This day in history – November 19

• 1493 Christopher Columbus discovers Puerto Rico, on his 2nd voyage.

• 1805 Lewis & Clark expedition reaches the Pacific Ocean, first European Americans to cross the west.

• 1824 Storm causes flooding in St Petersburg, killing 10 000.

• 1835 A ship carrying 500 armed Maori from Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga arrives on the Chatham Islands; those Moriori (indigenous people of the Chatham Islands) that are not killed are enslaved.

• 1850 Alfred Tennyson becomes British Poet Laureate, succeeding William Wordsworth.

• 1861 The first petroleum shipment (1 329 barrels) from the U.S. to Europe leaves Philadelphia, USA, for London, England on the Elizabeth Watts.

• 1863 US President Abraham Lincoln delivers his Gettysburg address beginning; “Four score & seven years ago…”

• 1872 E.D. Barbour of Boston is awarded the first U.S. patent for the first ‘calculator’, an adding machine capable of printing totals and subtotals.

• 1879 National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders determines what “is” a trotter.

• 1881 A meteorite lands near the village of Großliebenthal, southwest of Odessa, Ukraine.

• 1887 Start of Sherlock Holmes “Adventure of Dying Detective” (BG).

• 1893 1st newspaper color supplement (NY World).

• 1895 American inventor Frederick E Blaisdell patents the pencil.

• 1896 Start of Sherlock Holmes “Adventure of Sussex Vampire”.

• 1905 The steamer “Hilda” sinks in the English Channel (100 people drown).

• 1972 Leader of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) Seán MacStiofáin is arrested in Dublin.

• 1975 “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” based on book by Ken Kesey, directed by Milos Forman and starring Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher is released (Academy Awards Best Picture 1976).

• 1976 George Harrison releases “This Song”.

• 1976 Patty Hearst is freed on $15 million bail.

• 1979 Chuck Berry released from prison on income tax evasion

• 1990 Pop duo Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award after it is learned they did not sing on their award-winning “Girl You Know Its True” album.

• 1995 Suicide bomber blasts into Egyptian embassy in Islamabad, kills 16.

• 1996 The case of the Port Arthur massacre comes to trial.

• 1997 McCaughey septuplets born to Bobbi McCaughey in Des Moines, Iowa. First set of septuplets to survive infancy.

• 1998 Vincent van Gogh’s “Portrait of the Artist Without Beard” sells at auction for $71.5-million.

• 1998 Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begins impeachment hearings against US President Bill Clinton.

• 2010 “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1” the 7th film based on the books by J. K. Rowlingis released worldwide.

• 2010 New Zealand suffers its worst mining disaster since 1914 when the first of four explosions occurs at the Pike River Mine; 29 people are killed.

• 2013 23 people are killed by a suicide bombing attack on the Iranian Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

Source: www.onthisday.com