November 24

1954

A new Lockheed VC-121E Constellation was brought into service for President Dwight Eisenhower, which he names "Columbine III," and is christened Air Force One by First Lady Mamie Eisenhower. Though not the first plane to use the call sign Air Force One, it is the first to do so from the start of its service. In 1953, two planes nearly collided over New York City. One was Eastern Airlines flight 8610 and the other was Air Force flight 8610. Because they had the same call sign, they both entered the same airspace. After this incident, it was decided that the president’s plane should have its own unique call sign, Air Force One.

1960

Philadelphia Warrior Wilt Chamberlain snagged 55 rebounds in a game against the Boston Celtics and set an NBA record for the most rebounds in a single game. Chamberlain is considered one of the best offensive basketball players of his era. He broke more than 70 NBA records. In his 14-year career in the NBA, he scored 31,419 points. He was the highest scorer in the NBA from 1960-1966 and led the league in rebounding for 11 of his 14 seasons. During the 1966-67 season, when his coach asked him to shoot less and pass more, Chamberlain had more assists than anyone else in the league.

1971

A hijacker calling himself D.B. Cooper highjacked a Northwest Orient Airlines 727 and demanded $200,000 in ransom money. Wearing only wraparound sunglasses, a thin suit, and a raincoat, Cooper parachuted into a thunderstorm with winds in excess of 100 mph and temperatures well below zero at the 10,000-foot altitude where he began his fall. No trace of Cooper has ever been found. In 1980, an eight-year-old boy uncovered a stack of nearly $5,880 of the ransom money in the sands along the north bank of the Columbia River, five miles from Vancouver, Washington. The fate of Cooper remains a mystery.

November 25

1963

Three days after his assassination in Dallas, Texas, President John F. Kennedy was laid to rest with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

1979

Pat Summerall and John Madden broadcast a game together for the first time. There've been plenty of great broadcasting teams to take the booth in NFL history -- but this pairing stands a cut above the rest. John Madden and Pat Summerall worked as a broadcasting team for a whopping 22 years. Together, they covered eight Super Bowls and worked with multiple networks. They called their final game together in February 2002 with Fox. From the 1990s and into the early 2000s, Summerall also lent his voice to Madden's famous football video game series. Pat Summerall died of a heart attack in 2013. John Madden passed away at the age of 85 in late 2021. While each of these football icons have passed on, both of their voices will live on in the minds of NFL fans everywhere.

1986

Three weeks after a Lebanese magazine reported that the United States had been secretly selling arms to Iran in an effort to secure the release of seven American hostages, Attorney General Edwin Meese reveals that, on white house orders, proceeds from the arms sales were diverted to the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua. The revelation, confirmed by U.S. intelligence sources, came as a shock to officials outside President Reagan’s inner circle and went against the stated policy of the administration. In addition to violating the U.S. arms embargo against Iran, the arms sales contradicted President Reagan’s vow never to negotiate with terrorists.

November 26

1941

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill officially establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day. This followed the precedent set by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 which was followed annually by every subsequent president—until 1939. In 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt departed from tradition by declaring November 23, the next to last Thursday that year, as Thanksgiving Day. He thought this would help bolster retail sales during one of the final years of the Great Depression by adding an extra seven days of Christmas shopping. Considerable controversy surrounded this deviation, and some Americans refused to honor Roosevelt’s declaration. For the next two years, Roosevelt repeated the unpopular proclamation. In 1941, Roosevelt admitted his mistake and reverted back to the precedent established by Lincoln.

1942

Casablanca, a World War II-era drama starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premieres in New York City; it will go on to become one of the most beloved Hollywood movies in history. In the film, Bogart played Rick Blaine, the owner of a swanky North African nightclub, who is reunited with the beautiful, enigmatic Ilsa Lund (Bergman), the woman who loved and left him. Directed by Michael Curtiz, Casablanca took home three Oscars, for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film featured a number of now-iconic quotes, including Rick’s line to Ilsa: “Here’s looking at you, kid,” as well as “Round up the usual suspects,” “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship” and “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”

1956

The original Price Is Right, hosted by Bill Cullen, premiered on NBC's daytime schedule. During the American game show, contestants made successive bids on merchandise prizes with the goal of bidding closest to the actual retail price of the prize without going over. The show was a precursor to the current and best-known version of the show, which premiered in 1972 on CBS's daytime schedule. It makes The Price Is Right one of only a few game shows to have aired in some form across all three of the Big Three television networks. Bob Barker hosted 35 seasons of daily episodes until his retirement in 2007 when Drew Carey assumed hosting duties.

 

1968

While returning to base from another mission, Air Force 1st Lt. James P. Fleming and four other Bell UH-1F helicopter pilots received an urgent message from an Army Special Forces team pinned down by enemy fire. Lieutenant Fleming and another pilot pressed on with the rescue effort while others could not because of low fuel. The first attempt failed because of intense ground fire, but refusing to abandon the Army green berets, Fleming managed to land and pick up the team. When he safely arrived at his base near Duc Co, it was discovered that his aircraft was nearly out of fuel. Lieutenant Fleming was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions.

 

November 27

1910

New York City's Pennsylvania Station opened as the world's largest railway terminal. The original Penn Station occupied two city blocks and was built by The Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1963, however, Penn Station was razed, and was replaced by Madison Square Garden. When the building was destroyed, art historian Vincent Scully famously said, “One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.” The event is considered the inspiration of The Landmarks Law. Now, most of Penn Station in underground.

1978

Former Board of Supervisors member Dan White murdered Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk at City Hall in San Francisco, CA. White had reportedly been angry about Moscone’s decision not to reappoint him to the city board. White fired upon the mayor first then turned his gun on his rival Milk, who was one of the nation’s first openly gay politicians and a much-admired activist in San Francisco. Future CA Senator Dianne Feinstein, who was the first to find Milk’s body, found herself informing a stunned crowd at City Hall of the assassinations.

1991

At the height of Hulk Hogan's popularity during a 248 day title reign as the WWF Champ, Hogan and The Undertaker met for the first time at Survivor Series 1991. Thanks to some outside interference from Paul Bearer and Hogan's long-time nemesis, Ric Flair, Taker walked out with his first World Championship. At the time, The Undertaker was the youngest person to ever hold the title at 26 years old.

November 28

1895

On this Thanksgiving Day, piloting a gas-powered “horseless carriage” of his and his brother’s own design, the mechanic, inventor and now race car driver Frank Duryea won the first motor-car race in the United States. The race, sponsored by the Chicago Times-Herald, was intended to drum up publicity for the nascent American car industry. It worked, especially for the Duryeas: In the year after the Times-Herald race, the brothers sold 13 of their eponymous Motor Wagons, more than any other carmaker in America.

1925

The Grand Ole Opry, one of the longest-lived and most popular showcases for western music, began broadcasting live from Nashville, Tennessee. The showcase was originally named the Barn Dance, after a Chicago radio program called the National Barn Dance that had begun broadcasting the previous year. The Barn Dance officially became the Opry in 1927. As the program aired immediately after the NBC Music Appreciation Hour, one evening George D. Hay ad-libbed, “For the past hour, you have been listening to Grand Opera. Now we will present Grand Ole Opry!” The Opry aired from the famous Ryman auditorium from 1934 to 1974 before moving to the Grand Ole Opry House. President Richard Nixon was in attendance and lead the Opry audience in singing "Happy Birthday" to First Lady Pat Nixon.

1943

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt joined British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin at a conference in Iran to discuss strategies for winning World War II and potential terms for a peace settlement. Tehran, Iran was chosen as the site for the talks largely due to its strategic importance to the Allies. The United States was able to get supplies to the Soviets through Iran when Germany controlled most of Europe, the Balkans and North Africa, and German U-boat attacks on Allied shipping in the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea made transport treacherous.

 

November 29

1890

The first football game between the cadets of West Point and the cadets of Annapolis was played on the Plain at West Point. The rivalry began because Dennis Michie, Class of 1892, asked Navy to issue a challenge that could not be refused. It would be West Point’s first intercollegiate football game, but Navy had been playing since 1879. Since cadets were not allowed to leave the Academy grounds, Michie agreed to pay half of Navy’s travel expenses, and every cadet agreed to charge $0.52 to his store account for the purpose. The final score was 24-0 in favor of Navy.

1942

Coffee joined the list of items rationed in the United States. Scarcity or shortages were rarely the reason for rationing during the war. Rationing was generally employed for two reasons: (1) to guarantee a fair distribution of resources and foodstuffs to all citizens; and (2) to give priority to military use for certain raw materials, given the present emergency.

1981

Actress Natalie Wood, who starred in such movies as Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story, drowned in a boating accident near California’s Catalina Island. The actress was with her husband, Robert Wagner, and Christopher Walken. Neither Wagner nor Walken saw what happened to Wood that night, but it was believed she somehow slipped overboard while untying a dinghy attached to the boat. Her body was found in the early hours of the following morning. Brainstorm, Wood’s final film, was released in theaters in 1983. She was 43 years old.

November 30

1954

The first modern instance of a meteorite striking a human being occurred in Sylacauga, Alabama, when a meteorite crashed through the roof of a house and into a living room, bounced off a radio and struck a woman on the hip. The victim, Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges, was sleeping on a couch at the time of impact. The space rock was a sulfide meteorite weighing 8.5 pounds and measuring seven inches in length. Mrs. Hodges was not permanently injured but suffered a nasty bruise along her hip and leg. Ancient Chinese records tell of people being injured or killed by falling meteorites, but the Sylacauga meteorite was the first modern record of this type of human injury. In 1911, a dog in Egypt was killed by the Nakhla meteorite.

1965

32-year-old lawyer Ralph Nader published the muckraking book Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile. The book became a best-seller right away. It also prompted the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966, seat-belt laws in 49 states (all but New Hampshire and a number of other road-safety initiatives. Today, Nader is perhaps best known for his role in national politics—and in particular for the controversial role he played in the 2000 presidential election—but Unsafe at Any Speed was the book that made him famous and lent credibility to his work as a consumer advocate.

2004

After winning 74 straight games and more than $2.5 million—a record for U.S. game shows—Jeopardy! contestant Ken Jennings loses. Jennings’ extended winning streak gave the game show a huge ratings boost and turned the software engineer from Salt Lake City, Utah into a TV hero and household name. Barbara Walters named him one of the 10 most fascinating people of the year and Jennings appeared on such shows as Late Night with David Letterman, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and even Sesame Street.