Today in History: November 12
November 12 – This Day in History
1815 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton born. Women’s rights pioneer and organizer of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention; co-author of the Declaration of Sentiments.
1912 – Scott’s Antarctic party found. A search team discovers the tent containing the bodies of Robert Falcon Scott, Edward Wilson, and Henry Bowers on the Ross Ice Shelf.
1921 – Washington Naval Conference opens. Major powers begin talks in Washington, D.C., aimed at limiting naval armaments.
1927 – Holland Tunnel opens. The first vehicular tunnel under the Hudson River linking New York and New Jersey is dedicated; vehicles begin using it the next day.
1936 – San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opens. President Franklin D. Roosevelt presses a telegraph key in Washington to open the bridge to traffic.
1942 – Naval Battle of Guadalcanal begins. Allied and Japanese naval forces clash in the Solomon Islands; the multi-day battle ends in an American victory.
1944 – German battleship Tirpitz sunk. British bombers destroy the last major German battleship near Tromsø, Norway, in Operation Catechism.
1948 – Japanese war criminals sentenced. A war crimes tribunal sentences former premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese leaders to death by hanging.
1968 – Epperson v. Arkansas. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously strikes down Arkansas’s anti-evolution law (or statute prohibiting the teaching of human evolution in public schools).
The case originated with Little Rock biology teacher Susan Epperson.
1970 – Bhola Cyclone strikes. The deadliest tropical cyclone on record makes landfall in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), killing an estimated 300,000–500,000 people.
1979 – Jimmy Carter halts Iranian oil imports. In response to the Iran hostage crisis, President Carter orders a stop to all petroleum imports from Iran.
1980 – Voyager 1 reaches Saturn. The NASA probe makes its closest approach and returns the first detailed images of the planet’s rings and moons.
1981 – Space Shuttle Columbia flies again. STS-2 marks the first time a crewed spacecraft is launched into space twice.
1990 – World Wide Web proposed. Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau formally propose the system of hypertext documents that becomes the World Wide Web.
1999 – Plastics process designated historic landmark. The American Chemical Society designates the 1951 discovery of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) and crystalline polypropylene at Phillips Petroleum’s research center in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, as a National Historic Chemical Landmark.
2001 – American Airlines Flight 587 crashes. The Airbus A300 goes down in the Belle Harbor neighborhood of Queens, New York, shortly after takeoff from JFK Airport, killing 265 people.
2014 – Philae lander touches down on a comet. The European Space Agency’s Philae probe makes the first soft landing on a comet (67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko).
2018 – Stan Lee dies. The Marvel Comics writer, editor, and co-creator of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Avengers dies at age 95.
Born on this day
1815 – Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Women’s rights leader and co-organizer of the Seneca Falls Convention.
1840 – Auguste Rodin. French sculptor known for The Thinker and The Kiss.
1866 – Sun Yat-sen. Chinese revolutionary and first provisional president of the Republic of China.
.1908 – Harry Blackmun. U.S. Supreme Court justice who wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade.
1920 – Sunset Carson (Winifred Maurice Harrison). B-movie Western star of the 1940s; born in Gracemont, Oklahoma.
1929 – Grace Kelly. American actress who became Princess Grace of Monaco.
1945 – Neil Young. Canadian-American singer-songwriter (Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young).
1961 – Nadia Comăneci. Romanian gymnast who scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic history.
1980 – Ryan Gosling. Canadian actor (La La Land, Drive, Barbie).1982 – Anne Hathaway. American actress (The Devil Wears Prada, Les Misérables).
