Calendar for November 17th, 2012

2001: First day of Ramadan

St. Hugh of Lincoln

Died 1558: Queen Mary I of England

Born 1794: George Grote (historian)

1800: The U.S. Congress met for the first time in the Capitol, Washington, D.C.

Born 1816: August Wilhelm Ambros (composer)

1851: First U.S. postage stamp of American eagle issued

Born 1878: Grace Abbott (reformer)

Born 1901: Lee Strasberg (director)

Born 1904: Isamu Noguchi (sculptor)

Died 1917: Auguste Rodin (sculptor)

Born 1922: Stanley Cohen (biochemist)

Born 1925: Rock Hudson (actor)

Born 1930: Bob Mathias (decathlon athlete)

Born 1938: Gordon Lightfoot (singer)

Born 1942: Martin Scorsese (director)

Born 1944: Danny DeVito (actor)

Born 1944: Tom Seaver (baseball player)

Born 1966: Sophie Marceau (actress)

Born 1966: Daisy Fuentes (model & television host)

1970: Douglas C. Engelbart patented the computer mouse

Died 1979: Immanuel Velikovsky (author)

1980: A turkey was plucked in 1 minute 30 seconds, setting world record

Born 1994: Raquel Castro (actress)

Died 1998: Dick O'Neill (actor)

Died 1998: Esther Rolle (actress)

Died 2002: Abba Eban (statesman, dominated Israeli diplomacy for decades)

2003: Arnold Schwarzenegger inaugurated as Governor of California

2004: The soap opera All My Children taped its 9,000th episode

Died 2008: Irving Brecher (comedy writer)

2010: The world's oldest champagne (salvaged from a shipwreck in the Baltic Sea) was uncorked and sampled. Wine experts date the bottles as being from the early 19th century.