Tidbits of History

November 30 is:

National Mousse Day
The word mousse is French and translates as “froth” or “foam.”

Stay At Home Because You Are Well Day

Birthday of Jonathan Swift (1667) , English clergyman, poet, satirist remembered for “Gulliver’s Travels” and A Modest Proposal.

Publication of Federalist Paper #14: Objections to the Proposed Constitution From Extent of Territory Answered written by James Madison. This article is the last to address the issue of the benefits of having one united country vs several smaller unions. Madison answers the arguments that the United States would be too big to be governed successfully by one central authority.

In New Orleans in 1803, Spanish representatives officially transferred the Louisiana Territory to a French representative. Just 20 days later, France transferred the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.

Birthday of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) (1835), American author. Wrote “Tom Sawyer”, “Huckleberry Finn”, “Life on the Mississippi”, and many more. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is in the public domain and is available at our other site, Nextdoorestore.com.

From Today in Science
In 1858, John Landis Mason received a U.S. patent for his invention known by his name – the Mason jar (No. 22,186). Although hundreds of men and women obtained patents for fruit jars, probably the most well known in the industry has been the Mason jar. It has become a common term for the preserved food jar. Mason developed and patented a shoulder-seal jar with a zinc screw cap. The “Mason jar” had a threaded neck which fit with the threads in a metal cap to screw down to the shoulder of the jar and in this way form a seal. In 1869, a top seal above the threads and under a glass lid was introduced to the jar, thus effecting an excellent seal.

Birthday of Sir Winston Churchill (1874), British statesman, prime minister. One of only eight “Honorary citizens of the U. S.”

1902-11-30 – American Old West: Second-in-command of Fort Worth’s Wild Bunch gang, Kid Curry Logan, was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment with hard labor. In the picture, the two men standing are William “News” Carver and Harvey “Kid Curry” Logan. The three sitting are Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, aka “Sundance Kid”; Ben Kilpatrick, aka “Tall Texan”; and Robert Leroy Parker, aka “Butch Cassidy”.

Birthday of “American Bandstand” producer and host, Dick Clark, (November 30, 1929) in Mount Vernon, N.Y. Dubbed “America’s oldest teenager”.

Lucille Ball married Desi Arnaz in Greenwich, Connecticut on this date in 1940.

On this date in 2018, ex-President George H. W. Bush died at Houston, Texas of Vascular Parkinson’s disease. (See heavy.com for information about this form of atypical Parkinsonism)

November 29 is:

Square Dance Day The square dance is the official dance of nineteen American states. Square Dance is a fun, simple, and healthy form of dance and it has roots in normal English, Irish and Scottish folk dance.

National Lemon Cream Pie Day
Lemon cream pie is a Southern specialty which was first made in the 1920s.

National Rice Cake Day
Soft forms of rice cakes have been popular in Japan for hundreds of years.

National Chocolates Day
Per Foodimentary.com
Chocolate comes from the Aztec word “xocolatl” which means “bitter water”.

In 1777, San Jose, California, was founded as Pueblo de San José de Guadalupe. It was the first civilian settlement, or pueblo, in Alta California.

Birthday of Louisa May Alcott (November 28, 1832), author of “Little Women” and many more. Raised in New England by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott, she grew up among many of the well-known intellectuals of the day, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

The Sand Creek Massacre occurred in Colorado on November 29, 1864, when a militia led by Colonel John Chivington, killed at least 400 peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians who had surrendered and had been given permission to camp.

Thomas Edison demonstrated his phonograph for the first time in 1877.

Birthday of C.S.(Clive Staples) Lewis (November 29, 1898), a British writer and lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University and Cambridge University. He is best known for his works of fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain

U.N. General Assembly partitioned Palestine between Arabs and Jews in 1947.

“Kukla, Fran, and Ollie” debuted on NBC in 1948.

President-elect Eisenhower visited Korea to assess war in 1952, fulfilling a campaign promise.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson set up Warren Commission in 1963 to investigate assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Roman Catholic Church in U.S. replaced Latin with English in 1964.

Atari announced the release of Pong, the first commercially successful video game in 1972.

1975 – Bill Gates adopted the name Microsoft for the company he and Paul Allen had formed to write the BASIC computer language for the Altair.

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November 28 is:

Happy Thanksgiving Day!
See our page at Thanksgiving for tidbits of history about Thanksgiving!

National French Toast Day
French toast was not invented in France. In fact, French toast was around long before France even existed as a country.
The earliest reference to French toast dates all the way back to 4th century Rome.The name for French toast in France is “pain perdu”, which means “lost bread.”

November 28, 1520 – The first navigation of the Magellan Strait, to the south of mainland South America, was completed by Ferdinand Magellan and his crew.

Birthday of William Blake, (November 28, 1757), English poet, painter and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age.

Second Continental Congress formally established U.S. Navy in 1775.

Publication of Federalist Paper #13: Advantage of the Union in Respect to Economy in Government written by Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton looks at the cost of supporting several confederacies vs the economy of supporting one federal government. He speculates that, if the states should form their own unions, there would be two – North and South based on geographical and commercial considerations. Each would have to support its own defense and bureaucracy.

Olympia formed as capital of Washington Territory in 1853.

1861 – Confederate Congress officially admitted Missouri to Confederacy

1925 – The Grand Ole Opry began broadcasting in Nashville, Tennessee, as the WSM Barn Dance.

1942 Fire destroyed the Coconut Grove nightclub in Boston, killing nearly 500 people.

1943 – World War II: Tehran Conference – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin met in Tehran, Iran, to discuss war strategy.

“Hopalong Cassidy” premiered on TV in 1948.

Red Planet Day to commemorate the first launch in 1964 of Mariner 4, the first spacecraft to obtain and transmit close range images of Mars.

1972 – Last executions in Paris: Claude Buffet and Roger Bontems are guillotined at La Santé Prison. The chief executioner was André Obrecht. Buffet was already serving a life sentence in prison. During a prison riot, Buffet and Bontems slit the throats of two hostages. (Bontems had been found innocent of murder, but as Buffet’s accomplice was condemned to death anyway).

Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn were made Honorary Citizens of the United States on November 28, 1984.

November 27 is:

Pins and Needles Day According to Days of the Year.com the original Pins and Needles Day started up in 1937 to commemorate the opening of the pro-Labor musical play of the same name on Broadway. The cast of the original production was made up of sewing machine workers, cutters and basters who simply wanted to do something a little creative in their free time.

National Bavarian Cream Pie Day
Before the advent of refrigeration, Bavarian cream represented a culinary triumph. In order to set the dish, the Bavarian cream would have had to be chilled in an ice-filled bowl.

Publication of Federalist Paper #12: The Utility of the Union In Respect to Revenue written by Alexander Hamilton. In this article Hamilton discusses the issues of taxation. At that time the only taxes collected were on imports and excise taxes on manufactured products. Personal property or income were not yet taxed.

1826 – John Walker invents the first friction match in England.  He sold about 164 boxes of 50 matches which included a piece of sandpaper.  Because of the danger of fire, the matches were banned in France and Germany.

1835 – James Pratt and John Smith were hanged in London.  They were the last two to be executed for sodomy in England. The magistrate, Hensleigh Wedgwood, who had committed the men to trial, subsequently wrote to the Home Secretary, Lord John Russel, arguing for the commutation of the death sentences, stating:

“It is the only crime where there is no injury done to any individual and in consequence it requires a very small expense to commit it in so private a manner and to take such precautions as shall render conviction impossible. It is also the only capital crime that is committed by rich men but owing to the circumstances I have mentioned they are never convicted.”

Wedgwood described the men as “degraded creatures” in another letter. Nevertheless, he argued that the law was unfair in their case in that wealthy men who wished to have sex could afford a private space in which to do it with little chance of discovery. Pratt and Smith were only condemned because they could only afford to use a room in a lodging house, in which they were easily spied upon.

New York Times dubs baseball “The National Game” in 1870.

1895 – Alfred Nobel’s will established the Nobel Prizes

NY’s Penn Station opened as world’s largest railway terminal in 1910.

In New York City, the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was held in 1924.

Bank robber Baby Face Nelson (Lester Joseph Gillis) died in a shoot-out with the FBI in 1934. Nelson was responsible for killing more FBI agents than any other person. He was a member of the gang of John Dillinger. His death is called The Battle of Barrington. In the shoot-out, Nelson was shot nine times. Two FBI agents were killed.

Jannetje Johanna Schaft was a Dutch communist resistance fighter during World War II. She became known as “the girl with the red hair”. Her secret name in the resistance movement was Hannie. She was killed on April 17, 1945. After the war, on November 27, 1945, she was reburied at the honorary cemetery at the dunes in Overveen, a ceremony attended by Princess Juliana and her husband, Prince Bernard, of the Netherlands.

November 25 is:

National “Eat with a Friend” Day

National Parfait Day
Per /Foodimentary.com
Parfait is a French word that means perfect.
It is often served in a tall, clear glass and topping creation with whipped cream and fruit.
The oldest recipe with the name parfait comes from a French cookbook dated 1869. It was a frozen coffee-flavoured French ice dessert constructed in parfait-shaped (tall and thin) ice cream moulds.
French style parfait is served on decorated plates instead of tall, thin glassware.
The unique texture of parfait is because the fat, sugar, and air interfere with the formation of water crystals, which would otherwise cause an oily texture in your mouth.

1758 – French and Indian War: British forces capture Fort Duquesne from French control. Later, Fort Pitt will be built nearby and grow into modern Pittsburgh.

Delmonico’s, one of NY’s finest restaurants, provides a meal of soup, steak, coffee & half a pie for 12 cents in 1834.

Birthday of Andrew Carnegie (November 25, 1835). He led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans in history. He became a leading philanthropist in the United States and in the British Empire.

Birthday of Carrie Nation (November 25, 1846), American temperance leader who used a hatchet to implement her campaign against saloons.

Woody Woodpecker debuts with release of Walter Lantz’s “Knock Knock” in 1940.

1947 Movie studio executives agreed to blacklist the Hollywood 10, who were jailed a day earlier for contempt of Congress for failing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

On Nov. 25, 1963, the funeral  of President John F. Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery.

1979 – Pat Summerall and John Madden broadcast a game together for the first time, a pairing that would last 22 years and become one of the most well-known partnerships in TV sportscasting history.

Six-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez was rescued by a pair of sport fishermen off the coast of Florida in 1999.

President George W. Bush signed legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security in 2002. Its stated missions involve anti-terrorism, border security, immigration and customs, cyber security, and disaster prevention and management. As of 2018 DHS employs 240,000 people and has a budget of $51.672 billion.

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