November 9, 2020
Day 314 of 366

November 9th is the 314th day of the year. It is Independence Day in Cambodia, which separated from France in 1953.

In the United States, today is “celebrated” as National Scrapple Day, Microtia Awareness Day, and National Louisiana Day.

Historical items of note:

• In 1520, more than 50 people were sentenced and executed in the Stockholm Bloodbath.
• In 1620, Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower sighted land at Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
• In 1801, surveyor and publisher Gail Borden was born. He invented condensed milk.
• In 1867, the Tokugawa shogunate handed power back to the Emperor of Japan, starting the Meiji Restoration.
• In 1906, Theodore Roosevelt became the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.
• In 1914, Austrian-American actress and inventor Hedy Lamarr was born. She co-invented an early version of frequency-hopping spread spectrum, a guidance system for Allied torpedoes.
• In 1934, astronomer, astrophysicist, and cosmologist Carl Sagan was born.
• In 1951, bodybuilder and actor Lou Ferrigno was born.
• In 1964, actor, director, and producer Robert Duncan McNeill was born.
• In 1967, NASA launched the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft atop the first Saturn V rocket from Cape Kennedy, Florida.
• Also in 1967, the first issue of Rolling Stone magazine was published.
• In 1984, A Nightmare on Elm Street premiered.
• In 2004, Firefox 1.0 was released.

November 9th is World Freedom Day.

This United States federal observance declared by President George W. Bush commemorates the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe. The date was selected due to its proximity to Veterans Day in the United States, effectively starting what some call “Freedom Week”.

I’m not one of them.

The Thing About Today is an effort to look at each day of 2020 with respect to its historical context.

For more creativity with a critical eye, visit Creative Criticality.