Today in History

Today in History Today is Friday, Nov. 26, the 330th day of 2021. There are 35 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On Nov. 26, 1941, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull delivered a note to Japan’s ambassador to the United States, Kichisaburo Nomura (kee-chee-sah-boor-oh noh-moo-rah), setting forth U.S. demands for ‘œlasting and extensive peace throughout the Pacific area.’� The same day, a Japanese naval task force consisting of six aircraft carriers left the Kuril Islands, headed toward Hawaii. On this date: In 1825, the first college social fraternity, the Kappa Alpha Society, was formed at Union College in Schenectady, New York. In 1864, English mathematician and writer Charles Dodgson presented a handwritten and illustrated manuscript, ‘œAlice’s Adventures Under Ground,’� to his 12-year-old friend Alice Pleasance Liddell; the book was later turned into ‘œAlice’s Adventures in Wonderland,’� published under Dodgson’s pen name, Lewis Carroll. In 1883, former slave and abolitionist Sojourner Truth died in Battle Creek, Michigan. In 1917, the National Hockey League was founded in Montreal, succeeding the National Hockey Association. In 1933, a judge in New York ruled the James Joyce book ‘œUlysses’� was not obscene and could be published in the United States. In 1943, during World War II, the HMT Rohna, a British transport ship carrying American soldiers, was hit by a German missile off Algeria; 1,138 men were killed. In 1950, China entered the Korean War, launching a counteroffensive against soldiers from the United Nations, the U.S. and South Korea. In 1973, President Richard Nixon’s personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, told a federal court that she’d accidentally caused part of the 18-1/2-minute gap in a key Watergate tape. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan appointed a commission headed by former Sen. John Tower to investigate his National Security Council staff in the wake of the Iran-Contra affair. In 1990, Japanese business giant Matsushita (mat-soosh-tah) Electric Industrial Co. agreed to acquire MCA Corp., owner of Universal Studios, for $6.6 billion. In 2000, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified George W. Bush the winner over Al Gore in the state’s presidential balloting by a 537-vote margin. In 2008, teams of heavily armed Pakistani gunmen stormed luxury hotels, a popular tourist attraction and a crowded train station in Mumbai, India, leaving at least 166 people dead in a rampage lasting some 60 hours. Ten years ago: In a friendly-fire incident that further strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, U.S. forces launched airstrikes that mistakenly killed 24 Pakistani troops at two posts along the Afghan border. NASA’s Curiosity rover blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center on an 8 1/2-month, 354 million-mile journey to Mars (it arrived in August 2012). NBA players and owners reached a tentative agreement to end a 149-day lockout. Five years ago: Cuba said it would observe nine days of mourning for Fidel Castro, including a three-day journey by his ashes along the route taken by the rebel army he’d led on a victorious march across the island in 1959. Tony Award-winning character actor Fritz Weaver died in New York at age 90.