November 14
There are
47 days remaining in 2016.
There are
40 days until Christmas.
Today [oddly enough

] is
World Diabetes Day, the primary
global awareness campaign focusing on
diabetes mellitus.
Events
1770 –
James Bruce discovers what he believes to be the source of the
Nile.
1851 –
Moby-Dick, a novel by
Herman Melville, is published in the USA.
1862 – American Civil War: President
Abraham Lincoln approves General
Ambrose Burnside's plan to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia, leading to the
Battle of Fredericksburg.
1889 – Pioneering female journalist
Nellie Bly (aka Elizabeth Cochrane) begins a successful attempt to travel around the world in less than 80 days. She completes the trip in 72 days.
1910 – Aviator
Eugene Burton Ely performs the first takeoff from a ship in Hampton Roads, Virginia. He took off from a makeshift deck on the
USS Birmingham in a
Curtiss pusher.
1914 – The
Ottoman Empire declares war against Britain, France, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro during the early months of
World War I.
1922 – The
British Broadcasting Company begins radio service in the United Kingdom.
1938 – The
Lions Gate Bridge (a National Historic Site of Canada) connecting
Vancouver to the
North Shore region, opens to traffic.
1940 – World War II: In England,
Coventry is heavily bombed by German Luftwaffe bombers.
Coventry Cathedral is almost completely destroyed.
1941 – World War II: The aircraft carrier
HMS Ark Royal sinks due to torpedo damage from the German submarine
U-81 sustained on November 13.
1941 – World War II: In Slonim, German forces engaged in
Operation Barbarossa murder 9,000 Jews in a single day.
1957 – The
"Apalachin Meeting" in rural Tioga County in upstate New York is raided by law enforcement; many high level Mafia figures are arrested while trying to flee.
1965 – Vietnam War: The
Battle of Ia Drang begins: The first major engagement between regular American and North Vietnamese forces.
1967 – American physicist
Theodore Maiman is given a patent for his
ruby laser systems, the world's first laser.
1969 -
'Sugar Sugar' by
The Archies was at No.1 on the UK singles chart. The single became the longest running
One Hit Wonder in the UK with eight week's at the top of the charts. It was the first No.1 performed by cartoon characters.
1969 – Apollo program: NASA launches
Apollo 12, the second crewed mission to the surface of the Moon.
1970 – Southern Airways Flight 932 crashes in the mountains near Huntington, West Virginia, killing all 75 people on board, including 37 members of the
Marshall University Thundering Herd football team.
1979 –
Iran hostage crisis: US President Jimmy Carter issues
Executive order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States in response to the hostage crisis.
1991 – American and British authorities announce indictments against two Libyan intelligence officials in connection with the downing of
Pan Am Flight 103.
1995 – A budget standoff between Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress forces the federal government
to temporarily close national parks and museums and to run most government offices with skeleton staffs.
2003 – Astronomers
Michael E. Brown,
Chad Trujillo, and
David L. Rabinowitz discover
90377 Sedna, a
Trans-Neptunian object.
Births
1719 – Leopold Mozart

(little Wolfgang's pappy); 1765 – Robert Fulton (invented the steamboat); 1889 – Jawaharlal Nehru; 1900 – Aaron Copland♪ ♫; 1904 – Dick Powell; 1908 – Joseph McCarthy; 1916 – Sherwood Schwartz; 1921 – Brian Keith; 1922 –
Boutros Boutros-Ghali; 1922 – Veronica Lake

; 1927 – McLean Stevenson ('Colonel Henry Blake' on
M*A*S*H (tv)); 1934 – Ellis Marsalis, Jr.

(Winton's & Branford's father); 1936 – Cornell Gunter♪ ♫(The Coasters); 1937 – Bobby Astyr (porn actor); 1944 - Sherri Payne♪ ♫(The Supremes); 1947 – P. J. O'Rourke; 1947 – Buckwheat Zydeco♪ ♫; 1948 –
Robert Ginty; 1948 – Charles, Prince of Wales; 1949 –
Gary Grubbs (that guy who was in that thing); 1949 – James Young

(Styx); 1951 – Frankie Banali

(Quiet Riot, W.A.S.P., Billy Idol, Faster Pussycat, Steppenwolf); 1951 – Sandahl Bergman (
Conan the Barbarian); 1951 – Stephen Bishop♪ ♫(sang "
On And On"); 1951 – Alec John Such

(Bon Jovi); 1952 – Maggie Roswell (voice of Maude Flanders, Helen Lovejoy, Miss Hoover, and Luann Van Houten, et al, on
The Simpsons); 1954 – Condoleezza Rice; 1954 – Yanni

; 1961 – D. B. Sweeney; 1962 – Laura San Giacomo; 1962 – Harland Williams (
RocketMan); 1964 – Patrick Warburton (voice of 'Joe Swanson' on
Family Guy, Rules of Engagement, The Tick); 1966 - Joseph 'Run' Simmons♪ ♫(Run-DMC); 1967 – Nina Gordon

(Veruca Salt); 1970 – Brendan Benson♪ ♫(The Raconteurs); 1972 – Josh Duhamel (
Las Vegas,
Transformers movie series,
Battle Creek); 1973 – Betsy Brandt (
Breaking Bad, Life In Pieces); 1974 – Adina Howard♪ ♫; 1975 – Travis Barker

(Blink-182)
Deaths
1263 – Alexander Nevsky; 1864 – Franz Müller (committed the first murder on a train); 1915 – Booker T. Washington; 1974 – Johnny Mack Brown♪ ♫; 1995 – Jack Finney (wrote
"The Body Snatchers"; 1997 – Eddie Arcaro

; 2003 – Gene Anthony Ray (
Fame, movie & tv series); 2012 – Martin Fay

(The Chieftains); 2014 – Glen A. Larson (creator of the tv series
Alias Smith and Jones, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Quincy, M.E., The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, B. J. and the Bear, The Fall Guy, Magnum, P.I. and
Knight Rider et al); 2015 – Nick Bockwinkel (professional wrestler)