On This Day:
Saturday November 9, 2013 This is the 313th day of the year, with 52 days remaining in 2013. Fact of the Day: desert Deserts are vast areas where very little rain falls - typically less than four inches a year! Few places on earth are as stark and hostile as deserts. Few plants and animals can survive, and soil cannot develop because the ground is exposed to extremes of temperature. In the tropics, deserts can exceed 122 degrees Fahrenheit, while deserts at higher latitudes can be extremely cold. Deserts can shrink and expand as climatic conditions change. The world's great deserts lie deep within continents, far from the moisture of the ocean. The word desert comes from Latin desertum "abandoned, deserted." Many different types of desert exist - some mountainous and rocky, others pebbly, others just sand. The largest desert in the world is the Sahara, located in North Africa and covering 3,500,000 square miles.
Holidays Cambodia: National Day/Independence Day (from France 1949).
Feast day of St. Theodore the Recruit, St. Vitonus or Vanne, and St. Benignus or Benen.
Morocco: Wax Festival.
Events 1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte pulled off a coup and declared himself dictator of France.
1872 - A fire spread in windy weather, destroying nearly 800 buildings in Boston.
1906 - U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt departed for Panama aboard the battleship Louisiana, on the first official foreign trip in history by a U.S. president.
1918 - Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II announced he would abdicate, then fled to the Netherlands just two days before the signing of the Armistice.
1925 - The SS (Schutzstaffel or "Protection Squad)" was formed in Germany.
1935 - United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other labor leaders formed the Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO).
1938 - Bands of Nazis destroyed Jewish shops, synagogues, and beat, or arrested thousands of Jews (and kill 35) in Germany, Austria, and other Nazi-controlled areas. The attack, became known as Kristallnacht or "Crystal Night" for all the broken glass in the streets.
1965 - The Great Northeast Blackout took place in all of New York State, portions of seven neighboring states, and parts of eastern Canada, as they were hit by a series of power failures lasting up to 13.5 hours.
1972 - Bones discovered by the Leakey family of anthropologists set human origins 1 million years earlier than previously determined.
1983 - Alfred Heineken, beer brewer from Amsterdam, was kidnapped and held for a ransom of more than $10 million.
1988 - Gary Kasparov became world chess champion after beating Anatoly Karpov, the titleholder for 10 years, in Moscow.
1989 - East Germany opened it borders to West Germany and allowed thousands of its citizens to pass freely through the Berlin Wall. The next day, East German troops began dismantling the wall, and less than a year later, East Germany and West Germany were formally reunited.
2004 - Houston Astros pitcher Roger Clemens won his record seventh Cy Young award.
Births 1731 - Benjamin Banneker, American mathematician, clockmaker, surveyor, almanac author, and astronomer.
1841 - Edward VII, King of England, who succeeded his mother Victoria in 1901.
1853 - Stanford White, American architect of Madison Square Garden and Washington Arch.
1886 - Ed Wynn, American Emmy Award-winning actor.
1889 - Claude Rains, British actor.
1891 - Clifton Webb (Webb Hollenbeck), American actor.
1905 - J. William Fulbright, U.S. Senator and creator of Fulbright scholarships.
1913 - Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Kiessler), Austrian-born actress.
1918 - Spiro Agnew, 39th Vice President of the United States.
1934 - Carl Sagan, American Pulitzer Prize-winning author and astronomer.
1941 - Tom Fogerty, American musician, best known as the guitarist in Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Deaths 1880 - Edwin Drake, drilled the first oil well near Titusville, Pennsylvania.
1940 - Neville Chamberlain, British statesman and prime minister.
1953 - Dylan Thomas, Welsh poet.
1970 - Charles de Gaulle, French soldier and statesman.
2003 - Art Carney, American comedian and actor.
2005 - K. R. Narayanan, President of India.
2006 - Ed Bradley, American television journalist.
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