November 26 ...

In 1825 the first college social fraternity, Kappa Alpha, was formed at Union College in Schenectady, NY. In 1832 public streetcar service began in New York City. The fare: 12 1/2 cents. In 1842 the University of Notre Dame was founded. In 1861 West Virginia was created (out of Virginia) over a dispute over slavery; West Virginia was against slavery. In 1922 Peanuts cartoonist Charles M. Schulz was born in Minneapolis, MN. In 1940 the half million Jews of Warsaw, Poland, were forced by the Nazis to live within a walled ghetto. In 1941 a fleet of six Japanese aircraft carriers commanded by Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo left Hitokapu Bay bound for Pearl Harbor and the attack that would occur on December 7; later on this day, Secretary of State Hull presented the Japanese ambassador with the 'Hull note,' which had as one of its conditions a demand for the complete withdrawal of all Japanese troops from China; also on this day, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a bill re-establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the US (it had been the third Thursday since 1939, when FDR changed it from the fourth Thursday in order to help merchants during the Great Depression -- prior to 1939, Thanksgiving had been celebrated on the fourth Thursday of the month when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day in 1863). In 1942 the motion picture Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, had its world premiere at the Hollywood Theater in New York. In 1943 the HMT Rohna, a British transport ship carrying American soldiers, became the first ship sunk by a guided missile when it was hit by a German missile off Algeria; 1,038 men were killed, including 1,015 American troops. In 1949 India adopted a constitution as a republic within the British Commonwealth. In 1950 China entered the Korean conflict, launching a counteroffensive against soldiers from the United Nations, the US, and South Korea. In 1965 France became the third country to enter space when it launched a Diamant-A rocket with its first satellite, Asterix-1 on board. In 1968 the British rock band Cream played their farewell concert at Royal Albert Hall. In 1973 President Nixon's personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods, told a federal court that she'd accidentally caused part of the 18 1/2-minute gap in a key Watergate tape. In 1985 the space shuttle Atlantis was launched on its second mission, carrying seven astronauts on a seven-day mission. In 1998 Tony Blair became the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to address the Republic of Ireland's parliament.