This Week in History – Nov. 15-21

November 15, 1777 – The Articles of Confederation were adopted by Continental Congress.

November 15, 1917 – Oswald Chambers dies while serving as chaplain to British troops in Egypt during World War I. His widow, Gertrude, spent the rest of her life compiling his notes, lectures, and sermons into books, including the bestselling My Utmost for His Highest.

November 16, 1883 – The steamer Manistee sinks in Lake Superior. It had left Duluth on November 10, but a gale had driven it into port at Bayfield. Captain John McKay tries to force passage on this night, and twenty-three of the sailors aboard are never seen again. A lifeboat carrying three survivors washes ashore a few days later.

November 16, 1939 – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Pierce Butler dies in Washington, DC. Born near Northfield, Minnesota, on March 17, 1866, Butler opposed many of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. Butler was the final justice to pass the bar exam after studying with an attorney rather than attending a law school. He served as lawyer for Ramsey County and as regent for the University of Minnesota before President Warren G. Harding appointed him to the high court in 1922.

November 17, 1800 – The U.S. Congress met for the first time in the new capital at Washington, D.C. President John Adams then became the first occupant of the Executive Mansion, later renamed the White House.

November 17, 1989 – Thousands of protesters marched through the streets of Prague demanding an end to Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. Riot police and army paratroopers then moved in to crush the revolt.

November 18, 1883 – A Connecticut school teacher, Charles F. Dowd, proposed a uniform time zone plan for the U.S. consisting of four zones.

November 18, 1985 – Liberian freighter Socrates runs aground on Minnesota Point in Duluth. Excursion buses carry tourists to view the stranded ship, which is later freed by tugs.

November 19, 1861 – At the suggestion of her minister, abolitionist poet Julia Ward Howe wrote “some good words to that tune” of the song “John Brown’s Body.” Her words, together with “that tune,” is the “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” It was first published in the Atlantic Monthly and became the anthem of the Civil War.

November 19, 1805 – Lewis and Clark expedition, led by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, reaches the Pacific Ocean, the first Americans to cross the West.

November 19, 1862 – Baseball player-turned-revivalist William (Billy) Sunday is born in Iowa. An estimated 100 million people attended his 300 revivals, and he claimed that at least one million of them “hit the sawdust trail” to come forward and profess their conversion to Christ as a result of his preaching.

November 19, 1863 – President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address during ceremonies dedicating 17 acres of the Gettysburg Battlefield as a National Cemetery. Famed orator Edward Everett of Massachusetts preceded Lincoln and spoke for two hours. Lincoln then delivered his address in less than two minutes. Lincoln’s words have come to symbolize the definition of our Constitutional Republic.

November 19, 1872 – E.D. Barbour of Boston is awarded the first U.S. patent for the first adding machine capable of printing totals and subtotals.

November 19, 1895 – American inventor Frederick E. Blaisdell patents the pencil. Two years later on this date, the pencil sharpener is patented by J. L. Love.

November 19, 1985 – President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meet for the first time.

November 19-20, 1990 – The Cold War came to an end during a summit in Paris as leaders of NATO and the Warsaw Pact signed a Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe, vastly reducing their military arsenals. Former President Reagan plus the abject failure of socialism are credited for the fall of the Soviet empire.

November 20, 1620 – Peregrine White, son of William and Susanna White, is the first child born on the Mayflower.

November 20, 1945 – The Nuremberg War Crime Trials began in which 24 former leaders of National Socialist (Nazi) Germany were charged with conspiracy to wage wars of aggression, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

November 20, 1962 – The Cuban Missile Crisis concluded as President John F. Kennedy announced he had lifted the U.S. Naval blockade of Cuba stating, “the evidence to date indicates that all known offensive missile sites in Cuba have been dismantled.”

November 20, 2014 – 5 million illegals in the U.S. had the threat of deportation deferred by President Obama, thus opening the floodgates on the south border, after he announced sweeping immigration changes. Three days later, Republicans condemn Obama’s use of executive powers to force the changes.

November 21, 164BC – During Maccabbean revolt Judas Maccabaeus recaptures Jersusalem and rededicates the Second Temple, commemorated since as Jewish festival, Hanukkah.

November 21, 1620 – Pilgrims sign the Mayflower Compact, a typical church covenant of the time.

November 21, 1638 – A General Assembly at Glasgow abolishes the episcopal form of church government and establishes Presbyterianism, creating the Church of Scotland (see issue 46: John Knox).

November 21, 1902 – The steamer Bannockburn and its twenty-member crew are seen for the last time as they set forth from Duluth, later disappearing somewhere on Lake Superior.

November 21, 1924 – The steamer Merton E. Farr strikes and heavily damages the Duluth-Superior Bridge.

November 21, 1953 – Authorities at the British Natural History Museum denounced the “Piltdown Man” skull, one of the most famous fossil skulls in the world, as the first of many hoaxes to plague Darwin’s theory of evolution.