November 9

Birthdays:

1941 ~ Tom Fogerty (né Thomas Richard Fogerty; d. Sept. 6, 1990), American singer and guitarist for Creedence Clearwater Revival.  He died at age 48.

1936 ~ Mary Travers (née Mary Allin Travers; d. Sept. 16, 2009), American folksinger and member of the trio, Peter, Paul and Mary.  She died of leukemia at age 72.

1934 ~ Carl Sagan (né Carl Edward Sagan; d. Dec. 20, 1996), American astronomer and writer.  He died of cancer at age 62.

1929 ~ Imre Kertész (d. Mar. 31, 2016), Hungarian writer and recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature.  He was a Holocaust survivor and his writings reflect his experiences.  He is best known for his quasi-autobiographical novel, Fatelessness.  He died of Parkinson’s disease at age 86.

1928 ~ Anne Sexton (née Anne Gray Harvey; d. Oct. 4, 1974), American poet.  She was from Massachusetts.  She died by suicide about a month before her 46^th birthday.

1924 ~ Joy Page (née Joy Cerrette Paige; d. Apr. 18, 2008), American actress best known for her role as Annina Brandel in the film Casablanca.  She was 83 years old.

1922 ~ Imre Lakatos (d. Feb. 2, 1974), Hungarian mathematician.  He fled to England during World War II.  He died of a heart attack at age 51.

1918 ~ Spiro T. Agnew (né Spiro Theodore Agnew; d. Sept. 17, 1996), 39^th Vice President of the United States.  He served under President Richard Nixon.  He resigned the Office following an investigation of extortion, tax fraud, bribery and conspiracy.  He died at age 77.

1915 ~ Sargent Shriver (né Robert Sargent Shriver, Jr.; d. Jan. 18, 2011), American politician who married into the Kennedy clan.  He was married to Eunice Kennedy.  He was the Kennedy in-law who battled poverty.  He also served as the 21^st United States Ambassador to France.  He died at age 95.

1914 ~ Hedy Lamarr (née Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler; d. Jan. 19, 2000), Austrian actress, mathematician and inventor.  She died at age 85.

1897 ~ Ronald George Wreyford Norrish (d. June 7, 1978), English chemist and recipient of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  He died at age 80.

1886 ~ Ed Wynn (né Isaiah Edwin Leopold; d. June 19, 1966), American actor, best known for his role in Mary Poppins.  He died at age 79 of throat cancer.

1885 ~ Hermann Weyl (né Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl; d. Dec. 8, 1955), German mathematician.  He died a month after his 70^th birthday.

1885 ~ Theodor Kaluza (né Theodor Franz Eduard Kaluza; d. Jan. 19, 1954), German mathematician.  He died at age 68.

1880 ~ Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (d. Feb. 8, 1960), British architect and designer of the iconic red telephone box.  He died at age 79.

1871 ~ Florence R. Sabin (née Florence Rina Sabin; d. Oct. 3, 1953), American medical scientist.  She was the first woman to hold a full professorship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.  She died at age 81.

1853 ~ Stanford White (d. June 25, 1906), American architect.  He was murdered by Henry Thaw because of his affair with Evelyn Nesbit, Thaw’s wife.  He was 52 years old at the time of his death.

1841 ~ King Edward VII of the United Kingdom (d. May 6, 1910).  He was the eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.  He became King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in January 1901.  He ruled as King until his death in May 1910.  He was 68 years old.

1818 ~ Ivan Turgenev (d. Sept. 3, 1883), Russian novelist.  He died at age 64.

1801 ~ Gail Borden, II (d. Jan. 11, 1874), American publisher and inventor.  He invented condensed milk.  After his death, the name of his company, the New York Condensed Milk Company, was renamed the Borden Dairy Company.  He died at age 72.

1731 ~ Benjamin Banneker (d. Oct. 9, 1806), African-American astronomer, surveyor, naturalist, almanac author and farmer.  A school in New Orleans, Louisiana is named in his honor.  He died a month before his 75^th birthday.

1683 ~ King George II of Great Britain (d. Oct. 25, 1760).  He ruled from June 1727 until his death in October 1760.  He died about 2 weeks before his 77^th birthday.

1389 ~ Isabella of Valois (d. Sept. 13, 1409), Queen consort of England.  She was the second wife of King Richard II of England.  She was married to Richard II at age 7 and was widowed at age 10.  She later married Charles, Duke of Orleans.  She died in childbirth at age 19.

Events that Changed the World:

2019 ~ The Louisiana State University football team beat the University of Alabama team, in Alabama, in a score of 46 ~ 41.

2005 ~ Suicide bombers attacked three hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing at least 60 people.

1998 ~ Capital punishment was abolished in the United Kingdom.

1994 ~ The chemical element Darmstadtium was discovered.  Its atomic number is 110.  It is an extremely radioactive synthetic element.  It was created in Darmstadt, Germany, hence its name.

1989 ~ The Berlin Wall was torn down, thus marking the beginning of the reunification of East and West Germany.

1985 ~ Garry Kasparov (b. 1963) of the Soviet Union became the youngest World Chess Champion at age 22 when he beat Anatoly Karpov (b. 1951).

1967 ~ The Rolling Stone magazine began publication.

1965 ~ Several northeastern United States and parts Canada were hit by a series of blackouts that lasted over 13 hours.

1960 ~ Robert McNamara (1916 ~ 2009) was named President of the Ford Motor Company.  He was the first non-Ford family member to serve in that office.  He resigned a month later, however, to become John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense.

1953 ~ Cambodia gained its independence from France.

1938 ~ The Nazi pogrom known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of the Broken Glass, occurred, when the Nazis attached Jewish synagogues and businesses throughout Germany.  The rioting was initiated following the death of Nazi diplomat Ernest vom Rath (1909 ~ 1938) by gunshot wounds inflicted by Jewish resistance fighter Herschel Grynszpan (1921 ~ 1942).

1918 ~ Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859 ~ 1942) abdicated the German throne after the German Revolution and Germany was proclaimed a Republic.

1913 ~ The Great Lakes Storm of 1913, which was the most destructive natural disaster to hit the Great Lakes.  Nineteen ships were destroyed and over 250 people were killed.

1907 ~ The Cullinan Diamond was presented to King Edward VII (1841 ~ 1910) as a birthday gift.

1906 ~ President Theodore Roosevelt (1858 ~ 1919) became the first sitting President to make an official visit outside the United States, when he visited Panama to see the progress on the Panama Canal.

1887 ~ The United States received the rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

1872 ~ The Great Boston fire of 1872 began.  The fire burned for 12 hours, but destroyed over 770 buildings.  Despite the enormity of the fire, only 13 people were killed as its result.

1720 ~ The Yehudah he-Hasid synagogue in Jerusalem was burned down by Arabs, leading to the expulsion of the Ashkenazim from the city.

1688 ~ William of Orange (1650 ~ 1702) captured Exeter during the Glorious Revolution.

1620 ~ The Pilgrims on the Mayflower are believed to have sighted land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

1520 ~ Danish King Christian II (1481 ~ 1559) executed dozens of people during the Stockholm Bloodbath after invading Sweden.  The bloodbath had begun a few days earlier.

1494 ~ The de’Medici family was expelled from Florence, Italy.  The family returned to Florence in 1512.

1282 ~ Pope Martin IV (1210 ~ 1285) excommunicated King Peter III of Aragon (1239 ~ 1285).

694 ~ At the Seventeenth Council of Toledo, Visigoth King Egica of Hispania accused the Jews of aiding Muslims in Hispania.  He sentenced all the Jews in the area to slavery.

Good-Byes:

2015 ~ Jack Yufe (b. Jan. 11, 1933), the Jewish man who found his identical ex-Nazi twin.  He and his brother, Oskar Stöhr (d. 1997), were born to a German Catholic mother and a Romanian Jewish father.  Their parents split when the boys were 6 months old.  Oskar lived with his mother in Germany, while Jack lived with his father who settled in the United States.  Jack was raised Jewish and for a time served in the Israeli navy.  Oskar, who was raised Catholic and joined the Hitler Youth, kept his Jewish identity a secret.  The two met up again as young adults in 1954.  Jack was 82 at the time of his death.

2012 ~ Valerie Eliot (née Esme Valerie Fletcher, b. Aug. 17, 1926), British loyal wife who guarded T.S. Eliot’s legacy.  She was his second wife and was 38 years younger than her husband.  She died at age 86.

2012 ~ James L. Stone (né James Lamar Stone; b. Dec. 27, 1922), American soldier who fought in the Korean War and who had to wait for his rare honor.  He earned the Medal of Honor in 1952 but rarely spoke of his wartime.  He died at age 89.

2012 ~ Sergey Nikolsky (b. Apr. 30, 1905), Russian mathematician.  He died at age 107.

2011 ~ Har Gobind Khorana (b. Jan. 9, 1922), Indian-born American biochemist and recipient of the 1968 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.  He died at age 89.

2009 ~ Earl Cooley (b. Sept. 25, 1911), the American firefighter who pioneered smoke jumping.  He died at age 98.

2008 ~ Miriam Makeba (née Zenzile Miriam Makeba; b. Mar. 4, 1932), South African singer known as “Mama Africa.”  She died at age 76.

2006 ~ Ed Bradley (né Edward Rudolph Bradley, Jr.; b. June 22, 1941), African-American journalist.  He died at age 65 from leukemia.

2004 ~ Stieg Larsson (né Karl Stig-Erland Larsson; b. Aug. 15, 1954), Swedish writer, best known for his The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, series.  He died of a heart attack at age 50.

2003 ~ Art Carney (né Arthur William Matthew Carney; b. Nov. 4, 1918), American actor.  He died in Chester, Connecticut 5 days after his 85^th birthday.

1988 ~ John N. Mitchell (né John Newton Mitchell; b. Sept. 15, 1913), 67^th United States Attorney General.  He served under President Richard Nixon.  He died of a heart attack at age 75.

1970 ~ General Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle (b. Nov. 22, 1890), French general and 1^st President of the 5^th Republic of France.  He served as President from 1958 until 1969.  He died 13 days before his 80^th birthday.

1968 ~ Antonio Porchia (b. Nov. 13, 1885), Argentine poet.  He died 4 days before his 88^th birthday.

1953 ~ Dylan Thomas (né Dylan Marlais Thomas; b. Oct. 27, 1914), Welsh poet.  He died 2 weeks after his 39^thbirthday.

1952 ~ Chaim Weizmann (b. Nov. 27, 1874), 1^st President of the State of Israel.  He served as President from February 1949 until his death 3 years later.  He died in Office just 18 days before his 78^th birthday.

1940 ~ Neville Chamberlain (né Arthur Neville Chamberlain; b. Mar. 18, 1869), Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1837 ~ 1940.  He is best known for his attempt to “maintain peace for our time” through appeasement of Nazi Germany for signing the Munich Agreement, which conceded the Sudentenland region of Bohemia to Germany.  He died at age 71, just 6 months after leaving Office.

1937 ~ Ramsay MacDonald (né James MacDonald Ramsey; b. Oct. 12, 1866), Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.  He was the first Labor Party Prime Minister.  He served for two terms, first from January 1924 until November 1924, and then from June 1929 until June 1935.  Both terms were during the reign of King George V.  He died less than a month after his 71^st birthday.

1935 ~ Walter L. Fisher (né Walter Lowrie Fisher; b. July 4, 1862), 25^th United States Secretary of the Interior.  He served under Presidents William Taft and Woodrow Wilson.  He was in Office from March 1911 until March 1913.  He died at age 73.

1924 ~ Henry Cabot Lodge (b. May 12, 1850), American politician and United States Senator from Massachusetts.  He died following a stroke suffered after gall bladder surgery.  He was 74 years old.

1856 ~ John M. Clayton (né John Middleton Clayton; b. July 24, 1796), 18^th United States Secretary of State.  He served under Presidents Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore from March 1849 until July 1850.  He died at age 60.

1854 ~ Elizabeth Hamilton (née Elizabeth Schuyler, b. Aug. 9, 1757), American wife of Alexander Hamilton.  She died at age 97.

1844 ~ Marie Harel (b. Apr. 28, 1761), French cheesemaker.  She is credited with inventing Camembert Cheese.  She died at age 83.

1830 ~ Jan Śniadecki (b. Aug. 29, 1756), Polish mathematician.  The lunar crater Sniadecki on the moon is named in his honor.  He died at age 72.

1308 ~ Otto III, King of Hungary and Croatia (b. Feb. 11, 1261).  He ruled Hungary from December 6, 1305 until he abdicated in 1308.  He was the Duke of Lower Bavaria from February 2, 1290 until his death in November 1312.  He died at age 51.

1187 ~ Gao Zong (b. June 12, 1107), 10^th Chinese Emperor of the Song dynasty.  He reigned from his 20^th birthday in 1027 until March 1129, when he abdicated the throne in favor of his son.  He died at age 80.

959 ~ Constantine VII (b. May 905), Byzantine emperor.  He is believed to have been about 54 at the time of his death.