On Nov. 22, 1497, Portugal’s Vasco da Gama became the first navigator to sail around the Cape of Good Hope in his search for a sea route to India.
In 1718 English pirate Edward Teach, better-known as Blackbeard, was killed in a battle off the North Carolina coast (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
In 1819 Mary Ann Evans, who used the pen name George Eliot, was born in England.
In 1906 the SOS signal for ships in distress was adopted at the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin.
In 1928, in Paris, Maurice Ravel’s “Bolero” was performed for the first time.
In 1943 Billie Jean King, who would become a tennis star in the 1960s and ’70s, was born in Long Beach, Calif.
In 1963 President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Also in 1963 two prominent Britons died: author C.S. Lewis, 65, and novelist-critic Aldous Huxley, 69.
In 1965 the musical “Man of La Mancha” opened in New York.
In 1971 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that arbitrary discrimination against women was unconstitional.
In 1977 the supersonic Concorde jet began service to New York from London and Paris.
In 1989 Lebanese President Rene Moawad was assassinated less than three weeks after taking office when a bomb exploded next to his motorcade.
In 1997, after a forced three-week halt in inspections, UN weapons experts returned to Iraq to search for signs Iraq might have worked on biological, chemical or other banned arms during the suspension.
