Today In History - November 12

295 The origin of the Era of Ascension
607 Boniface III ends his reign as the Catholic Pope
954 Lotharius becomes the King of France
1591 Castilians army occupies Zaragoza
1614 Treaty of Xanten
1673 Dutch troops occupy Bonn
1682 Swedish King Karel XI establishes an absolute monarchy
1727 France and Bavaria renew a secret treaty
1775 General Washington forbids recruiting officers from enlisting blacks
1813 Allied troops occupy Zwolle, Netherlands
1823 The Great North Holland Canal opens
1859 Jules Leotard performs the first flying trapeze circus act in Paris - Leotard also designed the form-fitting garment that still bears his name
1873 The Bay District Race Track opens
1892 Pudge Heffelfinger receives $500 and becomes the first pro football player
1899 British troops reach Durban Natal
1900 The World's Fair in Paris ends: 50 million visitors
1910 The first Movie stunt: a man jumps into the Hudson River from a burning balloon
1912 Explorer Robert Scott's diary and dead body found in Antarctica
1914 Turks sultan Jamal Pasja declares a German holy war
1915 Britain annexes the Gilbert and Ellice archipelagos
1915 Theodore W. Richards is first American to win the Nobel Prize in chemistry
1918 Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary abdicates and Austria becomes a republic
1919 Ross and Keith Smith start a 1 month flight from London to Australia
1920 Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis is elected the first baseball commissioner
1921 The Washington Conference for Limitation of Armaments
1923 In Germany, Adolf Hitler is arrested for attempting to seize power
1925 U.S. and Italy sign a peace accord about war debts
1927 The first underwater tunnel opens: the Holland Tunnel connecting New York to New Jersey
1927 Notre Dame's Fighting Irish changes their blue jerseys for green
1927 Trotsky is expelled from Soviet CP and Stalin becomes the undisputed dictator
1928 The British steamer "Vestris" capsizes and sinks off Virginia: 110 people die
1932 24 people are killed at a Lancashire mine explosion
1933 The first game at NFL Pitts Pirate's Forbes Field, lose to Brooklyn Dodgers 32-0
1933 The first known photo of Loch Ness monster is taken
1933 The first Sunday football game in Philadelphia (previously illegal to play on Sunday)
1933 Nazis receive 92% of the vote in Germany
1936 Nobel Prize for literature is awarded to Eugene O'Neill
1936 The Oakland Bay Bridge opens
1938 Hermann Goering announces he wants Madagascar as a Jewish homeland
1939 The Jews in Lodz, Poland are ordered to wear a yellow Star of David
1940 A blizzard strikes the US Midwest: 154 people die (69 were on a boat on the Great Lakes)
1941 Germany's drive to take Moscow is halted
1942 In World War II, the battle of Guadalcanal began
1943 The Landwacht (NSB-political party) forms in Netherlands
1944 The RAF sink the German battleship "Tirpitz" at Tromso Fjord, Norway
1945 The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Cordell Hull for establishing the UN
1946 The first "autobank" (banking from your car) starts in Chicago
1948 Japanese Premier Hideki Tojo is sentenced to death by a war crimes tribunal
1951 17 people die in a train crash in Woodstock, AL
1953 David Ben-Gurion, resigns as the Premier of Israel
1953 U.S. district Judge Grim, rules that the NFL can black out TV home games
1954 The Ellis Island immigration station in New York Harbor is closed
1955 This is the date returned to in the movies "Back to the Future" and "Back to the Future II"
1955 The first West German officers are sworn in
1956 Largest observed iceberg is sighted: 208 by 60 miles
1960 The Coup against South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem fails
1963 A train crash in Japan kills 164 people
1964 Jean becomes the Grand Duke of Luxembourg
1964 Paula Murphy sets a female land speed record of 226.37 MPH
1965 Ferdinand Marcos is elected the President of the Philippines
1965 Venera 2 is launched by the Soviet Union toward Venus
1966 High school student Robert Smith kills 7 people
1967 Margie Masters wins the LPGA Quality Chekd Golf Classic
1968 The Supreme Court declares Arkansas law banning the teaching of evolution in public schools is unconstitutional
1969 Author Alexander Solzhenitsyn is expelled from the Soviet Writers Union
1969 The U.S. Army announces it's investigating William Calley for alleged massacre of civilians at Vietnamese village of My Lai
1970 A 240 KPH cyclone hits East Pakistan (Bangladesh) and 3-500,000 people die
1970 Scientists perform the first artificial synthesis of a live cell
1974 South Africa is suspended from United Nations General Assembly over racial policies
1975 Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas retired after 36 years
1977 France performs a nuclear test at Muruora Island
1977 New Orleans elects its first black mayor, Ernest "Dutch" Morial
1978 Nancy Lopez wins the LPGA Colgate Far East Golf Open
1979 President Carter announces an immediate halt to all imports of Iranian oil
1979 The U.S. freezes Iranian assets
1981 The first balloon crossing of the Pacific is completed: the Double Eagle V
1981 Great Britain performs a nuclear test
1982 The U.S. performs nuclear tests at Nevada Test Site
1983 Four people die in a train crash in Marshall, Texas
1986 France performs a nuclear test
1987 Ulla Weigerstorfer of Austria is crowned the 37th Miss World
1988 The U.S.S.R. performs a nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk U.S.S.R.
1989 Brazil holds its first free presidential election in 29 years
1991 Indonesian army shoots on a funeral possession killing 270-520 people
1995 The 25th New York City Women's Marathon is won by Tegla Loroupe: 2:28:06
1995 The 26th New York City Marathon is won by German Silva: 2:10:00
1995 Dan Marino breaks Fran Tarkenton's NFL all-time passing yardage mark of 47,003
1995 The New York MTA raises subway and bus fares from $1.25 to $1.50

Today In History - November 12

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