November 20th, 2008

Today in History

1998:
A court in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan declares accused terrorist Osama bin Laden "a man without a sin" in regards to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

1969:
Vietnam War: The Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

1962:
Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, US President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.

1820:
An 80-ton sperm whale attacks the Essex (a whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts) 2,000 miles from the western coast of South America (Herman Melville's 1851 novel Moby-Dick was in part inspired by this story).

1468:
Joanot Martorell's book Tirant lo Blanc is published for the first time.