November 21 ...

In 1620 the Mayflower reached Provincetown, MA; the ship discharged the Pilgrims at Plymouth, MA, on December 26, 1620. In 1694 author and philosopher Francois-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name of Voltaire, was born in Paris. In 1789 North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the US Constitution. In 1877 inventor Thomas A. Edison announced the invention of his phonograph. In 1920 Hall of Famer Stan Musial was born in Donora, PA. In 1942 the Alaska highway across Canada was formally opened. In 1964 New York's Verrazano Narrows Bridge, connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island, opened. In 1969 the Senate voted down the Supreme Court nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth, the first such rejection since 1930. In 1973 President Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 18-and-a-half-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate. In 1979 a mob attacked the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing two Americans. In 1980 an estimated 83 million TV viewers tuned in to the CBS primetime soap opera Dallas to find out "Who shot J.R.?" (The shooter turned out to be J.R. Ewing's sister-in-law, Kristin.) In 1985 former US Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested, accused of spying for Israel. (He later pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to life in prison.) In 1995 Balkan leaders meeting in Dayton, OH initialed a peace plan to end 3 1/2 years of ethnic fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina; the Dow Jones industrial average closed above the 5,000 mark for the first time. In 2002 NATO invited Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia to become members.