Friday, November 13, 2015
Today is Friday, Nov. 13, the 317th day of 2015. There are 48 days left in the year.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
On this date in:
1789: Benjamin Franklin writes in a letter to a friend, Jean-Baptiste Leroy: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
1849: Voters in California ratify the state’s original constitution.
1909: Some 259 men and boys are killed when fire erupted inside a coal mine in Cherry, Ill.
1927: The Holland Tunnel opens to the public, providing access between lower Manhattan and New Jersey beneath the Hudson River.
1937: The NBC Symphony Orchestra, formed exclusively for radio broadcasting, makes its debut.
1940: The Walt Disney film “Fantasia,” featuring animated segments set to classical music, has its world premiere in New York.
1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a measure lowering the minimum draft age from 21 to 18.
1956: The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down laws calling for racial segregation on public city and state buses.
1969: Speaking in Des Moines, Iowa, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew accuses network television news departments of bias and distortion, and he urges viewers to lodge complaints.
1974: Karen Silkwood, a 28-year-old technician and union activist at the Kerr-McGee Cimarron plutonium plant near Crescent, Okla., dies in a car crash while on her way to meet a reporter.
1982: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, designed by Maya Lin, is dedicated on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
1985: Some 23,000 residents of Armero, Colombia, die when a volcanic mudslide buries the city.
1995: Seven people, including five Americans, are killed when a bomb explodes at a military training facility in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
2005: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in Jerusalem, strongly rebukes Iran’s leadership, saying “no civilized nation” can call for the annihilation of another – a reference to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s remark that Israel should be “wiped off the map.”
2010: Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel officially announces his ultimately successful candidacy for mayor of Chicago.
2014: The European Space Agency publishes the first images taken from the surface of a comet; the photos sent back to Earth show a rocky surface, with one of the lander’s 3 feet in the corner of the frame.
VINDICATOR FILES
1990: The nine-year reign of Youngstown’s Harry Meshel as president of the Ohio Senate is in jeopardy as state Sen. Robert J. Boggs, D-Jefferson, mounts a challenge.
Dr. Saul Friedman, a professor of history at Youngstown State University, is honored at the 45th annual American Zionist Fund dinner at the Vista International Hotel in Pittsburgh.
1975: Ohio Senate Democrats fail by four votes to get the 60 votes needed to override Gov. James A. Rhodes’ veto of a right-to-strike bill for public employees.
A committee of the Youngstown Police Department administration and the Youngstown Fraternal Order of Police is working on a new police grievance procedure and other matters aimed at reducing morale problems.
The 13-year-old son of Robert C. Stempel, director of engineering for Chevrolet, is released by kidnappers near Detroit after Stempel paid a $150,000 ransom.
1965: The Salem United Fund Drive reaches 99 percent of its $92,375 goal.
Japanese Air Force Capt. Mitsuo Fuchida, who led 360 planes in the attack on Pearl Harbor and has since been converted to Christianity, will speak at First Baptist Church in Campbell.
Struthers downs Campbell, 20-8, to capture a share of the Steel Valley Conference title.
1940: Three veteran Youngstown street department employees admit during a Civil Service hearing that they used city-owned materials to build a cottage one of them owned at Geneva.
Patriotic Youngstown youths are enlisting at rates higher than any other Ohio city. Sgt. Richard Greenlee of the local recruiting office says 103 men enlisted in the past month.
An explosion at the Burton Explosives plant in Edenburg, Pa., near New Castle, kills three men.