This Week In History – Nov. 22-28

November 22, 1873 – The French ship Ville du Havre sinks in the north Atlantic, killing all four daughters of Chicago lawyer Horatio G. Spafford. His wife survived, and Spafford immediately booked passage to join her in England. While passing over the spot where his daughters died, he began writing what would become the famous hymn “It Is Well with My Soul.”

November 22, 1898 – Barnstorming aviator Wiley Post was born in Grand Plain, TX. He was a self-taught pilot who became an international celebrity in the 1930s and co-authored Around the World in Eight Days. In 1935, Post and his friend Will Rogers began a flight to the Orient, however, the plane crashed near Point Barrow, Alaska, killing both of them.

November 22, 1963 – At 12:30 p.m., on Elm Street in downtown Dallas, President John F. Kennedy’s motorcade slowly approached a triple underpass. Shots rang out. The President was struck in the back, then in the head. He was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital where fifteen doctors tried to save him. At 1 p.m., John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, was pronounced dead. On board Air Force One, at 2:38 p.m., Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President.

November 22, 1990 – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced she would resign after 11 years in office, the longest term of any British Prime Minister in the 20th century.

November 22, 1985 – Largest swearing-in ceremony: 38,648 legal immigrants become U.S. citizens.

November 23, 101 – Clement of Rome dies. According to spurious legend, he was tied to an anchor and thrown into the sea. Considered “the first apostolic father,” his letter to the church of Corinth was regarded as Scripture by many Christians in the third and fourth centuries. He was also credited with the Apostolic Constitutions, the largest collection of Christian ecclesiastical law.

November 23, 1654 – French scientist and mathematician Blaise Pascal experiences a mystical vision and converts to Christianity. The creator of the first wristwatch, the first bus route, the first workable calculating machine, and other inventions then turned his life to theology.

November 24, 1874 – Joseph Glidden, businessman and farmer, patented his invention of barbed wire.

November 24, 2020 – Despite losses early during the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic policies of President Donald Trump enabled the Dow Jones Industrial Average to rebound and close above 30,000 points for the first time ever.

November 25, 2348, BC – According to Anglican Archbishop James Ussher’s Old Testament chronology, Noah’s flood began on this date.

November 25, 1982 – The Minneapolis Thanksgiving Day Fire destroys an entire city block, including the Northwestern National Bank building and the recently closed Donaldson’s Department Store.

November 25, 1863 – Catherine Bissell is born. She and her husband, Edmund F. Ely, would run Minnesota mission schools at Fond du Lac, Pokegama, La Pointe, and other locations.

November 26, 1789 – The first American holiday occurred, proclaimed by President George Washington to be Thanksgiving Day, a day of prayer and public thanksgiving in gratitude for the successful establishment of the new American republic.

November 26, 1791 – The first U.S. cabinet meeting is held at George Washington’s home in Philadelphia, PA. Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of War Henry Knox, and Attorney General Edmund Randolph attend.

November 26, 1862 – President Abraham Lincoln meets Harriet Beecher Stowe, the abolitionist author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and daughter of prominent minister Lyman Beecher. “So,” Lincoln said upon meeting her, “you’re the little woman that wrote the book that made this great war!”

November 26, 1940 – During the Holocaust, Nazis began walling off the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw, sealing in 400,000 inhabitants while denying them adequate food, sanitation and housing.

November 26, 1960 – The former Washington Senators baseball club and new Minnesota club takes the name, “Minnesota Twins.”

November 27, 1853 – Wild West lawman Bat Masterson was born in Henryville, Quebec. He was also a gambler, saloonkeeper, and later became a news writer in New York.

November 27, 1921 – Czech leader Alexander Dubcek was born in Uhrocev, Slovakia. In 1968, as first secretary of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, he attempted to achieve “socialism with a human face” and loosen Soviet Russia’s control of his country. This resulted in a military invasion by the Russians.

November 27, 2019 – President Donald Trump signed two historic bills, approved by near unanimous consent in the House and Senate, aimed at supporting human rights and pro-freedom activists in Hong Kong, angering the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

November 28, 1520 – Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan passed through the strait (of Magellan) located at the southern tip of South America, thus crossing from the Atlantic Ocean into the Pacific.

November 28, 1628 – British cleric John Bunyan was born in Elstow, Bedfordshire, England. He wrote 60 books, including the famous A Pilgrim’s Progress, a Christian allegory of the human soul.

November 28, 1905 – The freighter Mataafa wrecks near the lighthouse in Duluth harbor during a storm that sank eighteen ships on the Great Lakes in a twenty-four-hour period. The crew suffers terribly from the cold winds of the storm, and nine freeze to death. The Mataafa is rebuilt and continues to sail until 1966.