va.

Ernie Davis of Syracuse University becomes the first African-American to be named winner of the Heisman Trophy.

1962: Princess Wilhelmina, the onetime Queen of the Netherlands, dies at age 82.

1964: The United States launches the space probe Mariner 4 on a course to Mars.

1979: An Air New Zealand DC-10 en route to the South Pole crashes into a mountain in Antarctica, killing all 257 people aboard.

1987: A South African Airways Boeing 747 crashes into the Indian Ocean with the loss of all 159 people aboard.

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