On November 14, 1881 – Charles J. Guiteau went on trial for assassinating President Garfield. Guiteau was convicted and hanged the following year.
1908 – Joseph McCarthy was born. He became an anti-Communist Senator from Wisconsin who gave the name “Mc-Carthyism” to his communist witch-hunts.
1910 – Civilian Eugene Ely, was the first to take off in an airplane from the deck of a ship, USS Birmingham (CL-2) .
1921 – The Cherokee Indians asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review their claim to 1 million acres of land in Texas.
1942 – Off the coast of Guadalcanal, Admiral Tanaka turns south with his destroyers and transports and comes under heavy air attack from both Henderson Field and planes from the USS Enterprise.
1960 – President Dwight Eisenhower ordered U.S. naval units into the Caribbean after Guatemala and Nicaragua charged Castro with starting uprisings.
1960 – OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), formed.
1961 – President Kennedy increased the number of American advisors in Vietnam from 1,000 to 16,000.
1965 – In the first major engagement of the war between regular U.S. and North Vietnamese forces, elements of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) fight a pitched battle with Communist mainforce units in the Ia Drang Valley of the Central Highlands.
1967 – Maj. Gen. Bruno Hochmuth, commander of the 3rd Marine Division, is killed when the helicopter in which he is travelling is shot down. He was the most senior U.S. officer to be killed in action in the war to date.
1969 – Apollo 12, the second manned mission to the surface of the moon, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with astronauts Charles Conrad, Jr.; Richard F. Gordon, Jr.; and Alan L. Bean aboard.
1979 – US President Jimmy Carter issues Executive order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States in response to the hostage crisis.
1986 – White House acknowledges CIA role in secretly shipping weapons to Iran.
2008 – General Ann E. Dunwoody becomes the first female four-star general in the history of the United States Army.
