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Highlight in History
On Nov. 24, 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed on terms to scrap shorter- and medium-range missiles. (The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev the following month.)
On this date
In 1784, Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States, was born in Orange County, Va.
In 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species,” which explained his theory of evolution by means of natural selection.
In 1862, Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed Gen. Joseph E. Johnston to command the Department of the West during the Civil War.
In 1922, Irish nationalist and author Robert Erskine Childers was executed in Dublin by Free State forces.
In 1939, British Overseas Airways Corp. (BOAC) was formally established.
In 1941, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Edwards v. California, unanimously struck down a California law prohibiting people from bringing impoverished non-residents into the state.
In 1950, the musical “Guys and Dolls,” based on the writings of Damon Runyon and featuring songs by Frank Loesser, opened on Broadway.
In 1963, Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, in a scene captured on live television.
In 1969, Apollo 12 splashed down safely in the Pacific.
In 1971, a hijacker calling himself “Dan Cooper” (but who became popularly known as “D.B. Cooper”) parachuted from a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 over the Pacific Northwest after receiving $200,000 dollars in ransom — his fate remains unknown.
In 1982, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Kenyan government economist and father of the president, was killed in an automobile accident in Nairobi; he was 46.
In 1992, a China Southern Airlines Boeing 737 crashed in southern China, killing all 141 people on board.
Ten years ago
In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Iraqi government complained that the small print behind upcoming weapons inspections would give Washington a pretext to attack. Lucio Gutierrez, a populist former army colonel who’d led a coup in 2000, was elected Ecuador’s sixth president in six years. Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel’s conservative party dominated parliamentary elections in Austria.
Five years ago
A fast-moving wildfire pushed by Santa Ana winds raced through the canyons and mountains of Malibu, Calif., for the second time in little more than a month, destroying some 50 homes. In Australia’s election, conservative Prime Minister John Howard suffered defeat at the hands of Labor Party head Kevin Rudd.
One year ago
After a meeting in Strasbourg, France, German Chancellor Angela Merkel deflected calls for the European Central Bank to play a bigger role in solving Europe’s debt crisis but won the backing of French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italy’s new premier, Mario Monti, to unite the troubled 17-nation eurozone more closely. In the first NFL game featuring brothers as opposing head coaches, the Baltimore Ravens, led by John Harbaugh, beat the San Francisco 49ers, 16-6, under rookie coach Jim Harbaugh.
National, International News
Today in History for Saturday, Nov. 24, 2012
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Bombs targeting Sunnis kill at least 76 in Iraq
Bombs ripped through Sunni areas in Baghdad and surrounding areas Friday, killing at least 76 people in the deadliest day in Iraq in more than eight months. The major spike in sectarian bloodshed heightened fears the country could again be veering toward civil war.
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Tornado-ravaged Texas town to start recovery
Residents whose homes were torn apart or blown away by a North Texas deadly tornado can soon return to retrieve what belongings may be left and start cleaning up, authorities said Friday.
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Conn. commuter trains collide; 60 go to hospitals
Two commuter trains serving New York City collided in Connecticut during Friday’s evening rush hour, sending 60 people to the hospital, including five with critical injuries, Gov. Dannel Malloy said.
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Record Powerball jackpot inspires office pools
In workplaces across the nation, Americans are inviting their colleagues to chip in $2 for a Powerball ticket and a shared daydream.
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Today in History for Saturday, May 18, 2013
Today is Saturday, May 18, the 138th day of 2013. There are 227 days left in the year.
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Big retailers back safety accord in Bangladesh
Some of the world’s largest retailers have agreed to a first-of-its-kind pact to improve safety at some of Bangladesh’s garment factories following a building collapse that killed more than 1,100 workers in the country last month.
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Amtrak unveils locomotives to replace aging fleet
Amtrak has unveiled at a plant in California the first of 70 new locomotives, marking what the national passenger railroad service said it hopes will be a new era of better reliability, streamlined maintenance and more energy efficiency.
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Police ID suspect in New Orleans mass shooting
Police late Monday identified a 19-year-old man as a suspect in the shooting of about 20 people during a Mother’s Day parade in New Orleans, saying several people had identified him as the gunman captured by surveillance camera videos.
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Obama tries to swat down 2 swirling controversies
President Barack Obama tried to swat down a pair of brewing controversies Monday, denouncing as “outrageous” the targeting of conservative political groups by the federal IRS but angrily denying any administration cover-up after last year’s deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya.
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Gov’t obtains wide AP phone records in probe
The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.
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