November 9 is: .
Schicksalstag (Day of Fate) commemorates 5 events in German history: the execution of Robert Blum in 1848; the end of the monarchies in 1918 and the start of the Weimar Republic; the Hitler putsch attempt in 1923; the Nazi antisemitic pogroms in 1938; and the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.
Crystal Night, the anniversary of the street riots of Nov 9 and 10, 1938 when Nazi storm troopers raided Jewish homes and synagogues. Called Kristallnacht in German (the “night of broken glass”). Per Wikipedia , “Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November Pogrom(s), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by SA paramilitary forces and civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”) comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris.”
“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
From Today in Science
In 1825, Thomas Drummond made the first practical use of limelight while surveying in Ireland to enable work through misty days and night. He created an intense light from a lump of lime (calcium oxide) heated to incandescent by an oxygenated alcohol flame in front of a reflector. He attempted to adapt it for lighthouses, but found operation too costly. The bright light given off by heated metal oxides was first investigated in the 1820s by Goldsworthy Gurney who created the oxyhydrogen blowpipe. Limelight was first used for indoor stage illumination in the Covent Garden Theatre in London in 1837 and enjoyed widespread use in theatres around the world in the 1860s and 1870s. Limelight was also used for microscope illumination.
Birthday of Carl Sagan, (November 9, 1934,), the astronomer whose books and television show informed millions of Americans.
The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, in a significant event towards the end of the Cold War. East Germany lifted restrictions on emigration or travel to the West, and within hours tens of thousands of East and West Berliners swarmed across the infamous Berlin Wall for a boisterous celebration.
In 1998, brokerage houses were ordered to pay 1.03 billion USD to cheated NASDAQ investors to compensate for their price-fixing. This was the largest civil settlement in United States history.