Today's Highlight in History:
On Nov. 24, 1963, Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy, in a scene captured on live television.
On this date:
In 1784, Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States, was born in Orange County, Va.
In 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin published "On the Origin of Species," which explained his theory of evolution.
In 1863, the Civil War battle for Lookout Mountain began in Tennessee; Union forces succeeded in taking the mountain from the Confederates.
In 1944, during World War II, U.S. bombers based on Saipan attacked Tokyo in the first raid against the Japanese capital by land-based planes.
In 1947, a group of writers, producers and directors that became known as the "Hollywood 10" was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about alleged Communist influence in the movie industry.
In 1947, John Steinbeck's novel "The Pearl" was first published.
In 1950, the musical "Guys and Dolls," based on the writings of Damon Runyon and featuring songs by Frank Loesser, opened on Broadway.
In 1969, Apollo 12 splashed down safely in the Pacific.
In 1971, hijacker D.B. Cooper parachuted from a Northwest Airlines 727 over Washington state with $200,000 dollars in ransom. His fate remains unknown.
In 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed on terms to scrap shorter- and medium-range missiles.
Ten years ago: President Clinton and Pacific leaders began meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, to discuss ways of calming the Asian economic crisis. That same day, Japan's Yamaichi Securities closed its doors, becoming the third Japanese financial company to collapse in a month. Space-walking astronauts from the shuttle Columbia grabbed a spinning satellite with their hands, enabling the cockpit crew to use the shuttle's robot arm to return it to the cargo bay.
