Today in History: Saturday, November 10, 2012
On Nov. 10, 1975, the ore-hauling ship Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a storm in Lake Superior. All 29 crew members died.
1483 Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation, was born in Eisleben, Germany.
1775 The U.S. Marines were organized under authority of the Continental Congress.
1928 Hirohito was enthroned as Emperor of Japan.
1938 Kate Smith first sang Irving Berlin's "God Bless America" on network radio.
1942 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, discussing the recent victory over Rommel at El Alamein, Egypt, said "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
1951 Direct-dial, coast-to-coast telephone service began with a call between the mayors of Englewood, N.J., and Alameda, Calif.
1954 The U.S. Marine Corps Memorial, depicting the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945, was dedicated in Arlington, Va.
1961 The satirical anti-war novel "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller was published.
1969 "Sesame Street" debuted on PBS.
1975 The U.N. General Assembly approved a resolution equating Zionism with racism.
1982 Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died at age 75.
1997 WorldCom Inc. and MCI Communications Corp. agreed to a $37 billion merger.
2001 The World Trade Organization approved China's membership.
2007 Author Norman Mailer died at age 84.
2009 John Allen Muhammad, mastermind of the 2002 sniper attacks that killed 10 in the Washington, D.C. region, was executed.