On This Day November 28th

 

OTD

November 28th is the 332nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 33 days remain until the end of the year.

 

 Events

1520 – After 38 days, an expedition under the command of Ferdinand Magellan completed the first passage through the Strait of Magellan and entered the Pacific Ocean.

1582 – In Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway pay a £40 (equivalent to £12,261 in 2021) bond instead of posting wedding bans, which enables them to marry immediately.

1660 – At Gresham College, twelve men, including Christopher Wren, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, and Sir Robert Moray, decide to find what is later known as the Royal Society.

1785 – The first Treaty of Hopewell was signed, by which the United States acknowledged Cherokee lands in what is now East Tennessee.

1811 – Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73, premieres at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig.

1895 – The first American automobile race occurred over 54 miles from Chicago's Jackson Park to Evanston, Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours.

1912 – Albania declares its independence from the Ottoman Empire.

1925 – The Grand Ole Opry begins broadcasting as the WSM Barn Dance in Nashville, Tennessee.

1942 – In Boston, Massachusetts, a fire in the Cocoanut Grove nightclub kills 492 people.

1964 – Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 4 probe toward Mars.

1989 – Cold War: Velvet Revolution: In the face of protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announced it would give up its monopoly on political power.

 

Birthdays

1628 – John Bunyan, English preacher, theologian, and author (d. 1688)

1682 – Betty Parris, the woman from Salem in Massachusetts, accused others of being witches (d. 1760)

1757 – William Blake, English poet, and painter (d. 1827)

1837 – John Wesley Hyatt, American engineer (d. 1920)

1866 – Henry Bacon, American architect, designed the Lincoln Memorial (d. 1924)

1928 – Arthur Melvin Okun, American economist and academic (d. 1980)

1929 – Berry Gordy, American songwriter and producer, founded Motown Records

1942 – Paul Warfield, American football player and sportscaster

1956 – Fiona Armstrong, English-Scottish journalist and author

1962 – Matt Cameron, American drummer and songwriter

1990 – Bradley Smith, English motorcycle racer

 

 

Holiday Spotlight

Red Planet Day

  Around 400 BC, the Babylonians began keeping records of celestial events. They called Mars “Nergal,” The King of Conflicts, ostensibly because of the association between the planet’s color and the blood spilled during armed encounters with enemies. The ancient Greeks and Romans must have also made the association because in both their pantheons, Ares and Mars, respectively, were known as the gods of war.

 As time passed and it became possible that man might one day travel among the stars, authors and filmmakers availed themselves of the sense of wonder surrounding the Red Planet and created works of science fiction and just plain fancy, imagining walking on that rusty ground.

 One big question was whether Mars held good old-fashioned water, the source of any life on a planet. Flyby missions detected polar ice caps. Ancient “canals” were shown to be an optical illusion, but that didn’t stop many believers from presuming that there had previously been civilizations on the fourth planet from the sun.

 It still stands to reason that imaginations have blossomed around the notion of life on Mars, from the classic novel “Stranger In a Strange Land” by 1950’s author Robert Heinlein to 2015’s Ridley Scott film starring Matt Damon, “The Martian.”

 During this century, orbiter and rover missions sent back more and more detailed information about Mars until NASA and its international counterparts began to plan manned missions to Mars. National Red Planet Day commemorates the launch of the Mariner 4 spacecraft on November 28, 1964. Mariner 4 performed the first successful flyby of Mars, returning the first pictures of the Martian surface.

 

Other Include

Albania Independence Day

Giving Tuesday

It's Letter Writing Day

Make Your Head Day

National French Toast Day

Turkey Leftover Day