Today 11/30 in 1958 at Sylacauga, Alabama, Mrs. Elizabeth Hodges was struck by a 7-inch meteorite weighing 8.5 pounds when it crashed through the roof of her home. She was hit in the hip without serious injury.
Ancient Chinese records tell of people being injured or killed by falling rocks from the sky. In 1911 a dog in Egypt was killed by a meteorite. Sylacauga is the only modern recording of a human being struck.
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Today in 1993 President Bill Clinton signed the Brady handgun-control bill into law. Basically, the law requires the purchaser of a handgun to wait 5 days while his background is checked.
James Brady suffered a gunshot wound to the head in 1981 when John Hinkley tried to assassinate President Reagan. Opponents of the Brady Bill (as it became known) questioned the regulation of gun ownership, citing the 2nd Amendment.
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Today in 2004 “Jeopardy!” contestant Ken Jennings lost after winning 74 straight programs of the game show. Jennings’ winnings totaled a little more than $2.5 million, a record in game show winnings.
The software engineer turned celebrity appeared on the talk show circuit and even appeared on “Sesame Street.” He also became a spokesperson for several products and wrote at least one book.
The question (or answer) that stumped Jennings was “Most of this firm’s 70,000 seasonal white-collar employees work only four months a year.”
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Happy Birthday
Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, born today 1835 in Florida, Missouri. Clemens made his reputation as a reporter, correspondent, humorist, and author. His best known novels are Innocents Abroad (1869); Tom Sawyer (1875); Life on the Mississippi (1883); and Huckleberry Finn (1885), what some consider his masterpiece. Clemens died in 1910.
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill born today in 1874 at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, England. Though not an American citizen, Churchill was the British Prime Minister and significant British ally during WWII. Congress conferred honorary American citizenship before he died in 1964.
