November 24 ...

In 1784 12th president of the United States Zachary Taylor 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 1868 ragtime composer Scott Joplin was born near Linden, TX. In 1871 the National Rifle Association was incorporated. In 1925 author, conservative journalist, and founder of National Review William F. Buckley, Jr. was born in New York City. In 1944 US bombers based on Saipan attacked Tokyo in the first raid against the Japanese capital by land-based planes. In 1963 Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy, in a scene captured on live television. 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 in ransom -- his fate remains unknown. In 1976 The Band gave its last public performance, documented by Martin Scorsese in the film The Last Waltz. In 1985 the hijacking of an Egyptair jetliner parked on the ground in Malta ended violently as Egyptian commandos stormed the plane. Fifty-eight people died in the raid, in addition to two others killed by the hijackers. In 1987 the US and the Soviet Union agreed to scrap shorter- and medium-range missiles. In 1989 Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu was unanimously re-elected Communist Party chief. (Within a month, he was overthrown in a popular uprising and executed along with his wife, Elena, on Christmas Day.) In 2004 Ukraine's election officials declared that Kremlin-backed Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych had won Ukraine's bitterly disputed presidential runoff balloting; thousands of opposition supporters demonstrated in Kiev.