Nov 23, 2017 2 min read

Today is Thursday, Nov. 23, the 327th day of 2017. There are 38 days left in the year. This is Thanksgiving Day.

On Nov. 23, 1942, during World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure establishing the U.S. Women’s Coast Guard Reserve, or SPARS (an abbreviation of the U.S. Coast Guard motto “Semper Paratus” – “Always Ready”).

In 1765, Frederick County, Md., became the first colonial American entity to repudiate the British Stamp Act.

In 1804, the 14th president of the United States, Franklin Pierce, was born in Hillsboro, N.H.

In 1889, the first jukebox made its debut in San Francisco, at the Palais Royale Saloon. (The coin-operated device consisted of four listening tubes attached to an Edison phonograph.)

In 1903, Enrico Caruso made his American debut at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, appearing in “Rigoletto.”

In 1910, American-born physician Hawley Harvey Crippen was hanged at Pentonville Prison in London for murdering his wife, Cora. (Crippen’s mistress, Ethel Le Neve, was acquitted in a separate trial of being an accessory.)

In 1936, Life, the photojournalism magazine created by Henry R. Luce, was first published.

In 1945, most U.S. wartime rationing of foods, including meat and butter, was set to expire by day’s end.

In 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson proclaimed Nov. 25 a day of national mourning following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

In 1980, some 2,600 people were killed by a series of earthquakes that devastated southern Italy.

“We are incredibly heedless in the formation of our beliefs, but find ourselves filled with an illicit passion for them when anyone proposes to rob us of their companionship.”

– James Harvey Robinson, American historian (1863-1936)