- 313th Day of 2012 / 53 Remaining
- 43 Days Until The First Day of Winter
- Sunrise:6:43
- Sunset:5:04
- 10 Hours 21 Minutes of Daylight
- Moon Rise: 12:50am
- Moon Set:1:42pm
- Moon’s Phase: 32 %
- The Next Full Moon
- November 28 @ 6:47 am
- Full Beaver Moon
- Full Frosts Moon
For both the colonists and the Algonquin tribes, this was the time to set beaver traps before the swamps froze, to ensure a supply of warm winter furs. This full Moon was also called the Frost Moon.
- Tides
- High: 8:00am/7:52pm
- Low: 1:10am/2:06pm
- Holidays
- Abet and Aid Punsters Day
- Cook Something Bold and Pungent Day
- National Parents As Teachers Day
- X-ray Discovery Day
- Admission Day-Montana
- Constitution Day-Micronesia
- Cretan National Day-Greece
- World Town Planning Day
- On This Day In …
- 1789 --- Elijah Craig distilled the first bourbon whiskey from corn, in Bourbon County, Kentucky.
- 1793 --- After more than two centuries as a royal palace, the Louvre is opened as a public museum in Paris by the French revolutionary government. Today, the Louvre's collection is one of the richest in the world, with artwork and artifacts representative of 11,000 years of human civilization and culture. The Louvre palace was begun by King Francis I in 1546 on the site of a 12th-century fortress built by King Philip II. Francis was a great art collector, and the Louvre was to serve as his royal residence. The work, which was supervised by the architect Pierre Lescot, continued after Francis' death and into the reigns of kings Henry II and Charles IX. Almost every subsequent French monarch extended the Louvre and its grounds, and major additions were made by Louis XIII and Louis XIV in the 17th century. Both of these kings also greatly expanded the crown's art holdings, and Louis XIV acquired the art collection of Charles I of England after his execution in the English Civil War. In 1682, Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles, and the Louvre ceased to be the main royal residence. In the spirit of the Enlightenment, many in France began calling for the public display of the royal collections. Denis Diderot, the French writer and philosopher, was among the first to propose a national art museum for the public. Although King Louis XV temporarily displayed a selection of paintings at the Luxembourg Palace in 1750, it was not until the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 that real progress was made in establishing a permanent museum. On November 8, 1793, the revolutionary government opened the Musée Central des Arts in the Grande Galerie of the Louvre. The collection at the Louvre grew rapidly, and the French army seized art and archaeological items from territory and nations conquered in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Much of this plundered art was returned after Napoleon's defeat in 1815, but the Louvre's current Egyptian antiquities collections and other departments owe much to Napoleon's conquests. Two new wings were added in the 19th century, and the multi-building Louvre complex was completed in 1857, during the reign of Napoleon III. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Grand Louvre, as the museum is officially known, underwent major remodeling. Modern museum amenities were added and thousands of square meters of new exhibition space were opened. The Chinese American architect I.M. Pei built a steel-and-glass pyramid in the center of the Napoleon courtyard. Traditionalists called it an outrage. In 1993, on the 200th anniversary of the museum, a rebuilt wing formerly occupied by the French ministry of finance was opened to the public. It was the first time that the entire Louvre was devoted to museum purposes.
- 1805 --- The "Corps of Discovery" reached the Pacific Ocean. The expedition was lead by William Clark and Meriwether Lewis. The journey had begun on May 14, 1804, with the goal of exploring the Louisiana Purchase territory.
- 1889 --- The Treasure State or Montana entered the United States of America as number 41. And, it turned out to be quite a treasure. Coal, copper, lead, zinc and silver have all been mined in Montana. Helena is the capital of Montana; the western meadowlark is the state bird and the bitterroot is the state flower. Of course, this has nothing to do with some of Montana’s bitter history, its most notorious event: The Battle of Little Big Horn (Custer’s Last Stand).
- 1895 --- Physicist Wilhelm Conrad Rontgen (1845-1923) becomes the first person to observe X-rays, a significant scientific advancement that would ultimately benefit a variety of fields, most of all medicine, by making the invisible visible. Rontgen's discovery occurred accidentally in his Wurzburg, Germany, lab, where he was testing whether cathode rays could pass through glass when he noticed a glow coming from a nearby chemically coated screen. He dubbed the rays that caused this glow X-rays because of their unknown nature.
- 1917 --- One day after an armed uprising led by his radical socialist Bolsheviks toppled the provisional Russian government, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin made his first appearance before the Congress of Soviets, in which the Bolsheviks held a 60 percent majority. "We shall now proceed to the construction of the socialist order," he announced. The first order of business for the new Bolshevik state was putting an end to Russia's participation in what Lenin and his followers considered an imperialist, upper-class war. That day, the Congress adopted a manifesto calling for "all warring peoples and their governments to open immediate negotiations for a just, democratic peace." A formal ceasefire between Russia and the Central Powers was declared on December 2. Russia's exit from the war--which was formalized in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the following March--shook the Allied war effort to its very foundations, as Germany and Austria-Hungary would be now be able to shift all their efforts to the west. Even more importantly, the rise to power of Lenin and the Bolsheviks in Russia announced the arrival of a new vision of the world order--a vision that would over the next decades rise to challenge the ideals of liberal democracy not only in Europe but around the world.
- 1923 --- Adolf Hitler, president of the far-right Nazi Party, launches the Beer Hall Putsch, his first attempt at seizing control of the German government. After World War I, the victorious allies demanded billions of dollars in war reparations from Germany. Efforts by Germany's democratic government to comply hurt the country's economy and led to severe inflation. The German mark, which at the beginning of 1921 was valued at five marks per dollar, fell to a disastrous four billion marks per dollar in 1923. Meanwhile, the ranks of the nationalist Nazi Party swelled with resentful Germans who sympathized with the party's bitter hatred of the democratic government, leftist politics, and German Jews. In early November 1923, the government resumed war-reparation payments, and the Nazis decided to strike. Hitler planned a coup against the state government of Bavaria, which he hoped would spread to the dissatisfied German army, which in turn would bring down the central, democratic government in Berlin. On the evening of November 8, Nazi forces under Hermann Goering surrounded the Munich beer hall where Bavarian government officials were meeting with local business leaders. A moment later, Hitler burst in with a group of Nazi storm troopers, discharged his pistol into the air, and declared that "the national revolution has begun." Threatened at gunpoint, the Bavarian leaders reluctantly agreed to support Hitler's new regime. In the early morning of November 9, however, the Bavarian leaders repudiated their coerced support of Hitler and ordered a rapid suppression of the Nazis. At dawn, government troops surrounded the main Nazi force occupying the War Ministry building. A desperate Hitler responded by leading a march toward the center of Munich in a last-ditch effort to rally support. Near the War Ministry building, 3,000 Nazi marchers came face to face with 100 armed policemen. Shots were exchanged, and 16 Nazis and three policemen were killed. Hermann Goering was shot in the groin, and Hitler suffered a dislocated elbow but managed to escape
- 1933 --- The Civil Works Administration was created by executive order by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The organization was designed to create jobs for more than 4 million unemployed people in the U.S.
- 1954 --- The American League approved the transfer of the Philadelphia Athletics baseball team to Kansas City, MO. Charles O. Finley of Chicago would later tire of Kansas City and move the A’s to Oakland
- 1960 --- Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy defeated Vice President Richard M. Nixon in the presidential election. The Republican insider was Richard Nixon of California, relatively young but experienced as the nation's vice-president for eight years under Dwight Eisenhower. The Democratic newcomer was John F. Kennedy, senator from Massachusetts, who at the age of 43 was the youngest person elected president. Kennedy, the 35th U.S. President, was also the first Roman Catholic to be elected president.
- 1979 --- A new late-night news program debuted on ABC-TV. The program, The Iran Crisis: America Held Hostage, was expected to be on the schedule only temporarily, according to ABC News chief Roone Arledge. Instead, the program, with Ted Koppel hosting, evolved into Nightline in March of 1980.
- 1997 --- The Yangtze River (China’s largest) was successfully diverted in preparation for the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. As engineers completed the dumping of 60,000 cubic meters (78,000 cubic yards) of rockfill and cement into the river, its flow was diverted through a canal. Boats on the river sounded horns and construction workers sent flares into the sky. Jiang Zemin, President of the People’s Republic of China, told the assembled crowd, “The damming of the Yangtze River is of great political and economic significance, and it proves to the whole world the Chinese people’s capability of building the world’s first-rate hydroelectric project.”
- Birthdays
- Bonnie Raitt
- Esther Rolle
- Bram Stoker
- Morley Safer
- Rickie Lee Jones
- ALfre Woodard
- Parker Posey
- Bonnie Bramlett
- Edmond Halley
- Herman Rorschach
- Margaret Mitchell
- Dr Christian Barnard
- Joe Flynn