GMT 11/09/2017

1799 Napoleon Bonaparte participates in a coup and declares himself dictator of France.

1848 The first U.S. Post Office in California opens in San Francisco at Clay and Pike streets. At the time there are only about 15,000 European settlers living in the state.

1900 Russia completes its occupation of Manchuria.

1906 President Theodore Roosevelt leaves Washington, D.C., for a 17-day trip to Panama and Puerto Rico, becoming the first president to make an official visit outside of the United States.

1914 The Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney wrecks the German cruiser Emden, forcing her to beach on a reef on North Keeling Island in the Indian Ocean.

1918 Germany is proclaimed a republic as the kaiser abdicates and flees to the Netherlands.

1935 Japanese troops invade Shanghai, China.

1938 Nazis kill 35 Jews, arrest thousands and destroy Jewish synagogues, homes and stores throughout Germany. The event becomes known as Kristallnacht, the night of the shattered glass.

1965 Roger Allen LaPorte, a 22-year-old former seminarian and a member of the Catholic worker movement, immolates himself at the United Nations in New York City in protest of the Vietnam War.

1965 Nine Northeastern states and parts of Canada go dark in the worst power failure in history, when a switch at a station near Niagara Falls fails.

1967 NASA launches Apollo 4 into orbit with the first successful test of a Saturn V rocket.

1972 Bones discovered by the Leakeys push human origins back 1 million years.

1983 Alfred Heineken, beer brewer from Amsterdam, is kidnapped and held for a ransom of more than $10 million.

1989 The Berlin Wall is opened after dividing the city for 28 years.

1993 Stari Most, a 427-year-old bridge in the city of Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is destroyed, believed to be caused by artillery fire from Bosnian Croat forces.

1994 The chemical element Darmstadtium, a radioactive synthetic element, discovered by scientists in Darmstadt, Germany.

1998 Largest civil settlement in US history: 37 brokerage houses are ordered to pay $1.3 billion to NASDAQ investors to compensate for price fixing.

2007 German Bundestag passes controversial bill mandating storage of citizens' telecommunications traffic date for six months without probable cause.

Born on November 9

1941 Tom Fogerty, musician; guitarist with Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Quote of the day

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood. George Patton

Dirty joke of the day

Why do vegetarians give good head?
Beause they’re used to eating nuts.