November 5 History Class
“Let me thank you, the American people, for giving me the great honor of allowing me to serve as your President. When the Lord calls me home, whenever that may be, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future.”
~Ronald Reagan
Alzheimer’s disease announcement
U.S./WORLD HISTORY
1605 – The conspiracy by English Catholics to kill King James I and replace him with his Catholic daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was cut short by the arrest of Guy Fawkes, who was charged with placing gunpowder under the Houses of Parliament.
Since then, November 5 has been celebrated in Britain and its colonies with a bonfire burning either Guy Fawkes or the pope in effigy.
1862 – More than 300 Santee Sioux were found guilty of raping and murdering Anglo settlers and were sentenced to hang.
No attorneys or witness were allowed as a defense for the accused, and many were convicted in less than five minutes of court time with the judge.
A month later, President Abraham Lincoln commuted all but 39 of the death sentences. The men remanded by order of Lincoln were sent to a prison in Iowa, where more than half died.
One of the Indians sentenced to hang was granted a last-minute reprieve, but the other 38 were hanged simultaneously on December 26 in Mankato, Minnesota – the largest single mass execution in U.S. history.
1862 – President Abraham Lincoln removed General George B. McClellan from command of the Army of the Potomac – for the second and final time.
The final straw for Lincoln came when McClellan, a sluggish and paranoid field commander, failed to pursue the retreating troops of General Robert E. Lee aggressively after the Battle of Antietam.
The dismissed general subsequently ran for president against Lincoln in the 1864 election and was soundly defeated.
1872 – Ulysses S. Grant easily won re-election as president, defeating newspaper publisher Horace Greeley by a large margin in the popular vote and an overwhelming margin in the electoral count.
Greeley carried six states and would have received 66 electoral votes but for the fact that he died before the electoral votes were cast. As a result, his votes were divided among four other men.
The election was also the first to have a female presidential candidate: Victoria Woodhull, representing the Equal Rights Party. Her running mate was Frederick Douglass.
1912 – New Jersey Gov. Woodrow Wilson was elected President of the United States.
The Republican National Convention nominated incumbent President William H. Taft for re-election, but fellow Republican (and former President) Theodore Roosevelt left to form his own organization, the Progressive Party (nicknamed the “Bull Moose Party”), and declared himself a candidate.
Wilson won a decisive victory, capitalizing on the split Republican vote. Wilson’s 435 electoral votes were the most ever up to that time. Roosevelt finished in second, with 88 votes. Taft won only two states, totaling 8 electoral votes.
1937 – The Hossbach Memorandum: Adolf Hitler held a secret conference in the Reich Chancellery during which he revealed his plans for the acquisition of “living space” for the German people at the expense of other nations in Europe.
Following the war, the Hossbach Memorandum was used in the Nuremberg war crimes trials as evidence of conspiracy to wage war, specifically targeting Chief of the Luftwaffe Hermann Goring, one of the attendees at the conference.
The memorandum also served to expose the ruthless cynicism of Hitler who repeatedly proclaimed a desire for peace in public, all the while laying out plans for war in Europe.
1968 – Former Vice-President Richard Nixon defeated Vice-President Hubert Humphrey to become the 37th President of the United States.
The other high-profile candidate was Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who ran on the American Independent ticket and had a major effect on the outcome.
Nixon won a close popular vote tally, besting Humphrey by less than 600,000 votes. The electoral difference was starker, with Nixon winning 301-191. Wallace won five southern states and 46 electoral votes.
1994 – In a handwritten letter, former President Ronald Reagan disclosed he had Alzheimer’s disease.
“I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease … I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead. Thank you, my friends. May God always bless you.”
Reagan died of pneumonia, complicated by Alzheimer’s disease, in 2004.
1996 – President Bill Clinton won a second term, besting Kansas Senator Robert Dole, who campaigned on a large across-the-board tax cut. Clinton campaigned on his record of prosperity and bipartisanship.
Billionaire H. Ross Perot ran as an Independent and won more than eight million votes (but no electoral votes). The popular vote difference between Clinton and Dole was just more than eight million.
2006 – Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death.
Specific charges included the murder of 148 people, the torture of women and children, and the illegal arrest of 399 members of the pro-Iranian Dawa Party (148 were executed).
The verdict and sentencing were both appealed, but subsequently affirmed by Iraq’s Supreme Court of Appeals.
Hussein died by hanging on December 30, 2006.
2009 – 13 people were killed and more than 30 others wounded, nearly all of them unarmed soldiers, when a U.S. Army officer went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in central Texas.
The deadly assault, carried out by Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, was the worst mass murder at a U.S. military installation.
2017 – A gunman opened fire on a small church in Sutherland Springs, Texas killing 26 people – including more than a dozen children – and wounding 20 others.
The shooter, Devin Patrick Kelley, was later found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
ROCK & ROLL HISTORY
1960 – Country music singer/songwriter Johnny Horton died in a car crash in Milano, Texas. He was 35.
Among his best known songs were The Battle of New Orleans, Sink The Bismarck, North to Alaska, and Honky-Tonk Man.
1989 – Former U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler died at the age of 49 at a Veterans Administration hospital in Nashville from complications brought on by a gunshot wound to the head, suffered 14 months earlier in Guatemala City.
Sadler is best remembered for his hit The Ballad of The Green Berets, which stayed on top of Billboard’s Hot 100 for five weeks in 1966.
1996 – Johnny Cash’s American II: Unchained album was released, the second album in Cash’s American Recording series.
Backed by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, the album contained a cover of the classic 1962 Hank Snow song, I’ve Been Everywhere.
Try To Keep Up!
2002 – Johnny Cash’s American IV: The Man Comes Around was released. It the last album released during his lifetime.
The album won Album of the Year at the 2003 CMA Awards and the video for Hurt was nominated in seven categories at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards.
2003 – Bobby Hatfield, best known as one half of the Righteous Brothers, died at the age of 63.
He died in his sleep, hours before a scheduled Righteous Brothers concert. In January 2004, a toxicology report concluded that an overdose of cocaine had precipitated a fatal heart attack.
The initial autopsy found that Hatfield had advanced coronary disease. The medical examiner stated that “in this case, there was already a significant amount of blockage in the coronary arteries.”
2005 – Link Wray, one of rock’s pioneer guitarists (Rumble) and the man credited as “the father of the power chord”, died of natural causes at the age of 76.
MOVIE/TV HISTORY
1942 – George M. Cohan died of cancer at the age of 64.
Cohan published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards Over There, Give My Regards To Broadway, Yankee Doodle Dandy and You’re A Grand Old Flag’, in addition to writing and producing over 50 Broadway plays.
Cohan may have written he was “born on the 4th of July” in Yankee Doodle Dandy but the only written record of his birth is a baptismal certificate which verifies that he was born in Providence, Rhode Island on July 3rd, 1878.
1956 – The Nat King Cole Show debuted on NBC. The variety program was the first of its kind hosted by an African-American, which created controversy at the time.
The program was ultimately done in by lack of a national sponsorship, and ended in December 1957 after Cole, not the network, pulled the plug.
1960 – Actor Ward Bond died of a heart attack at the age of 57.
He appeared in over 200 films, including It’s A Wonderful Life, Gone With The Wind, The Searchers, Sergeant York, Rio Bravo, but is also remembered for playing the role of wagon master Major Seth Adams on the Wagon Train television series.
1974 – Stafford Repp died of a heart attack at the age of 56.
He was best known for his role as Police Chief O’Hara in the Batman television series.
1977 – Guy Lombardo (orchestra leader best known for almost a half-century of New Year’s Eve broadcasts across America) died of a heart attack at the age of 75.
1991 – Actor Fred MacMurray died from pneumonia at the age of 83.
He appeared in more than 100 movies, including Double Indemnity, The Caine Mutiny, The Apartment, and The Absent-Minded Professor , but is best known for his role as Steve Douglas, the widowed father on the My Three Sons television series.
2010 – Jill Clayburgh died from leukemia at the age of 66.
She was twice nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award; An Unmarried Woman and Starting Over.
SPORTS HISTORY
1968 – Denny McLain of the Detroit Tigers was unanimously named winner of the American League Most Valuable Player Award – and with a 31-6 record (with 28 complete games) and an ERA of 1.96 – it was no surprise.
1994 – George Foreman, at the age of 45, became boxing’s oldest heavyweight champion when he defeated 26-year-old defending champion Michael Moorer in the 10th round of their WBA fight.
Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2005-2020 RayLemire.com / Streamingoldies.com. All Rights Reserved.