Today in History.....November 21

On this day in …

* 1877, inventor Thomas A. Edison announced the invention of his phonograph

* 1942, the Alaska highway across Canada was formally opened

* 1964, New York's Verrazano Narrows Bridge, connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island, opened

* 1969, the Senate voted down the Supreme Court nomination of Clement F. Haynsworth, the first such rejection since 1930

* 1973, President Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, revealed the existence of an 18-and-a-half-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to Watergate

* 1979, a mob, practitioners of that "religion of peace", attacked the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, killing two Americans

* 1980, an estimated 83 million TV viewers tuned in to the CBS primetime soap opera "Dallas" to find out "who shot J.R." (The shooter turned out to be J.R. Ewing's sister-in-law, Kristin.)

* 1995, the Dow Jones industrial average closed above the 5,000 mark for the first time