#Middlebury
On Nov. 18, 1883, American and Canadian railroads begin using four continental time zones to end the confusion of dealing with thousands of local times. Most Americans and Canadians quickly embraced their new time zones, however, it was not until 1918 that Congress officially adopted the railroad time zones.- On Nov. 19, 1915, British airman Richard Bell Davies performs a daring rescue, swooping down in his plane to whisk a downed fellow pilot from behind the Turkish lines. The British government awarded him the Victoria Cross.
- On Nov. 21, 1934, teenager Ella Fitzgerald wins Amateur Night at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. Putting her name in the hat on a bet, she’d originally planned a dance number. History was made when she changed her mind and sang “The Object of My Affection.”
- On Nov. 20, 1947, Princess Elizabeth marries distant cousin Philip Mountbatten, former prince of Greece and Denmark, who renounced his titles to marry the English princess. Mountbatten was made the duke of Edinburgh.
- On Nov. 16, 1959, the smash musical “The Sound of Music” opens on Broadway to the consternation of the real Maria von Trapp and her stepchildren. Nearly all of the particulars she related in her 1949 book, “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers,” were ignored by the creators of the musical.
- On Nov. 17, 1973, in the midst of the Watergate scandal that eventually ended his presidency, President Richard Nixon tells a group of newspaper editors that he is “not a crook.”
- On Nov. 22, 1988, the Northrop B-2 “stealth” bomber is shown publicly for the first time at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. Although the aircraft had a wingspan of nearly half a football field, its radar signal was as negligible as that of a bird. The B-2 also successfully evaded infrared, sound detectors and the visible eye.
© 2020 Hearst Communications, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
You must be logged in to post a comment.