- 320th Day of 2015 45 Remaining
- Winter Begins in 35 Days
- Sunrise:6:51
- Sunset:4:57
- 10 Hours 6 Minutes
- Moon Rise:10:59am
- Moon Set:9:35pm
- Phase:24% 5 Days
- Next Full Moon November 25 @ 2:44pm
- This was the time to set beaver traps before the swamps froze, to ensure a supply of warm winter furs. Another interpretation suggests that the name Full Beaver Moon comes from the fact that the beavers are now actively preparing for winter. It is sometimes also referred to as the Frosty Moon.
- Tides
- High:2:26am/1:03pm
- Low:7:17am/8:00pm
- Holidays
- National Fast Food Day
- National Button Day
- Have A Party With Your Bear Day
- International Day For Tolerance
- On This Day
- 1776 --- Hessian Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen and a force of 3,000 Hessian mercenaries and 5,000 Redcoats lay siege to Fort Washington at the northern end and highest point of Manhattan Island. Throughout the morning, Knyphausen met stiff resistance from the Patriot riflemen inside the fort, but by afternoon, the Patriots were overwhelmed, and the garrison commander, Colonel Robert Magaw, surrendered. Nearly 3,000 Patriots were taken prisoner, and valuable ammunition and supplies were lost to the Hessians. The prisoners faced a particularly grim fate: Many later died from deprivation and disease aboard British prison ships anchored in New York Harbor. Among the 53 dead and 96 wounded Patriots were John and Margaret Corbin of Virginia. When John died in action, his wife Margaret took over his cannon, cleaning, loading and firing the gun until she too was severely wounded. The first woman known to have fought for the Continental Army, Margaret survived, but lost the use of her left arm.
- 1801 --- Alexander Hamilton founded the New-York Evening Post newspaper, the oldest continuously published Daily newspaper in the U.S.
- 1901 --- A spare, low-slung car called the “Torpedo Racer”—basically a square platform on bicycle wheels—breaks the world speed record for electric cars in Coney Island, New York. The car’s builder and pilot, an engineer named Andrew Riker, managed to coax his machine one mile down the straight dirt track in just 63 seconds (that’s about 57 mph; today, by contrast, the world speed record for an electric vehicle is about 245 mph). The battery-powered Torpedo Racer held onto its record for ten years.
- 1907 --- Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory collectively enter the United States as Oklahoma, the 46th state. Oklahoma, with a name derived from the Choctaw Indian words okla, meaning “people,” andhumma, meaning “red,” has a history of human occupation dating back 15,000 years. The first Europeans to visit the region were Spanish explorers in the 16th century, and in the 18th century the Spanish and French struggled for control of the territory. The United States acquired Oklahoma from France in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase.
- 1913 --- The first volume of Marcel Proust's 'Remembrance of Things Past' was published. On January 1, 1909, he ate a piece of tea-soaked toast whose taste caused a flood of childhood memories. In his 7 volume allegorical novel the character Swann has a similar experience when he bites into a lemon cookie (a madelaine) which brings on a similar flood of memories. This is one of the most widely quoted allusions in literature.
- 1915 --- Coca-Cola had its prototype for a countoured bottle patented. The bottle made its commercial debut the next year.
- 1945 --- In a move that stirs up some controversy, the United States ships 88 German scientists to America to assist the nation in its production of rocket technology. Most of these men had served under the Nazi regime and critics in the United States questioned the morality of placing them in the service of America. Nevertheless, the U.S. government, desperate to acquire the scientific know-how that had produced the terrifying and destructive V-1 and V-2 rockets for Germany during WWII, and fearful that the Russians were also utilizing captured German scientists for the same end, welcomed the men with open arms. Realizing that the importation of scientists who had so recently worked for the Nazi regime so hated by Americans was a delicate public relations situation, the U.S. military cloaked the operation in secrecy. In announcing the plan, a military spokesman merely indicated that some German scientists who had worked on rocket development had “volunteered” to come to the United States and work for a “very moderate salary.”
- 1959 --- The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "The Sound of Music" opened on Broadway.
- 1961 --- President John F. Kennedy decides to increase military aid to South Vietnam without committing U.S. combat troops. Kennedy was concerned at the advances being made by the communist Viet Cong, but did not want to become involved in a land war in Vietnam. He hoped that the military aid would be sufficient to strengthen the Saigon government and its armed forces against the Viet Cong. Ultimately it was not, and Kennedy ended up sending additional support in the form of U.S. military advisors and American helicopter units. By the time of his assassination in 1963, there were 16,000 U.S. soldiers in South Vietnam.
- 1973 --- President Richard M. Nixon signed the Alaska Pipeline measure into law. Nixon claimed the nation’s “dangerous reliance” on foreign oil, controlled mainly by the increasingly powerful, but politically unstable oil-rich nations of the Middle East, posed a threat to America’s economy. America had once relied on cheap domestic oil, but by the 1970s, dwindling supplies forced the nation to buy more expensive oil on the international market. An Arab oil embargo in 1973 exacerbated the problem. Saying that the conservation of existing domestic supplies was not enough, Nixon declared that America had to find and tap more oil resources closer to home.
- 1974 --- Stevie Wonder's "Boogie On Reggae Woman" was released.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6B7HjiLD0E
- 1988 --- In Pakistan, citizens vote in their first open election in more than a decade, choosing as prime minister the populist candidate Benazir Bhutto, daughter of former Pakistani leader Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. She was the first woman leader of a Muslim country in modern history.
- 1998 --- It was announced that Monica Lewinsky had signed a deal for the North American rights to a book about her affair with U.S. President Clinton.
- 2001 --- British author J.K. Rowling’s star creation–bespectacled boy wizard Harry Potter–makes his big-screen debut in “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”, which opens in movie theaters across the United States. Based on the mega-best-selling fantasy novel of the same name, the film, which starred Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, went on to become one of the highest-grossing movies in history.
- 2004 --- President George W. Bush picked National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to be secretary of state, succeeding Colin Powell.
- Birthdays
- W C Handy
- Diana Krall
- Lisa Bonet
- Martha Plimpton
- Oksana Baiul
- Maggie Gyllenhaal
- Burgess Meredith
- Dwight Gooden
- Charles Dawson “Daws” Butler
National Fast Food Day-KALW Almanac-11/16/2015
