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“Fame is something which must be won; honor is something which must not be lost.”
~ Arthur Schopenhauer
Wikiquote (Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860) a German philosopher best known for his book, The World as Will and Representation, in which he claimed that our world is driven by a continually dissatisfied will, continually seeking satisfaction.)
November 21st, 164 BC
Temple in Jerusalem:
164 BC - Judas Maccabaeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean, restores the Temple in Jerusalem - this event is commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.
Wikipedia Image: Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans (1850 painting by David Roberts); A model of Herod's Temple adjacent to the Shrine of the Book exhibit at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
November 21st, 235
Roman Empire:
235 - Pope Anterus succeeds Pontian as the nineteenth pope. During the persecutions of emperor Maximinus Thrax he is martyred.
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 21st, 1386
Timur's invasions of Georgia: Timur of Samarkand captures and sacks the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, taking King Bagrat V of Georgia captive.
Wikipedia Photo: Tbilisi (Georgia) Gergeti Trinity Church, below Mount Kazbegi, in Georgia; Metekhi Church, Tbilisi, Georgia
November 21st, 1620
Plymouth Colony:
1620 - settlers sign the Mayflower Compact.
Wikipedia Painting: "Mayflower", The Granger Collection, New York 1905; Pilgrims landing on Cape Cod in November of 1620; The Pilgrims on the Speedwell; Mayflower arrived inside the tip of Cape Cod fishhook, November 1620 (satellite image, 1997); Landing of the Pilgrims by Michele Felice Cornè, circa 1805. Displayed in the White House.
November 21st, 1783
In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, Marquis d'Arlandes, make the first untethered hot air balloon.
Wikipedia Image: First untethered voyage by Pilâtre de Rozier and d'Arlandes, November 21, 1783. Illustration from the late 19th Century
November 21st, 1789
North Carolina ratifies the United States Constitution and is admitted as the 12th U.S. state.
Wikipedia Photo: North Carolina is a state in the Southeastern United States, bordering South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east.
November 21st, 1861
American Civil War:
1861 - Confederate President Jefferson Davis appoints Judah Benjamin secretary of war.
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 21st, 1877
Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a machine that can record and play sound.
Wikipedia Photo: Thomas Edison (right) demonstrating the kinetograph (motion picture camera), with the assistance of George Eastman, who helped develop the film used in the early motion picture machines.
November 21st, 1894
First Sino-Japanese War:
1894 - Port Arthur massacre (China); Port Arthur, Manchuria falls to the Japanese, a decisive victory, after which Japanese troops massacre the remaining inhabitants of the city.
Wikipedia Image: Map: South China Sea, credit Middlebury.edu; Japanese troops during the Sino-Japanese war, credit Cultural-China History.
November 21st, 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.
Wikipedia Picture: Albert Einstein Nobel Prize in Physics; Einstein at the age of three in 1882; The mathematician, physicist 1947; Einstein's theory of special relativity; Albert and Elsa Einstein in 1933; Conrad Habicht, Olympia Academy founders, Maurice Solovine and Einstein.
November 21st, 1916
World War I:
1916 - A mine explodes and sinks HMHS Britannic in the Aegean Sea.
1918 - Lwów pogrom (1918) takes place in Lwów (now Lviv); over three days, at least 50 Jews and 270 Ukrainian Christians are killed by Poles.
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 21st, 1920
Irish War of Independence:
1920 - "Bloody Sunday;" In Dublin, 31 people are killed in what became known as "Bloody Sunday" - this included fourteen British informants, fourteen Irish civilians and three Irish Republican Army prisoners.
Wikipedia Photo: British troops in Dublin City 1920's during the Irish War of Independence; Not everyone was a separatist in Ireland in 1919. Here the Union Jack flies over Trinity College at the Victory Parade for the First World War in Dublin; It believe the story behind the headlinesin the photo was with the shooting by members of Michael Collins squad of a high-ranking official of the G. N. R. (The Great Northern Railway) on the Southside of Dublin.
November 21st, 1927
Columbine Mine Massacre: Serene, Colorado; Striking coal miners are allegedly attacked with machine guns by a detachment of state police dressed in civilian clothes.
Wikipedia Photo: Walsenburg strikers in front of the IWW hall where two Wobblies were killed by state police an hour earlier, January 12, 1928. credit Wayne State University, provided by Eric Margolis.
November 21st, 1942
Alaska Highway (Alcan Highway): completion from Canada through Fairbanks, Alaska is celebrated (however, the highway is not usable by general vehicles until 1943).
Wikipedia Photo: Muskwa Ranges, north-east British Columbia, crossed by the Alaska Highway.
November 21st, 1950
Korean War:
1950 - Canoe River train crash; Two Canadian National Railway trains collide in northeastern British Columbia, the death toll is 21, with 17 of them Canadian troops bound for Korea.
Wikipedia Photo: Korean War Collage credit, The Big Picture, Boston Globe - (Associated Press; U.S. Department of Defense / SGT. F.C. Kerr; AP Photo; U.S. Department of Defense / TSGT. Charles B. Tyler; U.S. Department of Defense / TSGT. Charles B. Tyler; U.S. Department of Defense / TSGT. Robert H. Mosier; AP Photo / Max Desfor; U.S. Department of Defense / CPL. P. McDonald; AP Photo / Max Desfor; AP Photo/George Sweers; U.S. Navy / Maj. R.V. Spencer, UAF; AP Photo / Max Desfor).
November 21st, 1953
The British Natural History Museum announces that the "Piltdown Man" skull, initially believed to be one of the most important fossilized hominid skulls ever found, is a hoax.
Wikipedia Image: Group portrait by John Cooke, 1915. Back row (from left): F O Barlow, G Elliot Smith, Charles Dawson, Arthur Smith Woodward. Front row: A S Underwood, Arthur Keith, W P Pycraft, and Sir Ray Lankester.
November 21st, 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.
Wikipedia Photo: Alan Freed, "The Big Beat", WNEW-TV, New York City, 1959.
November 21st, 1967
Vietnam War:
1967 - United States General William Westmoreland tells news reporters: "I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing."
1970 - Operation Ivory Coast; A joint Air Force and Army team raids the Son Tay prison camp in an attempt to free American prisoners of war thought to be held there.
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 21st, 1969
The first permanent Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) link is established between University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and Stanford Research Institute (SRI).
Wikipedia Photo: Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the world's first operational packet switching network and the progenitor of what was to become the global Internet.
November 21st, 1986
Iran-Contra Affair: National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents implicating them in the sale of weapons to Iran and channeling the proceeds to help fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
Wikipedia Photo: Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, December 22, 1986; Oliver North testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings in Washington, D.C., 1987. credit Associated Press.
November 21st, 1990
Post Cold War:
1990 - Charter of Paris for a New Europe refocuses the efforts of the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europeon post-Cold War issues
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 21st, 1995
Yugoslav Wars, NATO bombing of Yugoslavia:
Dayton Peace Agreement; (ending three and a half years of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina) The agreement is formally ratified in Paris, on December 14 that same year.
Wikipedia Map: Kingdom of Yugoslavia; Belgrade, Yugoslavia; A twilight moon rises above the Kamniske mountains and Slovenia’s Sava River Valley, Slovenia, credit National Geographic; Yugoslavia, November 1977, credit National Geographic.
Photo: 1995 NATO bombing campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina / Aug. 30, 1995 by Oleg Stjepanovic (AP) ● Smoke rises from an ammunition depot in Bosnian Serb stronghold Pale near Sarajevo after NATO air strikes ● CK building in the moments after bombing ● Serbia marks the 10th anniversary of the Nato-led bombing campaign ● U.S. F-117 Nighthawk taxis to the runway before taking off from Aviano Air Base, Italy, on March 24, 1999.
November 21st, 2004
Gulf War - Iraq War:
2004 - The Paris Club agrees to write off 80% (up to $100 billion) of Iraqs external debt.
Wikipedia Photo: USAF F-15Es, F-16s, and a USAF F-15 flying over burning Kuwaiti oil wells; Iraqi Army T-72 main battle tanks. The T-72 tank was a common Iraqi battle tank used in the Gulf War; F-15Es parked during Operation Desert Shield; The oil fires caused were a result of the scorched earth policy of Iraqi military forces retreating from Kuwait; Aerial view of destroyed Iraqi T-72 tank, BMP-1 and Type 63 armored personnel carriers and trucks on Highway 8 in March 1991.