November 27, 1835: James Pratt and John Smith are hanged in London; they are the last two to be executed for sodomy in England.
November 28, 1895: The first American automobile race takes place over the 54 miles from Chicago’s Jackson Park to Evanston Illinois. Frank Duryea wins in approximately 10 hours (!).
November 28, 1942: Fire engulfed the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston, killing 492 people in the deadliest nightclub blaze ever. It led to the adoption of strict fire laws nationwide including outward opening exit doors, panic bars on exit doors, and fire-resistant decor.
November 29, 1961: Enos, a chimpanzee, is launched into space. The spacecraft orbits the Earth twice and splashes down off the coast of Puerto Rico.
November 30, 1954: In Oak Grove, Alabama, the Hodges meteorite crashes through a roof and hits Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges taking an afternoon nap; this is the only documented case in the Western Hemisphere of a human being hit by a rock from space.
November 30, 1667: Author Jonathan Swift was born. Anyone got dinner plans tonight?
December 1, 1952: The New York Daily News reports the news of Christine Jorgensen, the first notable case of sex reassignment surgery. She becomes an instant celebrity.
December 2, 1954: The U.S. Senate votes 65 to 22 to censure Joseph McCarthy for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute”.
December 2, 1954: The U.S. Senate votes 65 to 22 to censure Joseph McCarthy for “conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute”
My, how times have changed…
-“BB”-
December 3, 1967: In Cape Town, South Africa, a transplant team headed by Christiaan Barnard carries out the first heart transplant on a human (53-year-old Louis Washkansky).
December 4, 1872: The crewless American brigantine Mary Celeste, drifting in the Atlantic, is discovered by the Canadian brig Dei Gratia. The ship has been abandoned for nine days but is only slightly damaged. Her master Benjamin Briggs and all nine others known to have been on board are never accounted for.
There are those ‘real ghost stories’ you’re told as a kid… Mary Celeste, that town in Britain visited by Satan, etc. For about a year or two, I just drank this shit up… Many of us likely read the same kind of books/websites and went through this childhood phase as I did, I’m sure.
And there are rational explanations for all these, most of which I’ve debunked. No problem.
… yet I prefer to not know what happened on the Mary Celeste. I just want the theory of the moment (madness, murder, pirates, white slavery, whatever) to take a hold in my imagination and just go with it.
December 4, 1956: Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins gathered for the first and only time for a jam session at Sun Records in Memphis, Tennessee,
December 5, 1952: The “Great Smog”: A cold fog descends upon London, combining with air pollution, and killing at least 12,000 in the weeks and months that follow.
December 5, 1945: 6 planes and 27 lives are lost in the mysterious Bermuda Triangle “Flight 19 Mystery.”
December 6, 1912: The Nefertiti Bust is discovered. Owing to the work, Nefertiti has become one of the most famous women of the ancient world, and an icon of feminine beauty.
December 6, 1917: The Great Halifax Explosion kills approximately 2000 and injures another 9000. It was the largest man-made explosion ever prior to the Atomic Age.
December 6, 1865: The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery, was ratified as Georgia became the 27th state to endorse it.
December 7, 1946: The Winecoff Hotel fire in downtown Atlanta kills 119 and leaves another 65 injured. It is the deadliest Hotel fire in US history.
December 7, 1987: Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771, a British Aerospace 146-200A, crashes near Paso Robles, California, killing all 43 on board, after a disgruntled passenger shoots his ex-boss traveling on the flight, then shoots both pilots and steers the plane into the ground.