Today In History - November 10th

Monday November 10, 2014 the 312th day and 44th week of 2014, there are 53 days and 8 weeks left in the year.  Highlights of today in world history...


1903 Mary Anderson patents windshield wiper
On this day, the patent office awarded U.S. Patent No. 743,801 to a Birmingham, Alabama woman named Mary Anderson for her "window cleaning device for electric cars and other vehicles to remove snow, ice or sleet from the window." When she received her patent, Anderson tried to sell it to a Canadian manufacturing firm, but the company refused: The device had no practical value, it said, and so was not worth any money. Though mechanical windshield wipers were standard equipment in passenger cars by around 1913, Anderson never profited from the invention.
As the story goes, on a freezing, wet winter day around the turn of the century, Mary Anderson was riding a streetcar on a visit to New York City when she noticed that the driver could hardly see through his sleet-encrusted front windshield. Although the trolley's front window was designed for bad-weather visibility—it was split into parts so that the driver could open it, moving the snow- or rain-covered section out of his line of vision—in fact the multi-pane windshield system worked very poorly. It exposed the driver's uncovered face (not to mention all the passengers sitting in the front of the trolley) to the inclement weather, and did not improve his ability to see where he was going in any case.
Anderson began to sketch her wiper device right there on the streetcar. After a number of false starts, she came up with a prototype that worked: a set of wiper arms that were made of wood and rubber and attached to a lever near the steering wheel of the drivers' side. When the driver pulled the lever, she dragged the spring-loaded arm across the window and back again, clearing away raindrops, snowflakes or other debris. When winter was over, Anderson's wipers could be removed and stored until the next year. (This feature was presumably designed to appeal to people who lived in places where it did not rain in the summertime.)
People scoffed at Anderson's invention, saying that the wipers' movement would distract the driver and cause accidents. Her patent expired before she could entice anyone to use her idea.
In 1917, a woman named Charlotte Bridge wood patented the "Electric Storm Windshield Cleaner," an automatic wiper system that used rollers instead of blades. (Bridge wood’s daughter, the actress Florence Lawrence, had invented the turn signal.) Like Anderson, Bridge wood never made any money from her invention.

1928 Hirohito crowned in Japan
Two years after the death of his father, Michinomiya Hirohito was enthroned as the 124th Japanese monarch in an imperial line dating back to 660 B.C.
Emperor Hirohito presided over one of the most turbulent eras in his nation's history. From rapid military expansion beginning in 1931 to the crushing defeat of Japan by Allied forces in 1945, Hirohito ruled the Japanese people as an absolute monarch whose powers were nevertheless sharply limited in practice. After U.S. atomic bombs destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was Hirohito who argued for his country's surrender, explaining to the Japanese people in his first-ever radio address that the "unendurable must be endured."
Under U.S. occupation and post-war reconstruction, Hirohito was formally stripped of his powers and forced to renounce his alleged divinity, but he remained his country's official figurehead until his death in 1989. He was the longest-reigning monarch in Japanese history.

1942 Germans take Vichy France
On this day in 1942, German troops occupied Vichy France, which had previously been free of an Axis military presence.
Since July 1940, upon being invaded and defeated by Nazi German forces, the autonomous French state had been split into two regions. One was occupied by German troops, and the other was unoccupied, governed by a more or less puppet regime cantered in Vichy, a spa region about 200 miles southeast of Paris, and led by Gen. Philippe Petain, a World War I hero. Publicly, Petain declared that Germany and France had a common goal, "the defeat of England." Privately, the French general hoped that by playing mediator between the Axis power and his fellow countrymen, he could keep German troops out of Vichy France while surreptitiously aiding the antifascist Resistance movement.
Petain's compromises became irrelevant within two years. When Allied forces arrived in North Africa to team up with the Free French Forces to beat back the Axis occupiers, and French naval crews, emboldened by the Allied initiative, scuttled the French fleet off Toulon, in south-eastern France, to keep it from being used by those same Axis powers, Hitler retaliated. In violation of the 1940 armistice agreement, German troops moved into south-eastern-Vichy, France. From that point forward, Petain became virtually useless, and France merely a future gateway for the Allied counteroffensive in Western Europe, namely, D-Day.

1969 Sesame Street debuts
On this day in 1969, "Sesame Street," a pioneering TV show that would teach generations of young children the alphabet and how to count, makes its broadcast debut. "Sesame Street," with its memorable theme song ("Can you tell me how to get/How to get to Sesame Street"), went on to become the most widely viewed children's program in the world. It has aired in more than 120 countries.
The show was the brainchild of Joan Ganz Cooney, a former documentary producer for public television. Cooney's goal was to create programming for pre-schoolers that was both entertaining and educational. She also wanted to use TV as a way to help underprivileged 3- to 5- year-olds prepare for kindergarten. "Sesame Street" was set in a fictional New York neighbourhood and included ethnically diverse characters and positive social messages.
Taking a cue from "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," a popular 1960s variety show, "Sesame Street" was built around short, often funny segments featuring puppets, animation and live actors. This format was hugely successful, although over the years some critics have blamed the show and its use of brief segments for shrinking children's attention spans.
From the show's inception, one of its most-loved aspects has been a family of puppets known as Muppets. Joan Ganz Cooney hired puppeteer Jim Henson (1936-1990) to create a cast of characters that became Sesame Street institutions, including Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch, Grover and Big Bird.
The subjects tackled by "Sesame Street" have evolved with the times. In 2002, the South African version of the program, "Takalani Sesame," introduced a 5-year-old Muppet character named Kami who is HIV-positive; in order to help children living with the stigma of a disease that has reached epidemic proportions. In 2006, a new Muppet, Abby Cadabby, made her debut and was positioned as the show's first female star character, in an effort to encourage diversity and provide a strong role model for girls.
Since its inception, over 74 million Americans have watched "Sesame Street." Today, an estimated 8 million people tune in to the show each week in the U.S. alone.

1973 Slaughterhouse-Five is burned in North Dakota
On this day in 1973, newspapers reported the burning of 36 copies of Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut.
Vonnegut's book was a combination of real events and science fiction. His hero, Billy Pilgrim, was a World War II soldier who witnessed the firebombing of Dresden, as had Vonnegut himself. Pilgrim becomes "unstuck in time" and thereafter lives a double existence-one life on an alien planet where a resigned acceptance of inevitable doom expresses itself philosophically in the hopeless locution "And so it goes." In his life on Earth, Pilgrim preaches the same philosophy. Some found the book's pessimistic outlook and black humour unsuitable for school children.
Vonnegut was born on November 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, Indiana. He attended Cornell and joined the Air Force during World War II. He was captured by Germans and held in Dresden, where he was forced to dig out dead and charred bodies in the aftermath of the city's bombing. After the war, he studied anthropology at the University of Chicago and later wrote journalism and public relations material.
Vonnegut's other novels, including Cat's Cradle (1963), Breakfast of Champions (1973), Galapagos (1985), and others, did not generate as much controversy as Slaughterhouse-Five. His experimental writing style, combining the real, the absurd, the satiric, and the fanciful, attracted attention and made his books popular. Vonnegut is also a gifted graphic artist whose satirical sketches appear in some of his later novels, including Breakfast of Champions.

1982 Leonid Brezhnev dies
After 18 years as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev dies on this day. His death signalled the end of a period of Soviet history marked by both stability and stagnation.

Brezhnev came to power in 1964 when, along with Alexei Kosygin, he was successful in pushing Nikita Khrushchev out of office. For the next 18 years, he brought a degree of stability to Soviet politics unknown since the Stalinist period. However, his time in office was also marked by forceful repression of political opponents and dissidents, a massive military build-up that bankrupted the Russian economy, and a foreign policy that seemed confusing at best. 

During Brezhnev's reign political repression took on more and more ominous overtones. Dissidents such as Aleksandra Solzhenitsyn and Andrei Sakharov were harassed and sometimes sentenced to internal exile. His program to bring the Soviet military to parity with the United States drove the Russian economy to the breaking point; by the late 1970s economic growth was almost at a standstill. His foreign policy was often confusing for U.S. officials. On the one hand, he seemed to approve of the idea of "peaceful coexistence," pushed for control of nuclear weapons, and helped the United States in its negotiations with North Vietnam. On the other, he unleashed Soviet forces against Czechoslovakia in 1968, became involved with revolts in Ethiopia and Angola in the 1970s, reacted in a threatening manner during the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1973, and ordered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. By the end of his rule, discussions about nuclear arms control had almost completely lapsed.

Upon his death in November 1982, Yuri Andropov took control of the Soviet Union.

1995 Ken Saro-Wiwa, Playwright and activist hanged in Nigeria
Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian playwright and environmental activist, is hanged in Nigeria along with eight other activists from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop).
Saro-Wiwa, an outspoken critic of Nigeria's military regime, was charged by the government with the 1994 murder of four pro-military traditional leaders. He maintained his innocence, claiming that he was being unlawfully silenced for his criticism of the exploitation of the oil-rich Ogoni basin by the Nigerian ruling government and the Shell Petroleum Development Company. Most of the international community agreed, but Nigerian leader General Sani Abacha refused to grant the defendants an appeal and would not delay the executions.
Before his death, Saro-Wiwa won Sweden's prestigious Right Livelihood Award and had also been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In reaction to the executions, U.S. President Bill Clinton recalled the U.S. ambassador from Lagos and imposed an arms ban, though trade with oil-rich Nigeria continued.

2001 Bush addresses the United Nations regarding terrorism
On this day in 2001, in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, President George W. Bush addresses the United Nations to ask for the international community's help in combating terrorism around the world. He also pledged to take the fight against terrorism to any place where terrorists were harboured.
In his speech, Bush called the war on terror a case of "light overcoming darkness" and warned that civilization itself was being threatened by those who used terror to achieve their political aims. In a poignant moment, Bush pointed out that only a few miles from United Nations headquarters in New York City "many thousands still lie in a tomb of rubble," referring to the site where the World Trade Centre towers formerly stood. Bush cited the U.S.-led military action in Afghanistan against al-Qaida and the Taliban regime that had sponsored them, begun a month earlier, as proof that the U.S. was fully prepared to attack other nations that harboured or financed terrorist groups. Bush went on to promise that the U.S. would stand by its commitment to peace in the Middle East by "working toward a day when two states, Israel and Palestine, live peacefully together within secure and recognized borders as called for" by the United Nations.
Bush concluded his speech by saying he expected the United Nations member states to live up to their global obligation to help root out terrorist cells. "The cost of inaction is far greater," he said, and the attacks on September 11 proved that "the only alternative is a nightmare world where every city is a potential killing field." This speech was the first time Bush laid out a policy of pre-emptive action against regimes that sponsored terrorists. He followed up on his threat two years later by sending American troops to overthrow Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, whom he accused of funding terrorist organizations and developing weapons of mass destruction, though no such weapons were ever found.h