First Confidential

THIS DAY IN HISTORY - NOVEMBER 20th

Margot Fonteyn, Quote

“The one important thing I have learned over the years is the difference between taking one's work seriously and taking one's self seriously. The first is imperative and the second is disastrous.”

~ Margot Fonteyn

Wikiquote (Margot Fonteyn (Dame Margot Fonteyn de Arias, DBE (May 18, 1919 – February 21, 1991), an English ballerina of the 20th century. She is widely regarded as one of the greatest classical ballet dancers of all time.)

This Day in History

November 20th, 284

Roman Empire Decline and Fall of Rome

Roman Empire:
284 - Diocletian is chosen as Roman Emperor.

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 20th, 762

China: the world's most populous country, covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, second-largest country by land area (China from NASA Wordwind Satellite; Great Wall China, credit National Geographic; LongJi Terrace, credit National Geographic; Great Bear Rainforest, credit Paul Nicklen, National Geographic; Platoons of clay soldiers were buried with China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di, (required a labor force of 700,000 to build), credit O. Louis Mazzatenta, National Geographic)

China - Tang Dynasty:
762 - An Shi Rebellion; and Huihe tribe recaptured Luoyang from the rebels.

Wikipedia  Photo: China from NASA Wordwind Satellite; © Great Wall of China, credit National Geographic; LongJi Terrace, credit National Geographic; Great Bear Rainforest, credit Paul Nicklen, National Geographic; Platoons of clay soldiers were buried with China's first emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di, (required a labor force of 700,000 to build), credit O. Louis Mazzatenta, National Geographic.

November 20th, 1861

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 American Civil War: Battle of Antietam; Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland American Civil War: American Civil War: First Battle Between Ironclads; CSS Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads

American Civil War:
1861 - Secession ordinance is filed by Kentucky's Confederate government.

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 20th, 1917

World War I: Collage

World War I:
1917 - Battle of Cambrai; British forces make early progress in an attack on German positions but are later pushed back.
1917 - Ukraine is declared a republic.

Wikipedia  Photo: Trenches on the Western Front; a British Mark IV Tank crossing a trench; Royal Navy battleship HMS Irresistible sinking after striking a mine at the Battle of the Dardanelles; a Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks, and German Albatros D.III biplanes. National Archives and Records Administration.

November 20th, 1923

First assembly of the League of Nations is held in Geneva

Inflation in the Weimar Republic: First assembly of the German Rentenmark replaces the Papiermark as the official currency of Germany at the exchange rate of one Rentenmark to One Trillion (One Billion on the long scale) Papiermark.

Wikipedia  Photo: Aftermath of World War I; People facing starvation, workers being paid twice a day, living in unheated houses because there weren’t enough coal, and peoples’ savings in banks weren’t even valuable enough to buy a slice of bread or coal. When getting worse, a new government was formed by Gustav Stresemann, one of Germany’s powerful politicians. He knew that hyperinflation should have an end because it wasn’t right to have people suffering from thousands of bad effects. credit jspivey.wikispaces (Hyperinflation - Gustav Stresemann).

November 20th, 1940

World War II: Second firestorm raid on Germany, the Royal Air Force conducts an air raid on the town of Kassel, killing 10,000 and rendering 150,000 homeless World War II: Battle of Leyte Gulf; Battle of Leyte Gulf; The first kamikaze attack: A Japanese plane carrying a 200-kilogram (440 lb) bomb attacks HMAS Australia off Leyte Island

World War II:
1940 - Hungary becomes a signatory of the Tripartite Pact, officially joining the Axis Powers.
1943 - Battle of Tarawa (Operation Galvanic); United States Marines land on Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands and suffer heavy fire from Japanese shore guns and machine guns.

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.

November 20th, 1945

Post World War II: Auschwitz Concentration Camp; Nuremberg Trials - View of the defendants in the dock at the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg; Chief American prosecutor Robert H. Jackson addresses the Nuremberg court, November 20, 1945

Post World War II:
1945 - Nuremberg Trials; Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg.
1952 - Slánský Trials; a series of Stalinist and anti-Semitic show trials in Czechoslovakia.

Wikipedia  Photo: Auschwitz Concentration Camp; Nuremberg Trials - View of the defendants in the dock at the International Military Tribunal trial of war criminals at Nuremberg; Chief American prosecutor Robert H. Jackson addresses the Nuremberg court, November 20, 1945.

November 20th, 1969

Vietnam War: Hovering U.S. Army helicopters</a> pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border, in Vietnam on March 1965

Vietnam War:
1969 - The Plain Dealer publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam.

Wikipedia  Photo: Vietnam War: Hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border, in Vietnam on March 1965. (AP Photo / Horst Faas) / Boston Globe

November 20th, 1977

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel, when he meets Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and speaks before the Knesset in Jerusalem, seeking a permanent peace settlement

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel when he meets Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin and speaks before the Knesset in Jerusalem, seeking a permanent peace settlement.

Wikipedia  Photo: Anwar Sadat and Menahem Begin at the U.S. Capitol for Jimmy Carter's Speech on the Camp David Accords.

November 20th, 1979

Grand Mosque Seizure: About 200 Sunni Muslims revolt in Saudi Arabia at the site of the Kaaba in Mecca during the pilgrimage and take about 6000 hostages. The Saudi government receives help from French special forces to put down the uprising

Grand Mosque Seizure: About 200 Sunni Muslims revolt in Saudi Arabia at the site of the Kaaba in Mecca during the pilgrimage and take about 6000 hostages. The Saudi government receives help from French special forces to put down the uprising.

Wikipedia  Photo: Masjid al-Haram (Mecca) Saudi Arabia.

November 20th, 1980

Lake Peigneur drains into an underlying salt deposit. A misplaced Texaco oil probe had been drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, causing water to flow down into the mine, eroding the edges of the hole

Lake Peigneur drains into an underlying salt deposit. A misplaced Texaco oil probe had been drilled into the Diamond Crystal Salt Mine, causing water to flow down into the mine, eroding the edges of the hole. The resulting whirlpool sucked the drilling platform, several barges, houses and trees thousands of feet down to the bottom of the dissolving salt deposit.

Wikipedia  Photo: The backwards flow of the normally outflowing Delcambre Canal temporarily created the biggest waterfall in Louisiana.

November 20th, 1989

Cold War: often dated from 1947–1991, was a sustained state of political and military tension between the powers of the Western world, led by the United States and its NATO allies, and the communist world, led by the Soviet Union, its satellite states and allies

Cold War:
1989 - Velvet Revolution; in Czechoslovakia, a student demonstration in Prague swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.

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 20th, 2008

Critical failures in the US financial system began to build up after mid-September, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches its lowest level since 1997

Financial crisis of 2007–2008: After critical failures in the U.S. financial system began to build up after mid-September, the Dow Jones Industrial Averagereaches its lowest level since 1997.

Wikipedia  Photo: Financial crisis of 2007–2008; considered by many economists to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s - resulting in financial institution bailouts, evictions, foreclosures and prolonged unemployment.