11/11/09

OK, with Christmas also around the corner, I decided to do this blog post with a bit of significance in date, I mean what date has more numbers the same than this date(I'm not counting 11/11/11 in 2 years time). Basically, it's the 315th day (316th during a leap year) of the year, and these are the events of all that happened during that special date( I know, it's a lot!) I have removed a handful because of the LONGGGG, and GRUELING amount of reading you might have to do if I didn't delete it.

Events

• 1869 – Victorian Aboriginal Protection Act is enacted in Australia, giving the government control of Indigenous people's wages, of their terms of employment, of where they could live, and of their children, effectively leading to the Stolen Generations.
• 1880 – Australian Bushranger Ned Kelly is hanged at Melbourne Gaol.
• 1887 – Anarchist Haymarket Martyrs August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer and George Engel are executed.
• 1887 – Construction of the Manchester Ship Canal starts at Eastham.
• 1889 – Washington is admitted as the 42nd U.S. state.
• 1911 – Many cities in the U.S. Midwest broke their record highs and lows on the same day as a strong cold front rolls through. (see The 11/11/11 cold wave).
• 1918 – World War I ends: Germany signs an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside of Compiègne in France. The war officially stops at 11:00 (The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) this is annually honoured with two-minutes of silence.
• 1918 – Józef Piłsudski comes to Warsaw and assumes supreme military power in Poland. Poland regains its independence, celebrated each year on this day.
• 1918 – Emperor Charles I of Austria relinquishes power.
• 1919 – The Centralia Massacre in Centralia, Washington results the deaths of four members of the American Legion and the lynching of a local leader of the IWW.
• 1919 – Lāčuplēšu day – Latvian forces defeat the Freikorps at Riga in the Latvian War of Independence.
• 1919 – Allied win over the Central powers, ending WW1.
• 1921 – The Tomb of the Unknowns is dedicated by US President Warren G. Harding at Arlington National Cemetery.
• 1924 – Prime Minister Alexandros Papanastasiou proclaims the first Greek Republic.
• 1926 – U.S. Route 66 is established.
• 1930 – Patent number US1781541 is awarded to Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd for their invention, the Einstein refrigerator.
• 1940 – World War II: Battle of Taranto – The Royal Navy launches the first aircraft carrier strike in history, on the Italian fleet at Taranto.
• 1940 – The German cruiser Atlantis captures top secret British mail, and sends it to Japan.
• 1940 – Armistice Day Blizzard: An unexpected blizzard kills 144 in U.S. Midwest.
• 1942 – World War II: Nazi Germany completed their occupation of France.
• 1960 – A military coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam is crushed.
• 1962 – Kuwait's National Assembly ratifies the Constitution of Kuwait.
• 1965 – In Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe), the white-minority government of Ian Smith unilaterally declares independence.
• 1966 – NASA launches spaceship Gemini 12.
• 1967 – Vietnam War: In a propaganda ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, three American prisoners of war are released by the Viet Cong and turned over to "new left" antiwar activist Tom Hayden.
• 1968 – Vietnam War: Operation Commando Hunt initiated. The goal is to interdict men and supplies on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through Laos into South Vietnam.
• 1968 – A second republic is declared in the Maldives.
• 1972 – Vietnam War: Vietnamization – The United States Army turns over the massive Long Binh military base to South Vietnam.
• 1975 – Australian constitutional crisis of 1975: Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismisses the government of Gough Whitlam and commissions Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister, and announces a general election to be held in early December.
• 1992 – The Church of England votes to allow women to become priests.
• 2000 – In Kaprun, Austria, 155 skiers and snowboarders die when a cable car catches fire in an alpine tunnel.
• 2001 – Journalists Pierre Billaud, Johanne Sutton and Volker Handloik are killed in Afghanistan during an attack on the convoy they are traveling on top of.
• 2004 – New Zealand Tomb of the Unknown Warrior dedicated at the National War Memorial, Wellington.
• 2004 – Yasser Arafat is confirmed dead by the Palestine Liberation Organization, of unidentified causes. Mahmoud Abbas is elected chairman of the PLO minutes later.
• 2006 – The New Zealand war memorial monument is unveiled by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in London, United Kingdom, commemorating the loss of soldiers from the New Zealand Army and the British Army.
• 2008 – The RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (QE2) set sail on her final voyage to Dubai.