Glancing Backward 11-26-09

Today is Thursday, November 26, the 330th day of 2009. There are 35 days left in the year.

Today's highlight in history:

In 1789, a day of Thanksgiving is set aside by U.S. President George Washington to observe the adoption of America's Constitution.

Glancing Backward Locally:

25 years ago - 1984

The southbound lane of Main Street in Towanda was closed when many bricks fell off the four-story building at the corner of Elizabeth and South Main streets.

The weather is expected to be in the sixties today, which is good news for hunters going out of the first day of buck season.

Wyalusing cross country runner Rom Frazier took 118th out of 340 at the sixth annual Kinney Cross Country Championships in the Bronx.

75 years ago - 1934

Stella Marek Cushing will be visiting the Towanda High School to present a program on Jugoslavia.

Twenty-two Towanda Boy Scouts hiked to Table Rock yesterday and had a traditionally made dinner.

The Mills Hospital in Towanda now has a physiotherapy room.

Elsewhere on this date:

1942 - The film "Casablanca," starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, has its world premiere at the Hollywood Theater in New York.

1997 - Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invites foreign experts to live in his "presidential palaces" to prove that he has nothing to hide. The palaces remain closed to weapons inspectors.

1998 - The Supreme Court of Canada rules that authorities at elementary and secondary schools have the right to search a student without first obtaining a search warrant.

1999 - A Norwegian high-speed passenger ferry carrying 85 people sinks in the North Sea off western Norway, killing 16 people.

2000 - Florida certifies George W. Bush as the winner of the state's electoral votes for the U.S. presidential election. U.S. Vice President and Democratic rival Al Gore challenges the decision.

2001 - Former French intelligence chief General Paul Aussaressess says in testimony that the orders he issued to torture and kill prisoners during the Algerian independence war were justifiable acts of duty.

2002 - Attorney Gloria Allred asks California authorities to investigate singer Michael Jackson because of news videotape of the star holding his baby son over a fourth-floor railing at a hotel in Germany.

2003 - Elections held in Northern Ireland result in gains for hard-line parties on both sides of the longtime conflict between unionists, who want the territory to remain a British province, and nationalists, who seek unification with the Republic of Ireland.

2004 - Hoping to entice North Korea back into nuclear disarmament talks, the United States, South Korea, Japan and the European Union announce that a deal to build two light-water reactors is still on the table.

2006 - Leftist protesters in Mexico trying to force out the Oaxaca state governor for alleged corruption set more fires after torching government offices and vehicles in a night of street battles with police.

2007 - A British teacher is arrested in Sudan for allegedly insulting Islam by naming a teddy bear Muhammad. Gillian Gibbons, 54, is jailed for more than a week and eventually freed.

2008 - Teams of heavily armed gunmen storm luxury hotels, a popular tourist attraction and a crowded train station in Mumbai, India, leaving at least 172 people and wounding 239 others after a 60-hour rampage.

Today's Birthdays: U.S. pop singer Tina Turner is 70; porn star and Italian member of Parliament Illona Staller is 58.

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