Today in History....November 22

On this day in …

1718, English pirate Edward Teach — better known as Blackbeard — was killed during a battle off the Virginia coast

1935, a flying boat, the China Clipper, took off from Alameda, Calif., carrying more than 100,000 pieces of mail on the first trans-Pacific airmail flight

1942, a Soviet counteroffensive against the German armies pays off as the Red Army traps about a quarter-million German soldiers south of Kalach, on the Don River, within Stalingrad. As the Soviets' circle tightened, German General Friedrich Paulus requested permission from Berlin to withdraw

1943, President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek met in Cairo to discuss measures for defeating Japan

1963, President Kennedy was shot to death while riding in a motorcade in Dallas. Texas Gov. John B. Connally, in the same limousine as Kennedy, was seriously wounded. Suspect Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested

1988, in the presence of members of Congress and the media, the Northrop B-2 "stealth" bomber is shown publicly for the first time at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California. The aircraft, which was developed in great secrecy for nearly a decade, was designed with stealth characteristics that would allow it to penetrate an enemy's most sophisticated defenses unnoticed

1990, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, having failed to win re-election of the Conservative Party leadership on the first ballot, announced her resignation

1996, O.J. Simpson took the stand as a hostile witness in the wrongful death lawsuit filed against him, saying it was "absolutely not true" that he'd killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman

2005,


An Arab-American college student, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a practitioner of that "religion of peace", was convicted of joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate President Bush

Angela Merkel took power as Germany's first female chancellor

Ted Koppel hosted his final edition of ABC News' "Nightline"