This Day in History

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November 21

Today is, wait, whut? No Music Day? What the?! You know what? Don't even.

Every year, November 21 is World Hello Day. The objective is to say hello to at least ten people on the day. The message is for world leaders to use communication rather than force to settle conflicts. So...

Today also marks World Television Day. Not what you think.

There are 40 days remaining in 2016.

There are 33 days until Christmas.

Events

164 BC – Judas Maccabeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, restores the Temple in Jerusalem. This event is commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.

1386 – Timur of Samarkand captures and sacks the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, taking King Bagrat V of Georgia captive.

1676 – The Danish astronomer Ole Rømer presents the first quantitative measurements of the speed of light.

1905 – Albert Einstein's paper, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?", is published in the journal Annalen der Physik. This paper reveals the relationship between energy and mass. This leads to the mass–energy equivalence formula, E = mc².

1916 – Mines from SM U-73 sink the hospital ship HMHS Britannic, the largest ship lost in the First World War.

1922 – Rebecca Latimer Felton of Georgia becomes the first female United States Senator.

1945 – The United Auto Workers strike 92 General Motors plants in 50 cities to back up worker demands for a 30-percent raise.

1953 – The Natural History Museum, London announces that the "Piltdown Man" skull, initially believed to be one of the most important fossilized hominid skulls ever found, is a hoax.

1959 – American disc jockey Alan Freed, who had popularized the term "rock and roll" and music of that style, is fired from WABC-AM radio for refusing to deny allegations that he had participated in the payola scandal.

1969 – The first permanent ARPANET link is established between UCLA and SRI.

1970 – Vietnam War: Operation Ivory Coast: A joint United States Air Force and Army team raids the Sơn Tây prisoner-of-war camp in an attempt to free American prisoners of war thought to be held there.

1985 – United States Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard is arrested for spying after being caught giving Israel classified information on Arab nations. He is subsequently sentenced to life in prison.

1992 – A major tornado strikes the Houston, Texas area during the afternoon. Over the next two days the largest tornado outbreak ever to occur in the US during November spawns over 100 tornadoes before ending on the 23rd.

1998 – The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, one of the most successful and influential video games of all time, was released in Japan.

Births

1694 – Voltaire; 1729 – Josiah Bartlett; 1787 – Samuel Cunard (founded the Cunard Line); 1898 – René Magritte; 1919 – Steve Brodie; 1920 – Ralph Meeker ('Mike Hammer' in Kiss Me Deadly); 1920 – Stan Musial; 1924 – Joseph Campanella; 1924 – Christopher Tolkien (J.R.R.'s son and editor); 1937 – Marlo Thomas; 1940 – Dr. John (sang "Right Place, Wrong Time"); 1940 – Richard Marcinko; 1943 – Phil Bredesen; 1944 – Earl 'The Pearl' Monroe; 1944 – Harold Ramis; 1945 – Goldie Hawn; 1948 – George Zimmer (founded Men's Wearhouse, "You're going to like the way you look. I guarantee it."); 1950 – Gary Pihl(Sammy Hagar, Boston); 1950 – Livingston Taylor (James Taylor's brother); 1960 – Brian Ritchie(Violent Femmes); 1963 – Nicollette Sheridan(Knot's Landing); 1965 – Björk♪ ♫; 1967 – Ken Block; 1968 – Antonio Tarver; 1971 – Michael Strahan; 1972 – David Tua; 1975 – Jimmi Simpson; 1985 – Carly Rae Jepsen♪ ♫

Deaths

1924 – Florence Harding (36th FLOTUS); 1958 – Mel Ott; 1959 – Max Baer; 1963 – Robert Stroud, The Bird Man of Alcatraz; 1986 – Jerry Colonna♪ ♫; 1993 – Bill Bixby ("Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."); 2011 – Anne McCaffrey (wrote The Dragonriders of Pern book series); 2015 – Bob Foster