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“In a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”
~ Abraham Lincoln
Wikiquote (Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States and led the country during the American Civil War.)
(Abraham Lincoln, “Gettysburg Address” - delivered November 19, 1863) - (Daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln at age 54, 1863)
November 19th, 461
Roman Empire:
461 - Libius Severus is declared emperor of the Western Roman Empire. The real power is in the hands of the magister militum Ricimer.
Wikipedia Image: Relief from a 3rd-century sarcophagus depicting a battle between Romans and Germanic warriors; the central figure is perhaps the emperor Hostilian / Depiction of the Menorah on the Arch of Titus in Rome.
November 19th, 1095
Crusades
1095 - The Council of Clermont, called by Pope Urban II to discuss sending the First Crusade to the Holy Land begins.
Wikipedia Image: The Siege of Antioch, from a 15th-century miniature; After the successful siege of Jerusalem in 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade, became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem; Baldwin I of Jerusalem; Medieval image of Peter the Hermit, leading knights, soldiers and women toward Jerusalem during the First Crusade; The Battle of Ager Sanguinis, 1337 miniature; Pope Innocent III excommunicating the Albigensians, Massacre against the Albigensians by the crusaders; The capture of Jerusalem marked the First Crusade's success.
November 19th, 1493
Christopher Columbus goes ashore on an island he first saw the day before. He names it San Juan Bautista (later renamed Puerto Rico).
Wikipedia Paintings: Christopher Columbus' fleet of three ships sets sail from Spain in 1492. credit Kean Collection / Hulton Archive / Getty Images; Christopher Columbus pointing to land in the New World; Romantic Painting of Christopher Columbus arriving to the Americas Primer desembarco de Cristóbal Colón en América, by Dióscoro Puebla 1862.
November 19th, 1794
United States and Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay's Treaty, which attempts to resolve some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.
Wikipedia Painting: Chief Justice John Jay portrait by Gilbert Stuart; Jay's Treaty.
November 19th, 1863
American Civil War:
1863 - United States President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the military cemetery ceremony at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Wikipedia Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● First Battle Between Ironclads: CSS Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.
November 19th, 1912
First Balkan War: Battle of Monastir; The Serbian Army captures Bitola, ending the five-century-long Ottoman rule of Macedonia.
Wikipedia Photo: Macedonia; The church of St. John the Theologian–Kaneo perches on the rocks above placid Ohrid Lake, by Sarah Leen, National Geographic.
November 19th, 1916
Samuel Goldwyn Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures.
Wikipedia Photo: Goldwyn's Leo the Lion logo, has become perhaps the most famous movie studio logo in the world.
November 19th, 1941
World War II:
1941 - Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran; The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 Germans.
1942 - Battle of Stalingrad; Operation Uranus - Soviet Union forces under General Georgy Zhukov launch counterattacks at Stalingrad, turning the tide of the battle in the Soviet's favor.
1944 - United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling US$14 billion in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.
1944 - Battle of Vianden; Thirty members of the Luxembourgish resistance defend the town of Vianden against a larger Waffen-SS attack.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
November 19th, 1943
World War II: Holocaust;
1943 - Nazis liquidate Janowska concentration camp in Lemberg (Lviv), western Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews after a failed uprising and mass escape attempt.
Wikipedia Photo: World War II, The Holocaust. Sources: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum USHMM, History 1900s, Internet Masters of Education Technology IMET, Techno Friends, Veterans Today, Concern.
November 19th, 1950
United States General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes supreme commander of NATO.
Wikipedia Photo: Dwight D. Eisenhower is pictured as a brigadier general in about 1941–42. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
November 19th, 1959
Ford Motor Company announces the discontinuation of the unpopular Edsel.
Wikipedia Photo: 1958 Edsel Convertible
November 19th, 1969
Apollo Program: Apollo 12; NASA astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the "Ocean of Storms") and become the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon.
Wikipedia Photo: Apollo Program: Apollo 11 first manned Moon landing and the first walk on the surface on the moon. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle. Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Sea of Tranquility for two and a half hours while crewmate Michael Collins orbited above in the command module Columbia.
The Blue Marble is a famous photograph of the Earth, taken on December 7, 1972, by the crew of the Apollo 17 spacecraft, at a distance of about 45,000 kilometres (28,000 mi).
November 19th, 1979
Islamic revolution of Iran, Iran hostage crisis:
1979 - Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini orders the release of 13 female and black American hostages being held at the U.S. Embassy in Iran.
Wikipedia Photo: The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979, to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American Embassy in Tehran in support of the Iranian Revolution. President Carter called the hostages "victims of terrorism and anarchy", adding that the "United States will not yield to blackmail". The hostages were formally released into United States custody the following day, just minutes after the new American president Ronald Reagan was sworn into office.
November 19th, 1985
Cold War:
1985 - In Geneva United States President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.
Wikipedia Photo: Lockheed C-130 Hercules; RAF Menwith Hill, a large site in the United Kingdom, part of ECHELON and the UKUSA Agreement; New Zealand nuclear test, British nuclear tests near the Malden and Christmas Islands in the mid-Pacific in 1957 and 1958; Nevada nuclear tests, Nevada Division of Environmental Protection Bureau of Federal Facilities.
November 19th, 1985
Pennzoil wins a US$10.53 billion judgment against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States, stemming from Texaco executing a contract to buy Getty Oil after Pennzoil had entered into an unsigned, yet still binding, buyout contract with Getty.
Wikipedia Photo: Pennzoil wins judgment against Texaco, in the largest civil verdict in the history of the United States.
November 19th, 1998
Monica Lewinsky scandal: United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against United States President Bill Clinton.
Wikipedia Photo: Monica Lewinsky scandal, Time Cover Story "If it were not for Monica Lewinsky, I think we would have Social Security ..."
November 19th, 1998
Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of the Artist Without Beard sells at auction for US$71.5 million.
Wikipedia Painting: Vincent van Gogh, Self-portrait without beard, end September 1889, (F 525), Oil on canvas, 40 × 31 cm., Private collection. This was Van Gogh's last self portrait. Given as a birthday gift to his mother.
November 19th, 2002
The oil tanker Prestige splits in half and sinks off the coast of Galician, Spain , releasing over 20 million US gallons (76,000 m³) of oil in the largest environmental disaster in Spanish and Portuguese history.
Wikipedia Photo: The Prestige oil tanker sank off the Galician coast carrying 77,000 tonness of fuel oil in 2002. Associated Press.
November 19th, 2010
Pike River Mine disaster: The first of four explosions takes place at the Pike River Mine in New Zealand; 29 people are killed in the nation's worst mining disaster since 1914.
Wikipedia Photo: Auckland in the North Island of New Zealand ● Satellite image of New Zealand ● The Church of the Good Shepherd stands on the shore of New Zealand's Lake Tekapo, credit Thomas Young, National Geographics ● Milford Sound, credit Madan Paul, National Geographics ● Fiordland National Park, credit Brian J. Skerry, National Geographics ● Hunua Falls New Zealand.