November 16 ...

In 1776 British troops captured Fort Washington during the American Revolution. In 1864 Union Gen. William T. Sherman and his troops began their "March to the Sea" during the Civil War. In 1885 Canadian rebel Louis Riel was executed for high treason. In 1904 English engineer John Ambrose Fleming received a patent for the the thermionic valve, or the vacuum tube. In 1907 Oklahoma became the 46th state of the union. In 1933 the United States and the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations. In 1940 responding to Germany's leveling of Coventry, England, two days before, the Royal Air Force bombed Hamburg, Germany; also on this day, in occupied Poland, German Nazis closed off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world. In 1959 the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music opened on Broadway. In 1961 Speaker of the House Samuel T. Rayburn died in Bonham, TX, after having served as speaker since 1940 except for two terms. In 1973 Skylab 3, carrying a crew of three astronauts, was launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, on an 84-day mission; also on this day, President Nixon signed the Alaska Pipeline measure into law. In 2004 President Bush picked National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to be his new secretary of state, succeeding Colin Powell; also on this day, a NASA unmanned "scramjet" (X-43A) reached a speed of nearly 10 times the speed of sound above the Pacific Ocean.