November 12 is:
Chicken Soup for the Soul Day, a celebration of who you are, where you’ve been, where you are going.
National Pizza with the Works Except Anchovies Day
Sebastian Viscaino landed at and named San Diego, California. in 1602.
Birthday of Letitia Christian Tyler (November 12, 1790), wife of John Tyler, First Lady 1841 until her death in 1842. In 1839, she had suffered a paralytic stroke that left her an invalid. As first lady, she remained in the upstairs living quarters of the White House. She made her only public appearance in the White House at the wedding of her daughter, Elizabeth. Letitia and John Tyler had eight children. Two years following her death of another stroke, John Tyler married Julia Gardiner and had an additional seven children.
Jules Leotard perfomed the first flying trapeze circus act in Paris in 1859. He also popularised the one-piece gym wear that now bears his name and inspired the 1867 song “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze”
Leon Trotsky expelled from Soviet CP in 1927; Joseph Stalin became undisputed dictator. Lev Davidovich Bronstein, better known as Leon Trotsky, was a Soviet revolutionary, Marxist theorist and politician whose particular strain of Marxist thought is known as Trotskyism. Trotsky joined the Bolshevik Party a few weeks before the October Revolution, thus immediately becoming a leader within the party, and was one of the leaders of the October Revolution of 1917.
In California, the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge opened to traffic in 1936.
1946 – Walt Disney’s “Song Of South” released in 1946. It was based on the Uncle Remus stories. Introduced the song “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” as well as characters Br’er Rabbit, Br’er Fox, and Br’er Bear. The film received much critical attention for its handling of race. According to Wikipedia:
At the same time, however, some black press had mixed reactions on what they thought of Song of the South. While Richard B. Dier in The Afro-American was “thoroughly disgusted” by the film for being “as vicious a piece of propaganda for white supremacy as Hollywood ever produced,” Herman Hill in The Pittsburgh Courier felt that Song of the South would “prove of inestimable goodwill in the furthering of interracial relations”, and considered criticisms of the film to be “unadulterated hogwash symptomatic of the unfortunate racial neurosis that seems to be gripping so many of our humorless brethren these days.”
Ellis Island closed in 1954 after processing more than 20 million immigrants since opening in New York Harbor in 1892.